After the Internet
Jeremy Bailey, Maya Ben David, Dennis Day, Ann Hirsch, Rachel Maclean, Bridget Moser, Tough Guy Mountain, and Tabita Reznaire
Curated by Matthew Kyba
October 12 — November 11, 2017
Jeremy Bailey, Maya Ben David, Dennis Day, Ann Hirsch, Rachel Maclean, Bridget Moser, Tough Guy Mountain, and Tabita Reznaire
Curated by Matthew Kyba
October 12 — November 11, 2017
Since the 1960’s and up until our current (post) digital age, that contemporary art has flippantly fixated on and hastily flown past, the number of video artists have increased dramatically. Often times, for reasons spanning artistic autobiography and counter-cultural critique, artists have created digital personas or alter-egos that live within virtual worlds. Artists Jeremy Bailey, Maya Ben David, Dennis Day, Ann Hirsch, Rachel Maclean, Bridget Moser, Tough Guy Mountain, and Tabita Rezaire, all typify different approaches to digital selfhood, and the opportunities that exist for critique to be explored via virtual identities.
Due in some part to the democratization of video-editing and developing software, and the ever increasing availability of production equipment, artists now, more than ever, have ample opportunity to become 2-dimensional virtual subjects within their own practices. Many of these artists have pinched the nerve of current digital/real identity tensions that originate from the friction of Internet representation. Through various doppelgängers, the included artists exemplify the difficulty of veracity in our electronic selves.
Although new technologies and media may typify contemporary video artists, alternative personalities that are performative in nature have always been integral to certain video practices. Often involving identity construction, satirical socio-political stand-ins, and externalized subjects that can critique mainstream or traditional culture away from the artists’ own self, artist-created alter-egos have the ability to act as powerful agents for contemporary discourse. North American society is dominated by virtual representations of the self through social media. Each artist’s digital persona epitomizes our ability to curate a digital image, disassociating and confusing the real from the cyber-self. Symptomatic of our current 21st century state of constant virtual representation, this collection of artists symbolize the difficultly in separating ourselves from our online personalities while simultaneously showcasing how powerful these avatars can be when truly used for political and critical avenues.
As part of The Wrong Biennale.