Presenting my work on re-performance of contemporary performance work as a form of preservation, oral storytelling and reinterpretation at Transformation Digital Art 2019, LIMA Amsterdam.
March 21: 16:00-17:30 PART III: How to Activate the Past and (Re)Present It
Anne Marie Duguet (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) An Anarchive Archive
Adam Lockhart (University of Dundee) VR as an Archiving and Simulation Tool for Media Artworks
Emile Zile (Digital Ethnography Research Centre, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) Wearing the Skin Suit: Interpretation and Reperformance of Historical Performance Art
Moderated by Serena Cangiano (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland)
I wrote an article for upcoming magazine Attenzione on Shia LeBoeuf’s artwork ‘He Will Not Divide Us’ and the subsequent street and stream battles that took place.
Excerpts below, full article released on publication.
Utilising the structure of an always-on webcam, the invitation of narcissistic self-exposure, exquisite timing and Hollywood star power, Le Beouf activated adoration and admonishment. The HWNDU platform brought fans and trolls from their bedrooms, dorm rooms and basements to physically, symbolically and verbally enrage each other on the streets of New York. Capitalising on discontent once left to stew behind a keyboard, Le Beouf’s art work succeeded in creating a networked political reality show with its own cast of performers, repeat visitors and individuals drawn to troll the setup in-person. Footage streamed online was subsequently cut into fragments by users, providing the project with its own sustaining viral spread over networks. On Youtube and message boards mythologies began to circulate telling of the performative interventions of characters. These repeat visitors were tagged with nicknames by the online watchers; ‘Jackie 4Chan’, ‘AIDS Bjorn’, ‘Based Pole’. Mixing between them were more well-known YouTube and Twitch figures including Brittany Venti and Sam Hyde.
After Le Beouf was arrested for assault at the Queens location the Museum for the Moving Image shut down the project citing a ‘violent and unsafe environment’. The project moved to Alberquerque New Mexico until drive-by shootings led it to being relocated once more. The next iteration of the HWNDU stream initiated a proxy game of ‘Capture the Flag’ or Massively Multiplayer Realtime Trolling. The same Helvetica font with He Will Not Divide Us was applied to a white flag and run up a flag pole with no other geographic or contextual information provided. A white flag with black text framed by a blue sky. Within minutes of establishing a live connection from this new location the self-proclaimed ‘weaponised Autism’ of message board users on 4Chan.org was deployed. Such highly-networked and coordinated intelligence resulted in flight paths being triangulated, geographic analysis shared of regional frog croaking sounds and astronomical star tracking all used to pinpoint the new location of the flag. A video game physicalised into the world, with many points of online cultural cred to be unlocked per each imagined tear of Shia.
Limmy is Glaswegian. He came from the web, born of early YouTube. Compressed domestic tales from the compressed cloud cover of a pishy wet city.
Between 2010-13 he produced Limmy’s Show, a BBC Scotland sketch show. Ecstasy jokes at funerals. Junkie internal monologues in airless living rooms. Anti-moral tales from the housing estate. A wet surrealism born from desperation, seratonin-depletion and workplace demoralisation.
Limmy faces the camera. He has his location. His battery is charged. He hits record.
He found a niche in Vine, the short-video sharing social network subsumed into Twitter in 2016. Working in such concision his gestures are witnessed in flashes; a gnarl of teeth, a glance, the snatch of a gesture that transmits directly to our reptilian stem. Before we can react we see, and what we see is Limmy’s primordial state. Often in bed, without clothing or the presence of others, Limmy gags for the camera. A slithering tongue followed by a kitchen knife followed by a loving stare to camera. These are the masks of persona trying itself on. A face cycling through numerous emotional states and energies. The additional impact from their cataloguing into 600 Vine Supercompilations on YouTube makes suffocation inevitable.
Limmy will now create his ‘Homemade show’ in 2017. Between cheap high-resolution video cameras and the infinite potential of his apartment. A new form born from hand-held video devices, social sharing and the home.
