San Francisco, USA. Exhibition Poster and Flyer Commission
NOMA Gallery is pleased to present Avatar 4D, a performance event curated by JstChillin and the first event in the n o m a i n b e t w e e n series. In the words of the JstChillin creators (Caitlin Denny and Parker Ito): "Avatar 4D brings a night of embodied logarithms and viral glancing. We have asked seventeen artists whose work is concerned with the internet to perform in the space all at the same time. Through curatorial synesthesia, the performances will be set up as chaotically choreographed circumstances that exist in a reality of virtual proportions, modifying their skins in a post human culture of "I".
The nostalgic net romanticism of the nineteen nineties is a crisis passed - promises of a future society of cyborgs have swelled and vanished. Utopian metamorphosis through the digital screen is best left for Cameron's Avatar 3D. A fold in our digital condition has occurred, not unlike the fold of the human body, a naïve comfort in the inner workings of a complex machine. Dependence on the functions and malfunctions of the computer leave us at once at the whim of an unknown force and completely in control of our tactile environment. Embodiment no longer coincides with the limits of flesh; disembodiment initially experienced on the internet opens the possibility for collective re-embodiment through new technologies.
Artists in Avatar 4D are reality hackers, experimenting with the theoretical apparatus of struggle. The tensions that arise in finding one's body without organs, is between the ever changing modes of the net as much as the change in the self. The narcissistic focus found in many of the artists' works act as an instrument of distancing. Petra Cortright's work with high end webcams featuring herself and released on the internet speak to the idea that a gesture performed through the internet does not create an image of oneself, but an event of oneself. Ben Vickers (London) traces through his persons, his multiples, in a piece in which he recites the web address, username and password for every account and avatar he has ever represented. He forfeits all control to an unnamed audience who now have the ability to become him, to change him, to colonize his experience. The digital action signifies a movement, pulling the body beyond it's limits into a networked world of gestural relentlessness. These actions and the Avatar 4D event are models of new movement.
Images courtesy of JstChillin. Documentation here.
