April 10–December 6, 2015
ryan trecartin (Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me), 2006 Video, 7:15 min. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York I-Be Area, 2007 Video, 108 min. The Pinnell Collection
On view April 10–May 10
jon rafman Still Life (Betamale), 2013 HD video, 4:54 min. Dallas Museum of Art, DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund
On view May 12–June 7
antoine catala Emobot (Teacher), 2014 HD video, 13:00 min. Courtesy the artist and 47 Canal, New York
On view June 9–July 12
trisha baga Madonna y El Niño, 2011 Video, 25:14 min. Courtesy the artist and Société
On view July 14–August 9
jacolby satterwhite Reifying Desire 6, 2014 HD video, 24:15 min. Courtesy the artist and OHWOW Gallery, Los Angeles
On view August 11–September 6
aleksandra domanovi´c From yu to me, 2013 HD video, 35:00 min. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Leighton Gallery
On view September 8–October 4
ed atkins Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths, 2013 HD video, 12:51 min. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
On view October 6–November 8
hito steyerl How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013 HD video, 14:00 min. Courtesy the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
On view November 10–December 6
Today, we live in what might be described as a “post-Internet” world. While the definition of this term varies widely among contemporary artists, curators, and critics alike, here it is used simply to refer to the undeniably omnipresent nature of the Internet in our daily lives.1 Through our computers, tablets, smartphones, and other digital devices, we are now inundated with images and information on an unprecedented scale. The majority of cultural reception and production is now mediated through computers, digital cameras, and the Internet, resulting in a lack of fixity or any sense of an original within digital culture. Increasingly, our social relationships rely on the instant gratification of text messages and online social networks such as Facebook rather than on physical interaction. This technological shift has also allowed for a democratization of image and object production tools (both hardware and software); and, to a certain extent, consumers are now producers, or “prosumers.” This has created a paradigm shift in the dissemination of culture from what was once a one-to-many relationship to what is now a many-to-many relationship, creating a deafening multiplicity of voices online. Blogs, peer networks, social media, YouTube, and Tumblr now allow amateurs to actively create content on par with professional media, simultaneously leveling the playing field and lowering expectations. In the current moment, when the Internet has become “less of a novelty and more of a banality,”2 an increasing number of artists have turned their attention toward issues of representation—specifically representing the self—in an attempt to come to terms with how we know and define ourselves as individuals. Through a series of recent single-channel videos, the exhibition Concentrations 59: Mirror Stage—Visualizing the Self After the Internet examines the changing understanding and representation of the self via digital technology and the Internet. Taking as its starting point Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage”—a psychoanalytic stage of human development in which the infant first encounters an image of itself (often via a mirror) and begins to perceive the notion of selfhood—this exhibition explores how we as human beings now reencounter and reimagine the self via the myriad of screens we confront in our digital lives. According to Lacan, the mirror stage establishes an ideal image of the self (the Ideal-I) that subjects will perpetually strive for over the course of their lives. We need this image of ourselves in order to establish relationships with other people and in order to negotiate the physical and social reality of our world—this perception of the self locates us within the world and in relationship to others. In Lacan’s words, “The function of the mirror-stage . . . is to establish a relation between the organism and its reality”3—between one’s inner world and the outer world. While the mirror stage comes to an end early in a child’s development, it is important to remember that the “dynamic relationship between the subject and his image remains a perpetual force in the subject’s psychic life.”4 With this concept in mind, the current exhibition proposes that our confrontation with the screen establishes the relationship between ourselves and reality anew. As an extension of the mirror stage, the relationship between one’s online and offline realities is now fundamentally mediated by the screen. Today’s digital technology allows for infinitely mediated and malleable notions of one’s self-image that were unimaginable prior to the
advent of the Internet; however, as many of the works included in this exhibition attest, this unbounded freedom of self-representation is paradoxically met with increased feelings of anxiety and alienation. At times schizophrenic and narcissistic, the work of several artists included in Mirror Stage reflects what critic Melissa Gronlund describes as “an obsession . . . with one’s identity, but also a conception of identity as not controlled by one’s self, but determined and organized by factors beyond one’s scope.”5 According to Gronlund, due to the “poly-vocal” nature of communication via the Internet, self-identity has become increasingly defined by and contingent on the responses of others. This is engineered into social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, where “likes,” reposts, and comments sections provide instantaneous validation (or lack thereof) for one’s online personae. This tenuous relationship to the online other and constant need for self-validation creates a double-bind: one must continue to contribute and perform oneself online out of fear that he or she may be forgotten; however, there is no guarantee that one will receive a reply or acknowledgment of one’s contribution to begin with. As video artist Jennifer Chan points out, one must “participate to relieve the fear of missing out, and the loss of meaning and agency over self-representation.”6 Over the course of eight months, the Mirror Stage exhibition will display works by an international roster of artists—including Ed Atkins, Trisha Baga, Antoine Catala, Aleksandra Domanovi´c, Jon Rafman, Jacolby Satterwhite, Hito Steyerl, and Ryan Trecartin—with a different artist’s work on view each month. Each work has been carefully selected to present a diverse range of approaches, including documentary, narrative, and non-narrative video works, and has been arranged in a deliberate order that juxtaposes each video against the previous work. The exhibition begins with two early video works by artist RYAN TRECARTIN—the short (Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me) (2006) and the feature-length I-Be Area (2007). In both works, the artist and his collaborators seemingly perform the Internet, embodying many of the tropes and clichés of communicating online. Here the artist and fellow actors address the camera directly in a highly self-aware manner, constantly preening and adjusting themselves as if posing for a selfie. This exaggerated self-posturing is met with a barrage of quick sound and video edits that create a manic pacing indicative of the diminished attention spans of the YouTube generation. Language is also a key component of Trecartin’s world, in which ironic and pithy statements are generated from the shorthand of text messages and online chat room jargon. In the choreographed chaos of Trecartin’s videos, identity is rendered elastic, with the artist assuming multiple personalities and changing genders in chameleon-like fashion. Describing this phenomenon in relation to I-Be Area, the artist has commented, “The basic idea of the film is that what identifies people is not necessarily their bodies anymore; it’s all the relationships they maintain with others. You are your area, rather than yourself.”7 This notion is put into practice with unsettling results in the work of JON RAFMAN. In the video Still Life (Betamale) (2013), the artist utilizes found webcam footage obtained through social networking and imageboard websites such as 4chan and Reddit to piece together a loose narrative that gives a glimpse into the dark corners of Internet subculture. In
particular, the video explores the world of Internet “trolls”8 in addition to the subcultures of erotic Japanese animation (hentai anime) and “furry fans.”9 Using the visual device of the virtual window on a computer screen, the video provides a “window” into these largely hidden online communities. The narration of the film alludes to the infinite possibilities (connectivity, greater access to information, greater efficiency, etc.) that were promised at the dawn of the Internet age, but this utopic vision is undercut in disturbing fashion by the reality of what the Internet has become and the alternative communities it has generated. Viewers are presented with a mirror of their virtual other through real footage of online communities, resulting in the stark realization that these anonymous individuals are a reflection of humanity in the Internet age. ANTOINE CATALA’S Emobot (Teacher) (2014) presents a mirror of another sort, blending Lacan’s ideas of human development with notions of the post-human. The work consists of 3-D CGI motion-capture footage of a bare-chested adolescent boy whose limbs and torso are abruptly cut off by the video’s truncated frame. Over the course of the video, the digital avatar mimics various human emotions—smiling, laughing, frowning, and wincing—while sporadically voicing declarations of its current emotional state. These statements range from the jubilant (“I’m over the moon”) to the unsettling (“I am in so much pain”), and at times proclaim conflicting states of being—“I feel dead inside” and “I feel alive.” The isolated head and chest focus the viewer’s attention on the boy’s face, which often gives way to glitches in the eyes and teeth when the rudimentary digital framework fails to register the nuances of human facial expressions. This apparatus of a complex jumble of human emotions is envisioned by Catala as a means to “outsource” one’s emotions to a digital avatar. We currently outsource manufacturing and service industry labor across the globe, and Catala sees a world in the not-too-distant future where unwanted feelings can be taught to and transferred to a surrogate to alleviate one’s emotional discomfort. The notion that one’s self is the sum of its interconnected parts is reimagined by the artist TRISHA BAGA in Madonna y El Niño (2011). Here, the iconic religious pairing of the Madonna and Child is recast as the pop star Madonna, with “El Niño” referring to both the star-struck Baga and the system of warm ocean currents that periodically plague the Equatorial Pacific. Water is often a recurring narrative device in Baga’s work, and early on the video mentions the life-giving properties of water and the karma-like repetition of the water cycle—evaporation, condensation, precipitation. Staring at her computer screen, the artist begins to equate the sun with the monitor’s glow and has an epiphany of sorts, stating, “For a very long time all that I could see in this glass was my own reflection. Until the day I looked just a little bit harder and I realized another face was looking right back at me.” The face staring back at the artist through her cluttered desktop turns out to be Madonna, the “Queen of Pop,” with whom the artist speaks via keyboard and the computer screen. Blending elements of lip-synched webcam performance and found footage from Madonna’s 2006 The Confessions Tour DVD, the artist explores the interconnectedness of the digital age and the possibility of finding oneself in the ether of cyberspace. Baga’s video segues nicely into the work of JACOLBY SATTERWHITE, who is also interested in the creation of a personal mythology; however, unlike Baga, who focuses on the individual
journey of self-discovery and its relation to the cult of celebrity, Satterwhite explores the multiplicity of self-identity through the construction of vast digital fantasy worlds that draw equally from personal memory, popular culture, family history, and science fiction. In Reifying Desire 6 (2014), Satterwhite presents a surreal digital universe, created in the 3-D animation program Maya, that is populated by countless avatars of Satterwhite, as well as by architecture and objects based on numerous drawings by the artist’s own mother. Satterwhite incorporates his performance practice into his digital animations, with the fluid, improvisational movements of his body often providing the driving force behind his elaborate narratives. Reifying Desire 6 is rife with references to birth and procreation, as it begins with an androgynous alien mother figure giving rise to amorphous creatures from multiple orifices. These creatures float through a boundless space and are eventually revealed to be Satterwhite and porn star Antonio Biaggi gyrating in various positions of mock copulation. Their procreating is attended to by strange cybernetic beings, with the artist ultimately birthing a tree of life from a glowing screenlike opening in his crotch. Here, Satterwhite visualizes sexual desire as a vast network of undulating bodies in a digital fantasy world of his own making. Shifting focus from fantasy to reality, the documentary film From yu to me (2013) by ALEKSANDRA DOMANOVI´C examines the birth of the Internet in the former Yugoslavia, the artist’s birthplace. Domanovi´ c is best known for her sculpture and installation work that champions the recovery of female narratives in the history of technology and popular science fiction. The film’s title references the .yu domain name, which was first registered in 1989 by the “mother of the Internet in Yugoslavia,” Borka Jerman Blažiˇ c.10 One of a handful of female computer scientists and engineers of her generation, Blažiˇ c—now a professor at the University of Ljublijana—was a pioneering figure in bringing the Internet to Yugoslavia until the country’s collapse in the early 1990s. Through a series of interviews with Blažiˇ c and Mirjana Tasi´ c, found television footage, and CGI animation, the artist presents a rare account of women involved in the birth of the World Wide Web that is both empowering and revelatory. The documentary does not make any specific statement; instead it is a portrait of Domanovi´ c’s role models, and a story of politics, gender, and technology that runs parallel to the violent civil war in, and eventual dissolution of, the former Yugoslavia. The work of ED ATKINS utilizes technology—namely high-definition 3-D CGI animation—to explore the inherent paradoxes and shortcomings of digital representation to encapsulate lived experience. While the CGI avatars in his videos present an incredibly lifelike visage, Atkins is quick to point out how “utterly dead” such HD images are. In the digital verisimilitude and lack of corporeality of the avatars, the artist identifies “a ‘hollow’ representation, eternally distanced from life, from Being,”11 whose pure immateriality forces the viewer to consider the materiality, and by extension mortality, of his or her own body. In the work Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths (2013), an Adonis-like avatar with long, flowing black hair repeatedly recites the 1971 poem “The Morning Roundup” by Gilbert Sorrentino, which itself alludes to death and the inability to adequately represent the experience of banalities such as the weather. Through repeated reciting of this poem, the artist allows the words to take on nuanced meanings and an air of emotional urgency that is at odds with his inhuman, unfeeling digital avatar. The hyper-real artificiality of Atkins’ surrogate is compounded by
the artist’s inclusion of computer-rendered lens flare and lens dust to self-reflexively point to the immateriality of digital representation. For the Mirror Stage finale, HITO STEYERL’S How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013) examines the politics of visibility and the means for opting out of being represented in the digital age. Structured as a “how to” video, Steyerl’s work presents a variety of practical techniques to avoid being captured by the camera’s lens. These tactics range from the obvious (hiding), to the outlandish (invisibility cloak), to the sarcastic (being female and over 50). While playful in tone, the video’s message is deadly serious— the digital networks that visualize the world today serve to exploit the masses in the name of control, power, and profit. And, as more of us use smartphones to document ourselves and keep tabs on one another through social media, we are implicitly aiding and abetting these monitoring systems through a “regime of (mutual) self-control and visual self-disciplining.”12 Steyerl cautions that “hegemony is increasingly internalized, along with the pressure to conform and perform, as is the pressure to represent and be represented.”13 Ultimately, one can only resist the threat of such institutionalized regimes of surveillance by becoming invisible. Here, the act of disappearing becomes synonymous with refusal—a refusal to give in to such pressures, and a refusal to participate in these networks of exploitation. Gabriel Ritter The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art Dallas Museum of Art
1. For more on the post-Internet, please see Karen Archey and Robin Peckham, Art Post-Internet (Beijing: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 2014); Omar Kholeif, ed., You Are Here—Art After the Internet (Manchester, UK: Cornerhouse, 2014); Gene McHugh, Post Internet (Brescia, Italy: LINK Editions, 2011); Artie Vierkant, “The Image Object Post-Internet,” 2010, http://jstchillin.org/artie/pdf/The_Image_Object_Post-Internet_us.pdf. 2. Gene McHugh, Post Internet (Brescia, Italy: LINK Editions, 2011), 16. 3. Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), 505. 4. John David Zuern, “CriticaLink | Lacan: The Mirror Stage,” http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/ lacan/guide2.html. 5. Melissa Gronlund, “From Narcissism to the Dialogic: Identity in Art After the Internet,” Afterall 37 (Autumn/Winter 2014): 6. 6. Jennifer Chan, “Notes on Post-Internet,” in You Are Here—Art After the Internet, ed. Omar Kholeif (Manchester, UK: Cornerhouse, 2014), 114. 7. Ryan Trecartin in Calvin Thomas, “Experimental People,” New Yorker, March 24, 2014, 40. 8. Shut-ins who spend their days playing video games or causing online arguments. 9. Individuals who dress up as anthropomorphic animal characters to escape reality. 10. Aleksandra Domanovi´c, From yu to me (Colchester, UK: Firstsite, 2014), 6. 11. Ed Atkins, “Some Notes on High Definition with apologies to M. Blanchot,” 2011, 3. Available via http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/film-exercise-syposium-what-can-the-image-do/ed-atkinsnotes-on-hd. 12. Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” in Surround Audience: New Museum Triennial 2015, ed. Laren Cornell and Helga Christoffersen (New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications, 2015), 41. 13. Ibid. Concentrations 59: Mirror Stage—Visualizing the Self After the Internet is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. The presentation is made possible by TWO X TWO for AIDS and Art, an annual fundraising event that jointly benefits amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and the Dallas Museum of Art, and by the Contemporary Art Initiative through the gifts of Nancy and Clint Carlson, Lindsey and Patrick Collins, Arlene and John Dayton, Claire Dewar, Jennifer and John Eagle, Amy and Vernon Faulconer, Kenny Goss and Joyce Goss, Tim Hanley, Julie and Ed Hawes, Marguerite Steed Hoffman, The Karpidas Foundation, Patty Lowdon, Cynthia and Forrest Miller, Janelle and Alden Pinnell, Allen and Kelli Questrom, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Lisa and John Rocchio, Catherine and Will Rose, Deedie and Rusty Rose, Jan and Jim Showers, Jackie and Peter Stewart, Gayle and Paul Stoffel, and Sharon and Michael Young. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Partners and donors, the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Images are © Ryan Trecartin, © Jon Rafman, © Antoine Catala, © Trisha Baga and Société, © Jacolby Satterwhite, © Aleksandra Domanovi´c, © Ed Atkins, © Hito Steyerl