Death less ness Sian Fan
Float:
Digital Factor Sian Fan
‘Deathlessness’ was created as part of the Digital Factory Andy Warhol Artist Rooms Exhibition.
www.floatdigitalfactory.tumblr.com
ry Residency
y Residency, in association with Firstsite, Circuit and the
‘Deathlessness’, reflects upon Warhol’s key themes of death and celebrity, and explores the preservation and distortion of identity in the digital age. As an expansion on Warhol’s use of fading prints, suggestive of death, ‘Deathlessness’ uses digitally distorted and warped figures to represent a new, fluid view on mortality, in light of today’s digital identity. The figures exist as holograms, emulating three-dimensional life, and tricking the eye of the viewer. In the same way that Warhol’s repeated prints act to immortalise a person, the videoed figures act as simulacrum providing a looped and eternal vision. These copies move, perform and behave as portraits of the artist and evoke a ubiquitous presence in the space. Whilst the figures continue to develop, building layer upon layer, the expectation is for them to become increasingly solid, however they instead morph and blend into a further abstracted form. This flawed existence is reflective of the pervading yet incomplete experience that the Internet and digital media provides. The work is heavily influenced by Warhol’s method of immortalising a person through their image. It attempts to evade the notion of death and insignificance by creating a perpetual reproduction of the artist. This version, although obviously flawed reflects how heavily lives are created, stored and experienced digitally and challenges the notions of what it means to exist.
Collaborationvv-
Duet Ben Beauchamp
Visuals Susi Disorder
Collaboration-
with Susi Disorder
Crit set upPhoto credit Ben Beauchamp
Sian Fan is an emerging artist working in video, sculpture and performance. She studied BA Performance & Visual Art Dance (Hons) at the University of Brighton where she was also awarded the prize for Outstanding Creative Achievement from Seoul National University. She works with movement, the body and technology to explore and expose what it means to exist, both physically and spiritually. Drawing on her background in contemporary dance, she creates choreography that fragments and abstracts the body, as an exploration of the complexity and profundity of existence. Her use of her own image is an inherent element within her practice and stems from her desire to reflect upon her own perceptions, observations and philosophies. She is interested in the ephemeral and fleeting nature of both thought and the body and attempts to crystalize such moments within her works.
@sianfan www.sianfan.com