Night 1 June 10th 2022 8:15PM(PDT)
XUXA SANTAMARIA Chancletas D’Oro, XUXA SANTAMARIA / 2019 / 00:03:53
( Sofia Córdova + Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland )
Maya Ben David Sandworm from Dune wants relationship advice / 2021 / 00:04:14
Carla Gannis Until the End of the World / 2017 / 00:06:00
Lee Eun-sol Firefly / 2021 / 00:08:40
Hana Yoo Muju(무주, 無住) - not staying / 2018-2020 / 00:08:15
Diana Gheorghiu White bumpy lesion, redness and pain / 2020 / 00:03:39
Libbi Ponce Fernanda / 2019 / 00:04:35
Night 2 June 11th 2022 8:15PM(PDT)
Stacie Ant Uncanny Valley-MR Eff / 2021 / 00:04:51
Bahareh Khoshooee MaxMotives - Episode1 / 2019 / 00:06:23
Sid and Geri Tears of Oden / 2022 / 00:02:47
Faith Holland Lick Suck Screen 2 on Redtube / 2014 / 00:01:19
Yoshie Sakai Squeezed / 2012 / 00:04:31
Natasha Tontey Pest To Power / 2019 / 00:13:50
Cultural Policy Webtaura / 2020 / 00:03:47
Drink with AR & face filters by
Vitória Cribb, Stacie Ant, Mureș Nicoleta and Pau Jiménez
Day 1 June 10th 2022 at 8:15PM(PDT)
Sofía Córdova Chancletas D’Oro, XUXA SANTAMARIA / 2019 / 00:03:53
From Press Release: Chancletas D’Oro, XUXA SANTAMARIA’s third release and second full-length LP, is a loose concept album focused on exploring femme and women narratives drawn from both history and works of fiction. Side A employs reimagined myths, fables, and original fictional narratives to create songs that challenge or obfuscate the received ideas around feminine agency, motivations, and desire. In Puro Animal and King Marsile, Córdova recasts fictional characters (from “Dracula” and “The Song of Roland” respectively) who originally were little more than victims or mute accomplices within their narratives as willing participants in their own corruption or liberation; White Pine uses the text of an early 20th century poem about tribal life in the Pacific Northwest, written by a white trapper, as a means to simultaneously twist and redirect the white gaze in on itself while still celebrating the knowledge of land and sea possessed by this continent’s first peoples. The Borges-inspired Rudos Del Mar, written while Córdova was traveling along the coast of Chile, details the odyssey of a group of pirates patrolling the seas beyond the edges of language, reason, and time; closing out the side, Color Of The Dark is a (comparatively) straightforward ode to lust, love, and ego disintegration between bodies of color within the darkness of a dance club.
Side B pulls from historical narratives, with subjects ranging from queer silent film star Alla Nazimova in Jardin de Alla to the Puerto Rican syndicalist and feminist pioneer Luisa Capetillo in ¿Quien Lleva Los Pantalones? The last three tracks of the album follow the stories of collective and individual revolutionary women; in River Neva, the International Women’s Day March in 1917 which kickstarted the Russian Revolution and the massacre on Bloody Sunday over a decade earlier drift into each other, as the lyrics imagine the march morphing into a psychedelic battleground on a frozen river covered with blood. Heaven’s Gate Path dramatizes the work of the women truck drivers of the North Vietnamese army, who risked life and limb to transport vital goods during the American War of Imperial Aggression (known in the U.S. as ‘the Vietnam War’), following them through humid jungles bombarded by artillery and fire, while ¿Quien Lleva Los Pantalones? closes out the album by using the story of the Puerto Rican syndicalist movement and Luisa Capetillo to meditate on the struggle for freedom, not only from the injustices of US empire but from the confines of gender roles and tradition. Album available in digital + vinyl via Ratskin Records <3
Video: RIVER NEVA
Direction: Sofia Córdova + Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland (Director of photography)
Choreography + Co-direction : Jordan Rosenow
Dancers:
Kara Collins
Sofia Córdova
Katrina Matejcik
Jahnavi Nayar
Nina Potepam
Jordan Rosenow
Christina Victor
Alexa West
Baille Younkman
Maya Ben David Sandworm from Dune wants relationship advice / 2021 / 00:04:14
Part woman, part worm, she's not interested in your pathetic human pleas for life. She needs relationship advice and quick.
Carla Gannis Until the End of the World, by Carla Gannis / 2017 / 00:06:00
“Until the End of the World” (2017) is a moving image work of dark spectacle by Brooklyn-based artist Carla Gannis. Beginning with a 3D rendering of a naked womxn, reclining and staring into the screen of a small handheld device, Gannis lays bare her references to two seminal images from the history of computer graphics and speculative fiction film, Harmon and Knowlton's “Computer Nude: Studies in Perception I" (1967) and Wim Wender's “Until the End of the World” (1991). Through various avatars and personae Gannis provides a cyberfeminist perspective on themes of selfhood, intelligence and post-humanity in the Age of the Anthropocene.
Lyrics from “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans, a 1968 pop song about our over-dependence on technology, are spoken by synthesized computer voices throughout “Until the End of the World,” setting what Gannis refers to as an “aPOPalyptic” tone to the work.
“Until the End of the World” premiered at DAM Gallery, Berlin in November of 2017. The work connects and amplifies narrative components threaded throughout Gannis’s Selfie Drawings project theselfiedrawings.com/
Lee Eun-sol Firefly / 2021 / 00:08:40
Firefly is the English name for an insect called 'dog beetle' in Korea. Several animals in this video fly around like fireflies, shining and disappearing. The advantage of virtual characters is that even if you die, you can live again as if the game is reset. Kimberly is a character that combines 52 3D models with different facial expressions into one model, and they have the same Vertex number with different default facial values. (The iPhone's facial recognition feature can record facial animation, which standardizes 52 facial expressions needed by the protocol) The law of alchemy is an equivalent exchange, and these 52 heads are made up of the same material value and are equivalent exchangeable. Kimberly is a person who constantly contemplates and practices ways to survive, so this time she attempts to create a Magic Circle and transform the ruins into a new environment. Kimberly's attempts have consistently failed, but this is just a failure, and always planning for the next one.
Hana Yoo Muju(무주, 無住) - not staying / 2018-2020 / 00:08:15
Staying is accompanied by non-staying. Not staying anywhere - Muju(무주, 無住) in Zen-Buddhism directs to leave all forms of obsession, and at the same time to change without sticking to oneself. With the narration explores the connotation of ‘habitat’ reflecting studies of mind as well as socio-cultural context, the video induces meditative appreciation with the ambiguity of natural-artificial image and time.
Digital meditation culture has paradoxical ontologies - it is fed by depression and anxiety of digital spectacles while negating own nature; allows boredom, daydreaming, and stillness. It alters the sense of time in various directions, constantly negotiating with superficiality. Having contemplated on this, Muju takes desert as a symbolic liminal space, attempts to mediate its materiality and immateriality, center and periphery, Eastern and Western philosophy. The question of Muju remains in between temporality and the continuity of the wandering mind within different technical images.
Back from the desert
Publication - Come back from the desert, Being Muju
Published in 2018 *What is Muju?
Staying is accompanied by non-staying. Not staying anywhere - Muju(무주, 無住) in Zen-Buddhism means to leave all forms of obsession, and at the same time to change without sticking to oneself.1 Muju does not mean wandering in the desert. Rather, like a grain of sand in the desert, it does not claim the ownership of the desert. Hakim Bey named T.A.Z(the Temporary Autonomous Zone) as a form of temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control.2 The idea of Muju places the Zone of T.A.Z to Mu(無, Nothingness), thus, psychic nomadism entails the process of emptying. Nomadism without emptying is merely moving, which carries its burden of life each time. Muju is being a guest in your house, whether it is in the desert or in the mind. We are guests of our house, guests of our country, and guests of this planet. Being a guest is temporary. In that sense, T.A.M(Temporary Autonomous Muju) is a continuation of temporality(Zeitlichkeit).
Muju people, all of whom are guests, do not need their masters. Likewise, a non-resident mind does not need
a 'subjective mind'. The mind of Muju is not wandering from the subject but is just a trait that does not stay anywhere. This trait is also temporary, however in Muju, which is free from the desire to be continued,
the boundary between temporality and continuity becomes meaningless.
1Byung-Chul Han, Philosophie des Zen-Buddhismus (Reclam, 2017), 82
2Hakim Bey, T.A.Z. The temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism (Autonomedia, 1991), 104
Libbi Ponce Fernanda / 2019 / 00:04:35
(2019) 360° video 4:35 mins
(Synopsis written and first presented by Offsite Project and Dateagle Art as part of Spread The Virus Vol. 2, https://dateagle.art/spread-the-virus-vol2/:) Filmed in 360°, 'Fernanda' tells the everyday story of families split across borders, seen from the perspective of Ponce’s 9 year old cousin Fernanda. Taking place in Ecuador, over the new year period, Fernanda takes us through city streets as fireworks explode overhead, announcing herself and optimistically greeting everyone in the Estados Unidos. Later she tours us through her home, asking busy relatives to say hi to the camera as they help to prepare the holiday cena. Overlapping this backdrop Ponce introduces fragments of footage, showing ceremonial burnings of Disney icons and the 3d scanning of cultural artefacts, speaking to the post-colonial influence the United States has on Latin America and the status technological prowess grants one nation over another. These deeply complex conversations run parallel to the unbridled joy Fernanda takes in exploring the platform her cousin’s camera gives her to speak to the world.
‘FERNANDA’ has been screened at Modern Forms, UK; FLEX Fest, Tampa, Florida; Indie Grits Film Festival, SC;
Day 2 June 11th 2022 at 8:15PM(PDT)
Stacie Ant Uncanny Valley-MR Eff / 2021 / 00:04:51
Bahareh Khoshooee MaxMotives - Episode1 / 2019 / 00:06:23
Sid and Geri Tears of Oden / 2022 / 00:02:47
Faith Holland Lick Suck Screen 2 on Redtube / 00:01:19
Yoshie Sakai Squeezed / 2012 / 00:04:31
Natasha Tontey Pest To Power / 2019 / 00:13:50
Cultural Policy Webtaura / 2020 / 00:03:47
Stacie Ants Fernanda / 2021 / 00:04:50
This project was commissioned by Mr.Eff, who is an LA-based electronic musician. Together, Stacie Ant and Mr.Eff created an idea for a story that emphasizes the daily longing for digital distractions. The video presents a satirical view on newly popular concepts which emerged with the rise of the metaverse- such as self-representation as an avatar, toxic positivity and escapism. Uncanny Valey was coincidentally created at the beginning of 2020, which was the start of COVID19 pandemic so it seemed like the perfect time to explore the ups and downs of living online.
Bahareh Khoshooee MaxMotives Episode 1 / 2019 / 00:06:23
MaxMotives is an ongoing web series that follows the life of 7 alter-egos and an unwanted “non-resident alien” newborn. The series is filmed and produced in The Sims 2 video game with minor manipulation in post-production. Referencing the format of reality TV and the strategies of mainstream storytelling, the piece explores a strange marriage between the familiar and unfamiliar and couples it with humor to create a world in which even mundane actions become uncanny spectacles. The first season focuses on issues concerning fear of the "other" as well as the conservative and stereotypical expectations of what it means to be a “good mother”.
The narrative of MaxMotives unfolds as the characters investigate potential conspiracies behind the legitimacy and birth of the non-resident alien newborn. In the U.S. immigration laws non-citizen visa holders are referred to as “non-resident alien”. Taking the word literally and out of context, “alien” references pop culture fantasies of
extraterrestrial life while the term “non-resident alien” provokes questions outside of fantasy and science fiction, examining modes of Xenophobia and the extent to which it can be pushed.
Sid and Geri Tears of Oden / 2022 / 00:02:48
Sound by Ao Wu Chang
Oden is a type of Japanese dish, consisting of several ingredients such as boiled eggs, daikon, konjac, and fishcake stewed in a light, soy-flavored broth. In 1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, ceding Taiwan to Japan, and Japan ruled Taiwan for 50 years until its defeat in World War II. Japanese brought Oden into Taiwan,
it was modified to suit the taste of Taiwanese according to the customs, and it has become a common Taiwanese snack. The Japanese pronunciation of Oden transforms over time because of the change in accent, it has become Taiwanese now call "黑輪". "黑輪" in Taiwanese dialect also means when someone got punched in the eye and got black bruises around the eye.
Faith Holland Lick suck screen2-redtube / 2014 / 00:01:19
Porn Interventions is a series of site-specific videos made for RedTube. The works invoke pornographic tropes but defy porn viewers’ expectations. The videos are uploaded to RedTube using the site’s own vernacular clickbait, with tags such as “solo girl,” “BBW,” “amateur,” etc. Instead of the free flow of sexualized bodies, porn surfers are confronted with something critical, strange, and not very sexy. The work was removed from RedTube in 2020 as part of a major purge of amateur content.
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Yoshie Sakai Squeezed / 2012 / 00:04:31
The body is at the core of this video where art, mass media, and quack medicine collide in this netherworld where stuffed animal monkeys are fashion experts; Kool-Aid rules the day; and M & M’s are medically injected into the flesh, as well as a cheesy music video with paper puppets portraying lost love.
Natasha Tontey Pest to Power / 2012 / 00:13:50
Will the future hold its accountability for the human and nonhuman being to be more sustain? Who owns the future? Who benefits from the idea of future?
In this project, I look to the possibility of unlearning human evolution for manufacturing future by gaining knowledge through the agency of cockroaches. What is consider as pest might be a key to lead the sustainable future. Being marginalised for thousand years as a creature carrying diseases and treated as a fear-some species by the human counterpart, cockroaches bear its agency as the only single species that could survive the many extinction events and epochal transformation. Moreover, the judgement toward cockroach is built by the hyper-sterilised semiocapitalism/biopolitics idea of ‘proper lifestyle’ in which overproduction of synthetic commodity and the human dis-attachment to waste generated cockroach as a peripheral creature outside human’s cupola. When everything has to be related to the human activities, the filthy cockroaches are not part of the nature. Human idea to differentiate the nature and culture embraced the notion of speciesism for the cockroach.
This project is a science-quasi-fictional quest into a peculiar behaviour of cockroach that is constituted as an assemblage of nocturnal, habitable, homeopathic, and resourceful material to explore the idea of eco-centric futurism—which means human is not the center for everything. The artistic gesture of this artwork is that of presenting a collection of texts and images in the form of published book for inter-species reciprocity between human and cockroach. This publication will explore the potential of future-developing involving cockroach as a source material. In addition, a video displays the visuality of the research will also be installed as part of the installation. In order to extend the artistic expression of this phenomenon, a reading-performance will be held while implementing the installation space as the cenacle of transferring knowledge. The performance, which consists of human being reading the passage from the publish book while passively interacting with the audience, is an act of mimicking the existence of cockroach—that being somehow ignored but yet menacing. The installation and performance draw on a mode of representation and expression of the immersed image for the complex and fragile interactions and responses between human and cockroach.
What we, human, can learn from the cockroach? What cockroach can learn from human? What is the method of reciprocity for human and nonhuman agency? Could an artistic practice addresses this issue? As the manifesto of Xenofeminism argues, the future is not only for the Child, but it is also a space for nonhuman being. When we start thinking less anthropocentric, we think more ecological. The future is cockroach.
Cultural Policy Webtaura / 2020 / 00:03:47
It’s been 2 years since the world was forced into isolation. Of course, people have evolved to acclimate to this new reality but not as much as Webtaura the part human, part supercomputer with the body of a robotic animal.
The idea for Webtaura was born in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic by an international collaboration between artists from the USA and Ukraine.
The Project poses the questions:
“What are we becoming?” & “Are we sure we’re ready to become it?”
Webtaura ingests information via 24/7 data analysis of the world wide web. The amount of ingested storage, data manipulation, and general archiving would suggest that she is far above manipulation. In reality, she is just as affected by siren servers and information curation engines as normal human beings are. Webtaura performs hundreds of millions of Google search queries every second and is fluent in 23 languages (which accounts for more than half the world’s population). She can communicate via text and intelligent auto-gain. This guarantees a perfect matching of the perceived loudness of input and output signals.
She named herself after the Centaur. A creature from Greek mythology that came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture to nomads who were mounted on horses –– half-man, half-animal.
“After LA was locked down I started to fantasize about a futuristic human with a data server instead of a heart, and a musical language instead of purely verbal communication. In hindsight I’d have to admit her secret skill of being able to cook borscht in less than a minute (instead of 2 hours) is my secret obsession. –– Alice Scope (Curator, USA/Ukraine)
“Webtaura is always wearing glasses due to such a long time in isolation. Her lack of physical exposure has made her very sensitive to light. I love to play with contrast in these ways. Another example would be that she processes information extremely fast so I decided to make the pacing of the videos very slow.” –– Snizhana Chernetska (Visual Artist, Ukraine)
The project includes sound design by Philip Meyer (USA) and writing by Phillip Soulliere (USA). Both artists are based in LA.
Artists
Visual Artist Snizhana Chernetska @snizhanac
Snizhana is a Kyiv based visual artist. She currently works at the creative agency “Banda”. She is interested in the topic of defects/imperfections. In her work Snizhana explores the field of ugly aesthetics. Chernetska works in Cinema 4D, Adobe Holland, France, Ukraine.
Curator, Creative Director Alice Scope @alicescope
Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, Alice is an independent art curator, educator, and cultural producer based in Los Angeles. In 2016, she founded the first Experimental Art Center AkT in Ukraine, which supports young Ukrainian artists and was the first center in Ukraine to showcase art in Virtual Reality for a broad audience. In 2019, she started a Digital Art Education program Risa.Today for school kids in Kenya.
These days Alice is running a curatorial platform called Cultural Policy (@culturalpolicy), working with international artists, curating shows at Vellum LA. Alice explores topics of post-humanism and human psychology.
Sound Designer Philip Meyer @mw_ntrm
is a musician, multimedia artist, and software maker in Los Angeles.
He uses a computer to make work that invites people to feel the sensation of being one single person in one single place at one single point in time. His work can be found at philip-meyer.com
Writer Phillip Soulliere @ironically_cliche
Phillip is a Los Angeles based writer, and video director/producer. Originally from the Coachella Valley desert, his work has spanned over a plethora of mediums from narrative and commercial work to music video and creative direction. His main inspirations come from the magic of what we would normally see as mundane interactions of everyday life. Phil finds these moments to be not only our most fascinating expressions but our most telling.
Vocal Luc i@lucimuz
Special thanks to @nusiquero to make Webtaura speak