As a precursor to this blog, I haven’t
read through it, simply because it’s over 8000 words (including a 3000 word
essay), so at this point it needs to be published so that I can get the past
month out of the way. As another precursor, part of this blog was written a little less
than a month ago, before I came back to Suffolk for the holidays, so some
things have changed whilst others have stayed the same. I thought it was kind
of nice to keep this content, seeing how I’ve changed in the month since
writing this shit. New content is in italics, then later on it goes back to
normal text…
It is now officially Easter, I miss you
Blockbuster is over, the offsite show went well and soon I’ll be heading back
to Suffolk. I guess this will be a ‘round up’ blog, reflecting on the last few
months alongside catching up on all the stuff that I’ve been doing this week in
preparation for saying goodbye to another part of my life.
So, the SNAP exhibition on Friday went
incredibly well. In preparation for this ‘evening of events’ we put together a
spreadsheet with times alongside printing t-shirts with the SNAP logo to
identify the artists from the audience. The spreadsheet acted as our press
release, as we didn’t actually know where each of our works were going to be
leading up to the evening, so no time to draw up a plan. We also set up various
cameras documenting the experience, two on either side of the hall, a
photographer who took photographs throughout the evening and my own artwork, Viewpoints and Data Distortion, which
live streamed to my own Facebook account for the duration of the evening.
Obviously the idea of the exhibition, making the whole thing into a performance
within itself, deemed the cameras to be incredibly necessary.
The evening was a success, with the work
looking great alongside the performances going incredibly well. My own work was
received well, especially the piece Guided
Representation, a set of 6 badges with different web browsers printed onto
them. These were being given away for free and acted as a kind of voting
system, with people picking the browsers that they commonly used. I obviously
didn’t say outright that this was the case, or that one should choose your own,
but I feel that this was very much assumed as you kind of ‘get’ it by walking up
to the work. I enjoy how about 100 people now have an artwork of mine in their
pocket/bag/house.
Other things that happened this week,
the sweet dispenser arrived and the badges were photographed within them, seen
on my website here: www.bobbicknell-knight.com/guided-representation. I called the piece Guided
Representation due to the badges being a form of representation, representing
ones political beliefs and in a way showing off/performing to others around
them. It’s a form of ‘guided representation’ because of this performative act
of wearing a badge, with a lot of thought having gone into the choice of web
browser, that you yourself use and the one that others use too. If you want to
look ‘cool’ you may choose the Tor browser, one well known for allowing you to
enter into the ‘deep web’. If you’re of an older generation you might choose
internet explorer, reflecting on the past, whereas young people will probably
choose Chrome, a web browser that over 80% of the internet uses.
Another work that I basically finished was the
video piece that I began working on last week, emoji scrolling alongside
airport surveillance. I titled it Automated Compression, working off of the
vacuum sealed bag alongside the continued automation of basic tasks, like going
through airport security or making a delivery. Take a look at the finished
video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Sv9HGqEkw
Here’s some documentation of the installation.
Another little piece I put together was a sort of
reflection of my own curatorial practice, utilising some of the answers to the
interviews that I’ve been conducting with artists alongside old work, like my
vaporwave-y work alongside the Sims family. I took this image and have gotten
it printed onto canvas, marble and all. Here’s how it looks, still unsure of
what to call it. Side note here, I left this piece in Suffolk, so will probably document it in a few months if I still like it.
I’m still waiting for the bitcoin to be 3D printed.
This will arrive in the next few weeks hopefully… The bitcoin arrived, it looks great and is huge! I haven’t got around
to spray painting it yet. Hopefully soon, then I’ll display it on a plinth
resting on a classic coin holder.
In terms of isthisit?, the exhibition with A217 is
over. I’ll be de-installing that tomorrow, with the only annoying aspect of
that being posting back work, which I always hate doing. All in all it went
incredibly well, with a bunch of people coming to take a look at the show and
giving me their email, etc, etc. I will definitely be putting on another
physical show, and soon!
The magazine is fully done and currently taking
pre-orders! I’ve decided to order a bunch and then deliver them myself to
people, simply because the postage for one magazine from the website was so
much money (I think about the same price as the actual mag) so fuck that. I am
also able to sell them cheaper by ordering in bulk. I set the cost to £12.99
(including postage), alongside getting a free limited edition web browser
badge, so adding my own artwork into the experience. I’m currently waiting for
the text mag to arrive, then I can order a bunch, obviously sooner rather than
later! I’m excited to finally get the mag out there and (hopefully) getting
feedback from people. Here’s a link if you want to pre-order, it stops me from
freaking out about spending a ton of my own money at once and also shows me
that people want to actually read it, which is a really nice feeling within
itself - www.isthisitisthisit.com/magazine
Concerning the magazine, I hosted an online launch
event a few weeks ago. Lots of performances over a 2 hour period, including my
own version of Watching Me, Watching You. I think the whole thing went fairly
well, but it was incredibly hectic on my end, although I think that it was
quite nice to watch me watching the other performances, etc. It also made it
incredibly clear that maybe isthisit? needs a bigger following before doing a
live online event. Offline events, people are attracted by free beer and the
chat, but online you’re alone, beside a computer with no beer to hand. I wonder
how to combat this… If you missed the event follow the link to see many great
performances: www.isthisitisthisit.com/issue-1-launch
The
online shows are still going strong with HUTT Collective organising an
exhibition of physical works alongside artwork solely made for the online
space. It’s a fun show, a bunch of work being thrown onto a white we page,
similar to the exhibition a while ago with Scaffold Gallery. These are solid
shows, although I prefer ones where the curator has considered the layout and
attempted to do something innovative with the medium of the internet. However,
it is always interesting to see what the guest curators do, and there hasn’t
been one yet that I’ve hated which is a surprise. Go to www.isthisitisthisit.com/limbo-lambada to see the exhibition. Next week
I’m taking a slot to put on my own curated experience. I’m unsure what that
will manifest itself as. It’s time to actually look at the submissions on
CuratorSpace for once.
Since
this show there’s been a bunch more (obviously), one curated by myself, another
by East Bristol Contemporary and the most recent one from Luke Nairn. You can
read all the curatorial notes, as always, by going to www.isthisitisthisit.com/curatorial-notes
Here’s
mine for the show ‘url 2 irl 2 url’:
It’s
common knowledge that people act differently on the internet than in the ‘real’
world, with the mask of the screen to hide behind one arguably allows their
true self to appear, anonymously trolling on internet forums whilst creating
countless profiles on Facebook in order to ‘cyber-bully’, an old hat phrase by
todays standards… Although in the post-Trump era we are seeing a revolution, or
evolution, of the cyber bully, reverting to being a physical embodiment of the
bully, a frightening prospect. This week’s exhibition on isthisit?, titled ‘url
2 irl 2 url’, grouped together a number of artworks that explore the disconnect
that occurs between our offline and online selves and how social media is constantly
used as a space to create an alter ego of oneself. As you first encounter the
exhibition you’re assaulted by the consistent sound of white noise coming from
Hazel Soper’s video ‘Slag. I blame the parents.’ that utilises a variety of
found texts which seem to have been taken from various online message boards.
These float across the screen, eventually filling the space and effectively
drowning the viewer in abusive messages, specifically levelled at women,
reinforcing the offline hierarchy that’s commonly reciprocated on websites like
4chan and Reddit. On the other end of the screen there’s Stephanie Wilson’s
short film ‘Volume & The Void’ which sees a flimsy cut out of a robotic
hand being manoeuvred, as if stroking something, which in this case becomes the
film that’s being layered behind it, a close up exploration of a human hand.
This subtle experience that slowly occurs over the course of a few minutes is
oddly charming, and, rather than experiencing a disconnect between the two
forms, I begin to see beauty on the screen, the dancing fingers of the robotic
hand being embraced by the details of the human skin. Maybe a look to the
robotic relationships of the future... The final piece is a digital image from
Robert Cooper titled ‘@thefutureisfamous’, which is their handle on Instagram,
an ongoing art project within itself where they post photographs of themselves,
usually heavily digitally altered, exploring the line between the online and
the offline self that is continually questioned by users of various social
media platforms. As we as a race become more immersed in creating a fictitious
online portrait of ourselves, it begs the question, who is the real you? Or,
more personally, which one of you is the real Bob?
I think
I’m getting better about writing about my own shows that I’ve curated, as well
as writing in general? In the next week I have an essay to write, left
incredibly late, but why not?
This month’s resident on the website, Stacey
Davidson, is making some really interesting progress. At the moment she’s
putting together a variety of collages based on album covers she’d create if
she had a band, alongside her continued documentation of her daily life, etc.
Definitely go and check it out here - www.isthisitisthisit.com/share-it-with-the-world
This month’s resident is now Tabitha Steinberg who’s
in LA, making some work about congestion, linking to Trump and the various
administrations, etc.
This is
where the blog written at the beginning of Easter ends, and me writing now
begins, switching from italics to normal.
Me and Helena have been planning a show in Leeds at
Serf which is going to happen on the 27th of this month. It’s mostly
to promote the magazine some more, an afk launch event if you will, although
I’ve been trying to make it into more a=of an exhibition about making money
from making artwork, etc, and the various commercial avenues one can go down,
mainly merchandise. I’ve put together a bunch of isthisit? merchandise, a hat,
a mug, pens, t-shirt, stickers…These will be shown as works within themselves
and will be sold during the private view of the show. I’m hoping the majority
of this sells, simply because I can’t be fucked to bring stuff back to London
on the bus. I’m also printing a bunch of pages from the magazine big, around a
metre or two wide. There will be a few of these printed, alongside a huge scroll
of the whole magazine, running from one wall of the space and onto the floor,
where the magazines to be sold will be resting. This works as a taster for the
actual magazine, as well as a work within itself. Kind of fun. Here’s a few
images of how it’s looking right now, a work in progress, obviously…
What else has been going on? 30 works 30 days began
with 12o collective, which has been fun for the past week and a bit. It’s a
nice refresher at times, a mild annoyance at others, especially as there’s no
show at the end. I guess the whole point of the experience is to refresh your
practice, so it shouldn’t be about getting a show at the end, you shouldn’t
need a motivator, although the group experience is a motivator within itself.
Either way, it’s a great idea and an incredibly impressive project. Also,
thinking about money, 160 or so people are a part of it, 3 pounds each to get
in, that’s £480 to organise this shit. There should be more money involved for
the organisers, what with daily online exhibitions, etc. It’s also great that
they’ve got a fairly big following now, so can begin to rely on crowdfunding
projects in the future from people who they’ve worked with in the past.
Hopefully isthisit? will turn into
something like this in the future, maybe, who knows. It’s nice thinking about
how far I’ve come as an artist since this time last year, especially as 30/30
was the first thing that I ever applied for... Side note, next week I'll post all the work I've done for 30/30, but right now I'm tired and want this post to be over...
Oh shit, also, I was asked by Luke Nairn (founder
of DVD IS DEAD) to create a new video series for the Instagram, which I did,
and is now being shown on the Instagram over at www.instagram.com/dvdisdead/ It’s a conversation that I had
between a bot on Kik, it moves from talking about baking to considering what
real intelligence is, and the bot questioning whether I’m a bot or not. This is
shown on Facebook messenger bubbles fading onto the screen, with the
backgrounds being taken from idle moments in videogames, specifically Mass
Effect 1, 2 and 3. This is a science fiction RPG, one that sees you traversing
the galaxy, confronting aliens and robots. I was interested in these beautiful
landscape city shots which see flying cars zooming across the screen in the
background. A future, intricately rendered world, accompanied by the present
aesthetic of Facebook messenger looking to the future, seemed to work quite
well. I think I’m just a sucker for these beautiful landscapes. See the full
video here, or just wait for Luke to publish the rest of the episodes on the
Instagram: www.bobbicknell-knight.com/you-know-i-have-this-fun-test I want to think about how best
to install this work, although I’m currently thinking that simply having it in
a darkened room projecting onto a wall would work beautifully…
What else has happened? I’m currently being
interview over WhatsApp by Jef Ko about my work and everything else I do, which
is kind of fun. It’s a lot easier to drunk text than drunk email, which is my
only concern, although maybe that would add an interesting dynamic to
questions/answers. I also wanted to use the app, due to its privacy settings
not allowing anyone and everyone to read the conversations that are taking
place, as opposed to Facebook and email correspondence. This will be coming out
on Jef’s platform, KoProjects - www.koprojects.com/
I also got into a few things, an exhibition
occurring within a public toilet called '100 years of OUI', which I’ll hear
about soon! Then a solo online show at Feign Cubed, a fun virtual gallery space
that (I think) has been put together by Manchester School of Art students. My
show is on right now, and it’s kind of fun to see what they’ve done with my
work. Go here to see it until Friday (the 21st) - feigncubed.com/
I also sold a work at the 'Glitch Art is Dead' show
at Gamut Gallery in Minneapolis, which is kind of cool. Just a print, but still
very fun, and I think my first work sold to someone I don’t know. I’ve never
even been to Minneapolis! So yeah, that’s fun.
Alongside this I got into the Saltaire Arts Trail
with the water in videogames piece that I made last year called Everything Bad
is Good for You. This will be available via a QR code which you scan with your
phone whilst on the trail. I like the idea, and would actually love to go and
see this thing, although it is fairly far up North. I did get £50, which was an
unexpected monetary thing.
Last week I undertook a week long online residency
with I.O.U.A.E, an arts organisation being run by Stacey Davidson, who’s been
featured on isthisit? and was in the AFK show last year. As it’s been an incredibly
busy week last week, putting off writing the uni essay alongside being
interviewed over WhatsApp, I had completely forgotten about the res, and was
unable to spend as much time as I’d have liked on the project. I did, however,
manage to create an interesting body of work, coming back to an old project of
mine called All My Messages, a website where I published all of my past
Facebook messages. I then kind of dredged this document for data, creating
digital images with the content, highlighting which words would supposedly get
you followed by the NSA among other things. This manifested as digital images,
videos, prints and a few sculptures. It was fun, and if you’re interested in
seeing some of the work I produced go to their Instagram here - www.instagram.com/i.o.u.a.e/,
hopefully soon I’ll have all the completed works on my website soon, and will
talk about what all the work was specifically about in a later post, as this
one is looking incredibly long already.
Since being back in Suffolk I’ve been going on a
lot of walks, about once a day, taking an hour or so to walk around, reflect,
etc. It’s been nice, although whenever I’m back in Suffolk old memories of the
space re-surface, ones that I don’t particularly want to resurface, leading to
reflection among other things. Right now I’m on a train on the way back to
London, back to things happening all the time, a welcome change/distraction.
In the past week, as I mentioned, I wrote my essay
for uni, all 3000 words of it. I decided to write about trolls and trolling
online and why they’re coming out of the screen and into the AFK space, with
reference to Donald Trump, the project He Will Not Divide Us and the trolling
that occurred with that art piece, alongside LD50 gallery and just looking at
the rise of trolls in general, talking about Anonymous and 4chan, etc. Here it
is:
Contemporary trolls and
where to find them
"Trolling
is a art" (Anonymous, 2010) is perhaps the
definitive statement to sum up the act of trolling. Trolling is, at the basest
level, defined as the intentional disruption of another's emotional well-being,
often through a feigned promotion of an unpopular belief, or political
position, usually on the internet. In this example, the deliberate use of
"a" where "an" should be is likely to arouse a negative
reaction among those concerned with correct English usage. The fact that the
statement is itself directly referring to trolling and the art thereof gives
further power to its effect; if you're effected by this statement, its author
has succeeded, and its veracity has been confirmed.
This
contemporary definition of trolling has been used effectively in this way
within the online sphere for decades, promoting hate and causing widespread
frustration for many, only recently moving into the offline realm when Donald
Trump was elected to be the 45th president of the United States of
America, purportedly ‘the world’s greatest troll’ (Silver, 2015).
Within this
essay I am going to examine the origin of the internet troll, how and why its
transitioned into the AFK[1]
environment, away from the ’murky depths’ of internet forums such as 4chan and
Reddit, and its use as a political and social tool for change, regarding the
rise of Donald Trump, the fall of LD50 gallery and the artwork ‘He Will Not
Divide Us’, which has become an increasingly interesting collaborative art
project between the artists involved and the internet.
From LOL to LULZ
The use of
the word ‘troll’ as internet slang is said to have first appeared in Usenet[2] in
the early 1990s with the phrase ‘trolling for newbies’ whereby a veteran user
would introduce a question or topic that had been so overdone that only a new
user would respond to them earnestly. This was seen as a positive contribution,
used to identify new users of the platform, a far cry from today’s attributions
of the term. As the 90s continued, and the internet became more widely used,
trolling began to be seen in a negative light due to the rise in internet
traffic, resulting in the sort of general confusion that occurs when a
‘cacophony of voices are all speaking simultaneously’ (Stoll, 1995). In 2003 the
hacktivist group Anonymous was created on the online imageboard 4chan[3], the
cultural meme[4]
machine of our time, and became synonymous with the trolling community after a
series of publicity stunts and coordinated DDoS[5]
attacks on various groups and individuals. Although the media dubs the majority
of Anonymous’ online events as ‘attacks’, these are in-fact unlicensed protests
that occur when a group of Anons[6] are
unhappy with an aspect of society (Coleman, 2014). The first major
protest occurred on July 6, 2006 after moderators on the online social
networking site Habbo Hotel were rumoured to be racially profiling against
dark-skinned avatars, abusing their powers and banning users from the site. The
protest involved swarms of Anons logging into the site with their avatars
dressed in afros and business suits, forming a virtual blockade around the
games pool, disallowing anyone from entering the environment (fig1). Although the event, forever
dubbed ‘Pool’s Closed’, didn’t change Habbo’s problematic moderators (a rumour
that was never officially confirmed by Habbo), it did bring widespread media
attention to the group, leading to more impactful protests (labelled as
‘operations’) and a larger community of Anons contributing to massive social
change in the years that followed Pool’s Closed.
Trolling for change
On June 16,
2015 Donald Trump announced his candidacy to be the next president of the
United States with a campaign rally and speech at Trump Tower in New York City.
In March of 2009 Trump had created a twitter account, which would serve as a
unique campaign tool leading up to his election on November 8, 2016, utilising
the application as a vehicle for connecting to his followers and the world,
spreading ‘alternative facts’ and for some hate on a mass scale (Swaine, 2017). One could argue
that one of the most atrocious examples of this was when Trump retweeted an
image, which was said to have originated from a neo-Nazi Twitter account (fig2), containing wildly inaccurate
crime data between black and white people (Trump, 2015).
The use of Twitter in this way, spreading fake news and blurting out
misogynistic comments, could be genius, simply because of the throwaway aspect
of the social media feed, and the mass of content that’s continually being
generated. If a reader sees a statistic that seems like it might be true, they
may well assume it is, without considering the source, or even enlarging the
image to see it clearly. This could be for several reasons; the perceived lack
of time that’s afforded to people in the age of the internet (Goldsmith,
2016),
or simply due to people taking a few minutes to like and re-tweet articles
whilst sitting on the toilet, only skim-reading the titles to consume as much
tertiary data as possible. Either way, many people won’t be looking back whilst
surfing this information highway, and even if they did, what would be the
point? Yesterday’s Trump tweet has already been forgotten, replaced by another,
equally divisive addition to the pile of 3am tweeting misdemeanours that will
be attributed to a lack of sleep (McGill, 2016), continuing to reinforce the alt-right
movement and its ideals.
‘We memed him into the presidency’
Alongside the
tweets, another tactic to keep Trump in the public eye, eventually bringing him
to power, was to continually circulate memes across the internet. The meme is a
form of visual media that, in the present day, is made for and by the internet.
The term was originally coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as ‘"an idea,
behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture" (Dawkins, 1989). Various groups of
people saw it as their part time job to create memes focused on Trump,
especially in the lead up to important debates and rally’s. After Hilary
Clinton dubbed half of Trump’s supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables’ (Tatum, 2016) during a campaign
speech, supporters adopted this name and continue to wear it as a badge of
honour. ‘The Donald’, an incredibly active subreddit, has been described as a
24/7 Trump rally, and this is where most Deplorable’s create and share the
memes that they have created. The content of the memes ranged from Trump as
Pepe the Frog (fig3), originally a
cartoon green frog that was popular in the late 2000s and is now appropriated
as a symbol for the alt-right, to utilising emails leaked by WikiLeaks to
circulate conspiracy theories like #pizzagate (All, 2016),
a theory concerning child paedophilia that spiralled out of control, eventually
resulting in somebody going into a pizza parlour with a gun. After the Access
Hollywood tape was discovered, a recording of Trump discussing his incredibly
misogynistic approach to women, the hashtag MAGA3X[7]
began to circulate on Twitter. The idea, created by Mike Cernovich, was to do
something Trump related at least three times a day, from bringing 3 other Trump
voters with you on election day to retweeting 3 pro-Trump stories daily on your
social media account. This surge in Trump related content overwhelmed social
media and made the transition to AFK events like flash mobs and rallies (Johnson,
2016).
At the DeploraBall, an unofficial inaugural ball to celebrate the victory and
inauguration of Trump, participants exclaimed ‘we memed him into the
presidency’ (This American Life, 2017), which seems fitting
due to the huge amount of young naïve support that was thrown towards him by
users of 4chan and Reddit (Beran, 2017).
HeWillNotDivide.Us
On the date
of the presidential inauguration on 20 January 2017, the collaborative artist
trio made up of Luke Turner, Nastja Rönkkö and Shia LeBeouf, began an art
project that was said to be ‘open to all, 24 hours a day, seven days a week’
and ‘continuing for four years, or the duration of the presidency’ (He Will Not Divide Us, 2017). The piece was a
video being live streamed from a camera mounted on a wall outside of the Museum
of the Moving Image in New York City. Participants were invited to deliver the
words "HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US" into the camera, repeating the phrase
as many times, and for as long as they wish. In the days that followed the
inauguration, people would log on to hewillnotdivide.us, usually being greeted
by the sight of a group of smiling individuals of all ages and ethnicities,
repeating the phrase in a (usually) calm and considered manner (fig4). The artwork became incredibly
popular, garnering mainstream media attention due to Turner and Rönkkö
capitalising on LeBeouf’s fame once again[8],
alongside the piece’s relevance to Trump, protest culture and the possibility
of becoming internet famous by ‘performing’ in front of the camera. The liberal
nature of the project drew out the trolls of 4chan and members of the
alt-right, enticing them to crawl from their nests within their computer screens
and disrupt the peaceful, cult-like, nature of the installation. These
disruptions varied from holding up photos of Pepe to more elaborate
occurrences, a prime example being two individuals wearing skull masks cutting
open a toy rabbit with a large steak knife in front of the camera. The first
major incident occurred when a man, pretending to take a selfie with LaBeouf
(who frequented the live stream to show solidarity to the participants) said
‘Hitler did nothing wrong’[9],
causing LeBeouf to shove him away. Later in the day LeBeouf was arrested at the
scene and charged with misdemeanour assault. After this event, crude pranks
kept occurring, eventually resulting in the live stream being taken down, with
the museum stating that it was creating ‘an ongoing public safety hazard’. This
occurred on the 10 February, less than a month after the installation began.
The trio challenged the museum for its ‘lack of commitment to the project’ and
the stream was quickly relocated to a wall in Albuquerque outside the El Rey
Theatre. Within five days it was stated that ‘shots were reported in the area’
(LaBeouf, 2017) and the live stream was shut down yet again.
Capture the flag
The project
had become too successful in creating a dialogue between the left and the right,
drifting away from its original intention of unity to that of violence, hate
and kek[10].
Even though arguably everything that had happened at the different locations,
alongside the dialogues occurring online, had been an incredibly
thought-provoking reaction to the piece, it was obvious that the project was
too triggering to replicate yet again in a different location. On the 8 March
it was announced that the installation had transformed into a live stream in an
unknown location, with the camera pointing up to the sky showing a flag
emblazoned with the now well-known statement ‘HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US’. The
trolls obviously saw this as a challenge, and within a day the flag’s location
had been discovered by a group of 4chan users after analysing flight contrails
and celestial navigation, with one user driving around honking the horn of his
car so that it could be heard on the video stream, allowing others to
triangulate where the flag was based on the driver’s location. The flag was
taken down and replaced by a Make America
Great Again t-shirt and hat. Fields were set alight and the stream was
offline once again (fig5). At this
point the group protesting the protest, (who had admittedly only been
undertaking this exercise for ‘the lulz’ (Rusch, 2017)
alongside having an issue with PC culture[11])
effectively attempting to silence the voice of the left, had become as much a
part of the piece as the flag itself, throwing away their online anonymity with
no fear for the repercussions. After this the trio stated that ‘America is
simply not safe enough for this artwork to exist’ (FACT, 2017),
so it was decided that it’s new home would be on top of the Foundation for Art
and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, supposedly safe from the American
political system that inspired the piece. Unsurprisingly, on the 23 March,
within a day of the stream going live once again, the five-storey building was
climbed and a masked individual appeared on the live stream, attempting to
remove the flag. In the next hour FACT tweeted that on police advice the
artists and the institution had removed the installation due to ‘dangerous,
illegal trespassing’. As of writing, the art piece has yet to be reconfigured,
although it’s safe to assume that when it does eventually appear the 4chan
community will be called to action yet again. Are these ‘internet pranksters’
alt-right activists or simply bored people delighting in messing with a
celebrity who’s known for his high-octane outbursts? Either way the artwork
has, and will continue to, unite the troll community. What if this type of
community could be utilised against something that’s supposedly inherently bad?
IS IT OK TO PUNCH A NAZI (ART
GALLERY)?
This was the
title of an article published by Mute magazine on the 16 February 2017
concerning a small art gallery in Dalston called LD50 who had, 6 months
previously, organised an exhibition called ‘71822666’, named after a thread on
4chan that predicted Trump's victory. The exhibition explored visual strategies
adopted by the so-called ‘alt-right’, as well as a related symposium with
authors such as Peter Brimelow, Nick Land and Brett Stevens. The article
accused the gallery of giving a platform to fascists, as well as actively
promoting the alt-right. This led to a campaign for the gallery to close which
was originally created on Facebook. Called Shut
Down LD50, the group organised a demonstration outside the gallery on 25
February (fig 6), and the gallery
subsequently has had to close for an unknowable amount of time due to vandalism
and violent threats. When interviewed during the demonstration, many of the
protestors admitted to having never even been inside the gallery, remarking
that ‘art is shit’ (Gelder, 2017). Surely, even if the gallery was giving
a platform to neo-Nazis, to simply jump on the bandwagon makes you as
ill-informed as the 4chan trolls making fun of Labeouf and therefore not
understanding that they had themselves become a part of the artwork that they
were so intent on removing. Members of the SDLD50 group were also prone to
confronting people online who had ‘liked’ LD50’s Instagram posts, and in some
cases ‘no platforming’ them ahead of AFK talks and discussions (Larios, 2017). The Instagram, like
any other art gallery in the age of the internet, had photographs of previous
shows, including the meme filled exhibition ‘71822666’. A question one might
ask is when did a virtual ‘like’ count as an endorsement of an alt-right
ideology? Especially when associated with the throwaway aspect of social media,
where you may ‘like’ upwards of 100 posts a day.
Where do we go from here?
Since Donald
Trump was inaugurated, rising to a position of power and influence, we’ve seen
an outbreak of trolls and peoples supposed true selves, originally imprisoned
within the confines of their own home or on anonymous online message boards.
Having a troll as the president of the United States sets a precedent, with
many assuming that it’s now acceptable to be outwardly racist and misogynistic,
cuck calling and proclaiming that ‘Hitler did nothing wrong’. Turner, Rönkkö
and LeBeouf’s most recent project #ALONETOGETHER, where the artists are
confined to wood cabins in unknown locations within Lapland with the only
source of communication to the outside world being a live stream from within
Kiasma museum, has already attracted the attention of anons, with various
videos on YouTube showing individuals entering the exhibition and harassing LaBeouf.
4chan is already attempting to find the cabins (fig 7). How does the art community combat these obscure pockets of
the online community entering the ‘sacred’ space of an art gallery, simply to
mock a celebrity? How can we, dubbed ‘normies’ by the 4chan community, hope to
understand the trolls and the alt-right without taking the same red pill[12]
that they’ve been taking? Daniel Keller says you should ‘inoculate yourself
against it while fighting back’ (Keller, 2017), although many trolls are outwardly
normal people living normal lives who aren’t abusive AFK, the most prominent
example being in a recent South Park episode where Gerald Broflovski spends his
days as a hard working lawyer and his evenings photoshopping social media
photographs and harassing others on message boards, stating that ‘it’s fun to
stir the pot and watch everyone freak out’ (Parker, 2016). Should the liberal left allow
themselves to be made fun of, to go with the jokes, similar to an American
opossum pretending to be dead to reduce the possibility of being eaten, or
should we adopt Trump’s philosophy of rolling with the memes and bonding with
the younger generation that enjoy anarchy and conspiracy theories? Either way,
staying in your own liberal filter bubble, no platforming speakers at
universities and protesting because of ill-informed facts, is no longer an
option now that the king troll is at the head of the table, we all need to
become investigative reporters, fact checking as we go.
Fig 1
Fig 2
Fig 3
Fig 4
Fig 5
Fig 6
Fig 7
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So
that was the essay, kind of fun, with the next piece of writing for uni being
dissertation prep later on in the term. How fucking exciting…
What
next? Before coming home for the holidays, about 4 weeks ago, I went to a bunch
of galleries. So I’ll run through these incredibly quickly now, as they’re
probably out of date by now.
First
off, Annka Kultys with a solo show by Stine Deja. It was an interesting show,
evoking a departures lounge at an airport, with the classic metal bench
seating, grilled ash cylindrical ash tray and departures board. The
installation was fun, although the whole show revolved around one video piece,
which was being shown on both a projector and 3 iPads. It’s a good video, but
at least 2 years old which I’d already watched on her Vimeo. Although this is
similar to a lot of other video art installations, in this case when 4 devices
are being utilised for the same video, it’s a bit annoying. I understand the
repetitive nature of the departure lounge, the mundanity of the experience, but
still… The video is good, considering digital environments and embodying/living
within them? I think, as I said, it’s been 4 weeks of walking around in the
country. So yeah, good show if you’re new to the work.
Ah
shit, there were also a bunch of student led shows in that last week, most of
which I have forgotten. The most interesting aspect of all these shows was (If
I can remember) was the various venues that people had hired/discovered, from a
theatre on top of a pub to a beauty parlour where I had to squeeze past people
to look at mediocre work. Hmmm…
Seventeen
Gallery surprised me with a solo show of paintings by Rhys Coren. These are
made up of spray painted/acrylic wooden boards which are obviously cut up, then
fit back together within a wooden frame. They’re very nice to look at, and
impressive too. The actual content is mostly wiggles and bright aesthetic
wiggles. Not really sure what they were trying to say, as the press release was
a poem, not unlike the majority of Seventeen’s exhibitions.
Another
painting show that I enjoyed, Gordon Cheung at Edel Assanti with a solo show
called Unknown Knowns. A title I’ve used for a previous work, how funny. So
this was made up of these incredible paintings, one of which was a triptych of
this futuristic environment, mountains, etc. The paint is this incredibly thick
oil paint which is built up over multiple layers. These were accompanied by
literally glitched images printed onto canvas. I’m not a big fan of glitch art…
TJ
Boulting had an exhibition featuring Daniel Castro Garcia with a bunch of work
about migration, travelling to various countries around Europe and finally
visiting ‘The Jungle’ in Calais. Lots of photographs, a few videos, one that
was being projected onto this silk garment which was a bit weird, but apart
from that it was pretty solid work. One of the videos in particular featured
the artist wandering around snowy mountain tops, which can’t really be faulted.
Part
4 of Carroll Fletcher’s exhibition in four parts had some great work, from Eva
and Franco Mattes Stolen Pieces where
the artists stole parts of famous art works over the course of a few years,
alongside a video game evoking space invaders by Thomson and Craighead where
instead of aliens you destroy Michael Foucault’s essay What is an Author? I
made the mistake of spending 10 minutes completing the whole thing, with no
real payoff at the end. Joshua Citarella and Brad Troemel’s Etsy store pieces
were there too, which are basically ideas of things that can be bought and are
then fabricated by the buyer. In this case it was a Ethernet cable washing
line, a bunch of Amazon boxes and a be all protest sign (very funny) which was
basically a white board attached to a stick.
White
Rainbow had a ‘nice’ group show on, with the main appeal being a
computer-generated video of all these incredibly bright white spaces by
Alexandra Navratil. Holly Hendry’s work was also there, and by now it’s a given
that it is nice, but I want to see something new from her now…
White
Cube, I’m beginning to hate all their shows. Big and brash and boring! I hate
Josiah McElheny’s work, it’s artwork to please the masses, reflective glass
pieces that are nice to look at. My most favourite moment from the experience
was when a small child climbed underneath one of the large, all glass works,
and I witnessed the invigilators being incredibly sweet to the child as they
attempted to coax him from underneath the structure. That’s it.
Fold
had a show on by Valerie Kolakis, lots of MDF board and everyday objects placed
at ‘interesting’ angles alongside bronze bags that are painted to seem like
they’re not bronze, etc. It was okay but forgettable.
Maureen
Paley was dull and unforgettable.
Pilar
Corrias had 2 interesting shows with the main event featuring Alice Theobald.
An interesting false grass walkway leads you through the space, down the stairs
and into another room of the space. Sand bags are piled high as you walk in, with
a reversed video of a dog, taken from a phone, being shown on a tv screen. The
most interesting part was a mobility chair which assisted you on the stairs.
You were invited to sit on the chair and glide down the stairs listening to a
video piece where a (presumably) old woman is repeating the words ‘He never
imagined he’d be so moved’. Didn’t really understand but was fun. 3D video
downstairs, unneeded.
Also
in the gallery was a bunch of paintings/photographs by Louisa Gagliardi. These
are usually figures of beauty, originally printed onto PVC canvas and then
worked on with layers of gel to give them a really interesting ‘look’ which I
really liked. Big fan.
Whilst
in Suffolk I visited an exhibition in Norwich at OUTPOST's residency space. The
work produced, by Magnus Ayers was a culmination of a one month residency within the
space. It featured carboard cut outs of his avatar it seems, which were being
propped up by an AFK version of this robotic claw which was also a very short
video piece. There was also a large projection showing a video looking at Renault and its innovative approach to car design in this fast approaching post-human
space. Kind of fun, was it worth driving an hour to Norwich for? Maybe, but
maybe not…
So
I’ve been dreading typing up all the films and tv I’ve watched, as this blog
post is already about 8000 words including the essay. I’m just going to go for
it, probably listing most of them, and talking about only a few which catch my
eye as exceptional.
xXx:
Return of Xander Cage was terrible, How I Live Now was okay, You
Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger was fun, The
Ideas of March was fun, both Chef
and Burnt were put on my watch list
because of an amazing YouTube channel called Binging with Babish where the guy
makes food in films incredibly well. Both okay films.
A
United Kingdom was beautiful, Elle was simply astonishingly amazing, What Women Want was kind of fun, The Love Witch was very funny, The
Space Between Us was pretty wanky, Split
was okay, Weiner-Dog was fairly
unnerving, Prevenge was mental in a
great way, A Walk in the Woods was
lovingly contemplative.
Office
Christmas Party was terrible and I’m ashamed to have
watched it. Short Circuit was fun,
but incredibly misogynistic at times. My
Father and My Son was deeply depressing. The Discovery was really well done, Cannibal Holocaust was incredibly visceral for all the wrong
reasons.
Cannibal
Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death was amazingly hilarious.
Mine was basic, Storytelling was weirdly thought provoking. Upside Down was basic but Catfight
was hilarious and well worth a watch. Kong:
Skull Island was fine. Krisha was
worryingly depressing, Christine was
just depressing and Movie 43 was
obviously terrible.
Win
It All was nice, as was Drinking
Buddies. Detachment was
depressingly weird.
I
think that’s it? There was probably more that I’ve forgotten, which I hate to
do, but I guess that’s my fault for not updating this fucking thing for over a
month!
I
also watched a bunch of tv shows. Lovesick
which was beautiful and worth a watch, Odd
Mom Out which was terrible, Mike
Tyson Mysteries is hilarious, as was Animals,
One Day at a Time (the 2017 version)
was bad.
Dramaworld was a weird indie
show, Better Things is amazing and
even more so if you’re a mother (probably), Baskets
was sad, Insecure was very ‘real’ and
Undeclared was incredibly funny and
worth your time.
I
also played an incredible video game called Night
in the Woods. The gameplay is very basic; a 2D platformer/visual novel,
clicking through for dialogue, but what’s being spoken about, the story, the
characters, all of these are amazingly impressive aspects of this game. I would
describe it as crushing. Highly recommended.
This
is where I’m going to stop writing, because at over 8000 words I feel like I’ve
just dumped a load of text, but I do feel like I’ve caught (almost) everything
up in a very vague way… Now I’m back in London, ready to make some new work,
put on the show at Serf and plan issue 2 of the magazine!
