Electronic Civil Disobedience: Screenings of Video Art 1993∞2017
Sunday 25 June + Sunday 9 July 2017, 5-7pm
Free admission, no booking required
Organised by Katie Yook
Danielle Dean • Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Adriene Jenik, Roberto Sifuentes • Branda Miller • Anna Mikkola • Paper Tiger TV • Molly Soda • Cornelia Sollfrank
Electronic Civil Disobedience presents two screenings based on the practice of curator Kathy Rae Huffman–a pioneer of media art, cyberfeminism, net.art, broadcast and television art–whose collection of rare books and catalogues is held at Res. This intergenerational programme, developed by Goldsmiths MFA Curating student Katie Yook, includes video spanning 1993 to 2017.
With optimism for a democratising digital revolution in the early years of the Internet, artists in the ‘80s and ‘90s were quick to explore the creative and political potential of the new rapidly-proliferating personal devices and communication technologies that began shaping one’s time and social interactions. Cyberfeminists like Cornelia Sollfrank staked a claim in a male-dominated tech industry, whilst Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) advocated an activist approach to hacking.
The event name comes from Critical Art Ensemble’s book Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas, which suggests that power lies in information-capital and as such, we need “new methods of disruption invented that attack power (non)centers on the electronic level” – Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas, Autonomedia, 1996, p.9.
By appropriating various elements of the media, from the language of advertising to online dating, the participating artists determine their mediated identities for themselves. At the same time, technologies from the camcorder to the webcam give unprecedented opportunities for image-making and self-representation.
SUNDAY, 25 JUNE | TV or Not TV
TV or Not TV revolves around mass media’s effects on consciousness and formations of identity. The participating artists appropriate mass-media technologies towards various ends: Paper Tiger Television establishes independent public access television as a critique against the commercial media industry, Guillermo Gómez-Peña stars in a guerilla television performance piece in an act of electronic civil disobedience and Danielle Dean uses the language of over 50 years of water and toothpaste company advertisements to explore the rhetoric around purity and whiteness.
5:10pm: Paper Tiger TV, Staking a Claim in Cyberspace (1993)
5:40pm: Danielle Dean, Hexafluorosilicic (2015)
6:00pm: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Adriene Jenik, Roberto Sifuentes, El Naftazteca: Cyber-Aztec TV for 2000 A.D., (1995)
SUNDAY, 9 JULY | Phobias and Fantasies
In contrast to the collectivity of mass media, Phobias and Fantasies focuses on technologies used in the privacy of one’s home. Household gadgets have been historically marketed for women, while the personal computer allow for opportunities to self-construct virtual, anonymous identities on the Internet. Molly Soda and Branda Miller use dating websites and webcams to represent female desires and behaviours in cyberspace, Cornelia Sollfrank speaks to an anonymous female hacker practicing Electronic Civil Disobedience and Anna Mikkola explores the automation of affective, domestic tasks constructed as unwaged women’s work.
5:10pm: Molly Soda, Come To My Window (2016)
5:40pm: Branda Miller, U & I’dOt cOm (1999)
6:10pm: Anna Mikkola, Morphopoietic (2017)
6:40pm: Cornelia Sollfrank, have script, will destroy (2000)
Supported by the Goldsmiths Art Department