<div dir="ltr"><div>Greetings! Thanks, Renate, for inviting me into the soft-skinned space.</div><div><br></div><div>In my intermedia based artistic practice I’m interested in the temporal shifting that occurs through technological tools and how an embodied phenomenological experience can counter the habits cultivated through distraction culture. I build installations featuring screens and projected video to create dark meditative spaces that encourage viewers to consider the subtle aspects of digital technology such as the quality of light and the mental state induced when engaging with screens and mobile devices. This month’s discussion topic has led me to consider boredom as resistance to the always-on, click-baited mental state that I examine personally through meditation and publicly through artistic production.</div><div><br></div><div>In their introduction to the edited collection _Essays on Boredom and Modernity_ Barbara Dalle Pezze and Carlo Salzani give an etymological history of boredom and list several publications on the topic. They describe the modern subject as being bombarded by new stimuli due to urbanisation, modernisation, and mechanisation which altered the traditional parameters of experience. Consequently, “These stimuli become the only possible filling for empty meaningless time, a desire which is always renewed and never fulfilled.” (13) </div><div><br></div><div>Boredom, malaise, ennui, disenchantment, acedia, and melancholy have described at various times what was initially considered a moral failing prior to the eighteenth century, but became known as a physiological malady under the influence of the humanist naturalist perspective. Given the increased quantity of stimuli and the accessibility afforded by mobile devices, detachment from media streams may indeed bring about boredom but whereas the phenomenon of boredom was known as the malaise of the nineteenth century, I think anxiety more accurately describes the malady of the twenty-first.</div><div><br></div><div>I wish to propose boredom as a form of resistance against distraction culture. I am engaging in “Radical Acts of Boredom” in which I force myself to remain as “bored” as possible, ideally for longer than what is comfortable. The inactivity may become meditative, pleasant or unbearable but sustaining the monotony of the moment is an exercise with potential temporal, psychological and physiological consequences. It turns out the concept of “radical boredom” was investigated by the critical theorist Siegfried Kracauer in his essays on boredom from his 1963 book _The Mass Ornament_. I will move forward with my planned hashtag but here is an excerpt from Kracauer’s essay _Boredom_ for further inspiration.</div><div><br></div><div>“On a sunny afternoon when everyone is outside, one would do best to hang about in the train station or, better yet, stay at home, draw the curtains, and surrender oneself to one's boredom on the sofa. Shrouded in tristezza, one flirts with ideas that even become quite respectable in the process, and one considers various projects that, for no reason, pretend to be serious. Eventually one becomes content to do nothing more than be with oneself, without knowing what one actually should be doing—sympathetically touched by the mere glass grasshopper on the tabletop that cannot jump because it is made of glass and by the silliness of a little cactus plant that thinks nothing of its own whimsicality. Frivolous, like these decorative creations, one harbors only an inner restlessness without a goal, a longing that is pushed aside, and a weariness with that which exists without really being.” (334)</div><div><br></div><div>I invite you to perform your own #RadicalActOfBoredom.</div><div><br></div><div>- Emilie St.Hilaire</div><div>Twitter: @Emiliest</div><div><a href="http://www.emiliest.com">www.emiliest.com</a></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, May 10, 2015 at 9:39 AM, Renate Terese Ferro <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rferro@cornell.edu" target="_blank">rferro@cornell.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
Welcome to Emilie St. Hilaire and Lyn Goeringiner for agreeing to be our<br>
guests for Week 2 on -empyre: Boredom: Labor, Use and Time. We are<br>
looking forward to having them both comment on their own work and<br>
reflections in relationship to our topic. Iım sitting out on my porch<br>
today where the sun is shining, the trees are in full bloom writing this<br>
introduction thinking about boredom.<br>
<br>
Emilie St.Hilaire (CA) is an intermedia artist and recent MFA graduate<br>
working with video and<br>
installation to invite meditative encounters in which to re/consider<br>
technology. Through the use of dark spaces lit by glowing screens and<br>
subtle projections<br>
Emilie's work creates space between the virtual and the real, the natural<br>
and the artificial, light and dark. Emilie has also worked on<br>
site-specific projects involving interactive installation and live-feed<br>
video. Originally from the francophone community of St-Boniface, in<br>
Winnipeg, Emilie will be joining the interdisciplinary Humanities Doctoral<br>
Program at Concordia University, in Montreal, in the fall of 2015.<br>
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Lyn Goeringer is an intermedia artist, performer, and independent scholar.<br>
Her research focuses on intermedia and interactive approaches to public<br>
space and site-specific art practices with a particular focus on the<br>
experience of the body in space. At the center of this research are<br>
questions about how we as individuals create and navigate space, and the<br>
ways in which larger government infrastructures influence how we navigate<br>
public and private spheres. These questions driver her artistic practice<br>
and<br>
led her to work within a variety of media, including body-centered<br>
cybernetic performance art that explores notions of privacy, wearable<br>
controllers, audio walks and public sound art. As an extension of her<br>
research in liminality within the Everyday, Goeringer also works with and<br>
incorporate notions of play within labor practices into art and sound<br>
composition especially within the context oflabor disruption, and was<br>
invited to participate in the Cleveland Performance Art Festival in 2013<br>
as a part of the ENACT exhibition. Curated by Anne Torke<br>
and Nanette Yannuzzi. For this festival, she contributed a sound<br>
performance piece for six performers titled Œbi-product of laborı. This<br>
performance is part of a larger ongoing series of pieces the Œbi-productı<br>
of labor, which seeks to explore, catalog, and present the ways in which<br>
we subvert labor practices in daily life. In November of 2013, the next<br>
iteration of Œbi-product of laborı will be on view in Abu Dhabi at Studio<br>
1054. <a href="http://www.lyngoeringer.com/portfolio/?page_id=353" target="_blank">http://www.lyngoeringer.com/portfolio/?page_id=353</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Renate Ferro<br>
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,Cornell University<br>
Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office: 306<br>
Ithaca, NY 14853<br>
Email: <<a href="mailto:rferro@cornell.edu">rferro@cornell.edu</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:rtf9@cornell.edu">rtf9@cornell.edu</a>>><br>
URL: <a href="http://www.renateferro.net" target="_blank">http://www.renateferro.net</a> <<a href="http://www.renateferro.net/" target="_blank">http://www.renateferro.net/</a>><br>
<a href="http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net" target="_blank">http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net</a><br>
<<a href="http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net/" target="_blank">http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net/</a>><br>
Lab: <a href="http://www.tinkerfactory.net" target="_blank">http://www.tinkerfactory.net</a> <<a href="http://www.tinkerfactory.net/" target="_blank">http://www.tinkerfactory.net/</a>><br>
<br>
Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space<br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/</a><br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">Emilie St.Hilaire<div>Research and Accreditation Coordinator</div><div>Alberta School of Busines<span style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">s, 3-30Q Business Building</span></div><div style="font-size:12.8000001907349px">University of Alberta, T6G 2R6</div>(780) 492-3054<div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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