Re: [-empyre-] FW: introduction [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Stacia Yeapanis <stacialy@yahoo.com>]

Jill, 
I'm glad you brought up the point of the virtual as
fiction. The word has so many potential meanings. I
feel that it's useful to try and define it in a few
ways, for the sake of conversation and to clarify it
in my own head.

A quick Google search yielded this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&defl=en&q=define:virtual&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title

I've recently been thinking of the "virtual" as head
space. as psychological space, creative space, fantasy
space, emotional space, intellectual space. This fits
with your idea about fiction. 

This brings me to thinking about performance in
general, and in virtual spaces, in particular. I tend
to use the word "performative" when I talk about my
own work. I don't consider myself a performance artist
in the sense that a text or idea is conceived of and
then acted out for an audience. (Yes, this is a very
restrictive definition which we can happily blow
apart.) "Performative" for me connotes an exageration
of the truth for an audience. For example, I make work
about fandom and that uses the idea of fandom as a
tool to explore meaning-making. It's important to me
that the work I make springs out of my own fandom. So,
I am a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. That exists
outside of my work as an artist, but I also
consciously emphasize that fact in my artistic persona
so my work will be framed in a certain way. Coming out
of a period of time and an art school, when and where
irony is a given, I feel I need to ground my work in
sincereity in order to say what I want to say. So my
fandom is both authentic and performed. Similar to
what Jill says about writing down a story that "did
happen." 

This brings up the idea of text as a virtual space.
Books have always done what games and tv and movies do
now. (Makes me think of what mez said about World of
Warcraft- games just seem to embrace their lack of
control over the narrative.) Books as virtual spaces.
I'm curious what you think, Barbara, about this,
considering your use of narratives in your
performance.

Stacia
 
--- "Meziane, Tracey"
<Tracey.Meziane@environment.gov.au> wrote:

>  
> Forwarded message from Jill Magid
>  
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: Jill Magid [mailto:jill@jillmagid.net] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 6 June 2007 9:45 AM
> To: empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Cc: Meziane, Tracey
> Subject: introduction
> 
> 
> Hello everyone, 
> 
> I have not properly introduced my work so I would
> like to do that now. I
> am including a short paragraph about my work 
> below in quotes. Please excuse my sporadic my
> entries at the beginning
> of our conversation, I have an exhibition coming up 
> and am in the midst of preparations. 
> I am interested in a topic that is quickly surfacing
> in all the entries
> so far, 
> about the real verses the virtual. As I believe
> Stacia mentioned, for
> her these are both real experiences, with different
> qualities. 
> I am torn on the issue myself, not as much about the
> virtual in terms a
> digital media but the virtual as narrative or
> literary fiction. 
> Most of my work comes from a lived experience- like
> Barbara said as
> well, I use myself as a tool. Many of my projects
> involve my gaining 
> permission to enter a system. This permission
> becomes a material of the
> work. The relationships created within the system
> (generally 
> one of authority) depends upon a creating a shared
> feeling of
> vulnerability. I often talk about this as a form of
> seduction, an
> engagement 
> between myself and a system that is bigger or more
> powerful than me. 
> 
> As for this question of fiction, it has come up
> lately, especially in my
> new work Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy, (LOVE in police 
> radiotelephony language). please see my site:
> www.lincoln-ocean-victor-eddy.net. I wrote a novella
> of the same title
> that is shown 
> within an installation and also autonomously, to be
> read on its own,
> separate from the artwork. The novella is based on
> my experiences 
> shadowing a police officer in the subways of NYC
> during his nighttime
> surveillance rounds. I do not present the book, nor
> the installation, 
> as documentation; I am concerned with the story as a
> poetic observation
> and a mysterious relationship. The question of this
> work- as fiction or 
> nonfiction, surfaces mainly in the literary world.
> One editor said to me
> that for him, truth happens the minute a word is
> placed on 
> a page. I love this, but then where does it place an
> experience written
> about that 'did happen'? Are they the same? I am
> curious to explore 
> fiction verses reality as fiction becoming reality
> or vice versa. 
> 
> "I seek intimate relationships with impersonal
> structures. The systems I
> choose to work with, such as police, secret
> services, CCTV and forensic
> identification, function at a distance, with a
> wide-angle perspective,
> equalizing everyone and erasing the individual. I
> seek the potential
> softness and intimacy of their technologies, the
> fallacy of their
> omniscient point of view, the ways in which they
> hold memory (yet often
> cease to remember), their engrained position in
> society (the cause of
> their invisibility), their authority, their apparent
> intangibility and,
> with all of this, their potential reversibility." 
> 
> More soon, 
> Jill
> 
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