[-empyre-] Post-internet art (on selfies and feminism)

[Simon Biggs]

Ulman is an interesting artist in respect of a discussion about artists use of the internet now. A number of my students are interested in her work and are referencing it in various ways. I recently examined a PhD on the selfie as a new trope in artistic portraiture (as opposed to self-portrait snaps). Ulman is clearly striking a chord for those who are interested in self-representation and gender within the context of social media and a mass media obsessed with celebrity. Not surprisingly, these are millennials. In this context we have the emergence of ‘professional’ famous people, like the Kardashian’s, who are simply famous for being who they are - they don’t appear to do anything other than create representations of themselves to feed into a social media milieu that subsequently generates substantial income (perhaps this is the real story about the relationship between the internet and finance - where people can make a living off their own image through Youtube related advertising revenue?). Ulman’s work is very much a critique of that culture (our society). Hey, we might even see a President elected by similar means (strangely I can’t think of a less timely candidate than Trump - but perhaps he is?).

best

Simon


Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk
http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/homepage.asp?name=simon.biggs
http://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/school-of-art/simon-biggs







> On 29 Sep 2016, at 10:57, Claudia Pederson <ccp9 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> 
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Thank you Tim for the introduction and for the invitation to add some thoughts to this discussion (I promise not to sniffle). I think that the topic of net art and feminism came up in the discussion, and I wanted to jump in to inquiry into your thoughts about its developments since cyberfeminism. I particularly intrigued by the emergence of young women photographers using the format of selfies and social media platforms as their mode of distribution. I discuss this in classes and opinions seem to be divided on the issue (along gender lines). Is this an empowering gesture or not so much? One notable case is the work of the Argentinian artist Amalia Ulman: http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/arts/marc-spiegler-cnn-style-guest-editor/ <http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/arts/marc-spiegler-cnn-style-guest-editor/> (disregard the sparse history). Here is also an recent essay by a former fellow grad student at the art history department at Cornell and now colleague, Derek Murray on the issue that I use in my classroom discussions: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10253866.2015.1052967 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10253866.2015.1052967> 
> 
> Cheers, Claudia.        
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