[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 185, Issue 6

Tue Nov 17 11:21:52 AEDT 2020

Dear Empyre list, 

Sophia here, one of the artists involved in the Recent Changes online exhibition. I wanted to share a bit of information about the thinking behind my collaboration with Benjamin de Boer: a hostility index! 

A hostility index, attempts to typify and reflect on how hostile architecture could exist in digital interfaces. We consider the possibility that hostile architecture online has the inverse effect from physical hostile architecture in the city; rather than disciplining/controlling the body by limiting and disallowing undesirable behaviour, hostility online is found in the capitalization of all sites. Perhaps manufacturing individualized desire and satisfaction is a kind of hostility, but one that is less visible than spikes on windowsills or benches that prevent the sitter from comfortably lying down. During our conversations as we planned the work, the topic of visual rest and the resulting zombie formalism of digital art and online spaces came up often. We came to consider the co-option of visual rest in both digital and physical sites (think of the white background of facebook, instagram, google, the glossy tiled walls and floors of shopping malls, airports etc) as a form of hostility. In the context of constant over-stimulus, visual rest may be thought of as a site of care, but when deployed in capitalist / corporatized digital spaces, it does the opposite, lulls us into docile behaviours. 

Digital spaces intentionally remove friction or any sense of rupture. Ben and I would argue this is hostile, as it serves as a numbing mechanism, and promotes consumption online. Consumer spaces online try to remove all instances of unpredictability, so in response, we tried to make pages that are intentionally strange and complicated to navigate in order to draw attention to the structure of online spaces.

Looking forward to continuing the discussion, and happy to answer any questions anyone might have!

Best, 
Sophia 

> On Nov 13, 2020, at 8:00 PM, empyre-request at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au wrote:
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> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. thank you / website / first guest artists (Daniel Lichtman)
>   2. Re: thank you / website / first guest artists (Matt Nish-Lapidus)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2020 20:49:42 -0500
> From: Daniel Lichtman <danielp73 at gmail.com>
> To: empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: [-empyre-] thank you / website / first guest artists
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAC9Xe+VrZGxG8Y-4p1nQjCWZxxyq0qB8HUs=EgmK_E1xViDwzw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Dear Empyre list,
> 
> Firstly, thank you to Renate Ferro and Timothy Murray for having me as
> moderator this month! We have known each other for many years since I was a
> student at Cornell and I have thoroughly enjoyed being involved in a number
> of projects together since.
> 
> The website for this month's topic is online! It can be viewed here:
> https://accumulations.online/. Projects will be added to the site as they
> are introduced during the month.
> 
> Now, I'm excited to introduce the first guests / artists for this
> month: Oscar Alfonso, Simon Fuh, Matt Nish-Lapidus, Sophia Oppel, Benjamin
> de Boer, Rowan Lynch, Sameen Mahboubi, and Philip Leonard Ocampo. The
> artists will post to the list shortly to introduce their project, View
> Recent Changes. Please find their biographies below.
> 
> I was particularly interested in how the artists made creative use of so
> many different features of the wiki format, including categories,
> definitions, references, hyperlinks, images and tracked changes. The result
> is a collaborative project that speculatively and fantastically crosses
> boundaries between literary, poetic, technical and documentary text and
> images.
> 
> I'm looking forward to discussing this, and other projects during the month
> that work at intersections between networked collaboration, distributed
> storytelling and digital community building.
> 
> And once again, we also warmly welcome subscribers to share projects that
> you're working on or would like to share!
> 
> Till soon,
> Dan
> 
> 
> Artist Biographies:
> 
> Simon Fuh is an artist from Regina, Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory, and
> is currently based out of Toronto, ON, Treaty 13 territory, where he is an
> MVS candidate at the University of Toronto. He completed his BFA
> (with distinction) from the University of Regina in 2016. Simon has
> exhibited across Saskatchewan, and in Winnipeg, Toronto, Taiwan, and
> France. His writing has been published in C Magazine.
> ?
> 
> Matt Nish-Lapidus is an artist and musician prodding at our ever-changing
> life with computation, media, and information. Through sound, text, video,
> and software Matt plumbs the aesthetic, ethic, and politics of contemporary
> computation technology through an examination of its history and the edges
> of utility. Matt has performed and exhibited at InterAccess, Vector
> Festival, ACUD Macht Neu, Mayhem Copenhagen, Click Festival, Electric
> Eclectics, and more. His ongoing musical projects include New Tendencies,
> m?, 160ppm, and numerous collaborations. Matt is currently completing the
> Master of Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto (2021).
> 
> More: http://www.emenel.ca
> ?
> 
> Sophia Oppel is an artist and researcher born and based in
> Tkaronto/Toronto. Oppel?s work addresses the insidious positions of
> embedded power in networked infrastructures, and its manifestations in
> embodied experience. Oppel received her BFA from OCAD University and is
> currently a co-director of Bunker 2 Gallery, and a Master of Visual Studies
> candidate at the University of Toronto. Oppel has exhibited in Ontario and
> internationally, including shows at Crutch Contemporary Art Center,
> Toronto, InterAccess, Toronto, Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto, and
> Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm.
> http://sophiaoppel.com/
> ?
> 
> Oscar Alfonso works with text, photography, digital media, and
> installations. He may also write, but he remains unsure if he qualifies.
> Born en La Ciudad de M?xico and raised in Vancouver, his artistic and
> research practice focuses on identifying with and reconstructing a
> relationship to home through a process of Contingent Belonging. This focus
> takes him to Mexico City, and manifests itself through food, the market,
> storytelling, the representations of urban childhood in film, and
> city-building video games as sites of the urban imaginary and architectural
> preservation.
> 
> He holds a BFA in Visual Arts, and a BA in History and Print & Digital
> Media Publishing from Simon Fraser University on the unceeded Coast Salish
> Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh Nations. He is
> currently a Masters of Visual Studies Student at the University of Toronto
> on the traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the
> Mississaugas of the Credit.
> ?
> 
> Benjamin de Boer is a writer and bookseller living in Toronto, Canada.
> Benjamin is currently developing their poetics within an ecological
> framework, to experiment with the chance of combinations inhabited.
> To see more of de Boer's work please visit: https://www.benjamindeboer.com/
> ?
> 
> Rowan Lynch is an artist/writer/worker from Hamilton, ON, based in
> Tkaronto. They are a graduate of OCADU?s Criticism and Curatorial Studies
> program and the 2018 recipient of OCADU?s medal in Criticism and Curatorial
> Studies. They are a co-founder of Hearth Gallery and have worked with
> 8eleven gallery, Art Metropole, Critical Distance Centre for Curator's, the
> Hamilton Audio Visual Node (HAVN), The Peripheral Review, OCAD U galleries,
> and Xpace Cultural Centre.
> Contact them at rowanhlynch at gmail, or see @rowanly/rowanlynch.com
> ?
> 
> Sameen Mahboubi was born on the territories of the Anishinabewaki, the
> Attiwonderonk and the Haudenosaunee. Sameen currently resides on the land
> of the Anishinabewaki, Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendat. Sameen is one of
> four co-founders and directors of Hearth, a DIY space at the intersection
> of Bathurst and Ulster in Tkaronto. You can connect with me on Instagram
> (@sameenmahboubi).
> 
> ?
> 
> Philip Leonard Ocampo is a queer Filipino artist and arts facilitator based
> in Tkaronto, Canada. Ocampo?s multidisciplinary practice primarily involves
> painting, sculpture, writing and public programming. His work
> usually explores phenomenon, magic, and memory, using the extraordinary to
> reconcile and better understand personal and collective experiences; often
> through a diasphoric focus. Ocampo is interested in the poetics of
> information and the allure of the unknown. Through this curiosity, he seeks
> to access aspects of existence that are invisible, intangible, or inhuman
> in nature.
> 
> He holds a BFA in integrated Media from OCAD University (2018) and is
> currently a Programming Coordinator at Xpace Cultural Centre and one of the
> four founding co-directors of Hearth.
> 
> To see more of Ocampo's work please visit: https://www.philipocampo.com/
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> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2020 21:34:18 -0500
> From: Matt Nish-Lapidus <matt at emenel.ca>
> To: empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] thank you / website / first guest artists
> Message-ID: <FA3E329D-85F1-419F-A858-FA282098AF04 at emenel.ca>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Thank you, Dan, for that great introduction.
> 
> Here?s a bit more about our project. I think most of us are on the list now, so we?re more than happy to answer questions and chat about the work with everyone here.
> 
> : View Recent Changes
> 
> [https://recentchanges.ca/]
> 
> It started as a way to connect. We had begun thinking about the project before the COVID lockdown in Toronto. It was initially going to be a proposal to Hearth to host a summer group show, a physical exhibition bringing us and our work together over the summer months. When everything shut down, plans changed. When we started talking about doing an online exhibition the enthusiasm was fairly low, even though we all wanted to do something in the new and uncertain circumstances. We knew we didn?t want to make a website of images and videos that existed somewhere between documentation, portfolio, and promotion. We wanted a specific type of online place with a context. We wanted to highlight the collaborations, and lean into the materials of the web (hypertext, images, malleability, community).
> 
> The Wiki gave us a way forward. We came to it through thinking about collaboration, community, and information architectures. The Wiki felt like a way to make a specific type of space on the web, a way to imagine a sort of site-specific online work that speaks to its symbolic architecture?a form of placemaking within the greater language of the web. We also knew that we all wanted to make new work, in collaboration with each other, that is specific to this type of place, and the context we found ourselves in. 
> 
> Working in curator-artist pairs (which quickly become blurry, thanks in part to the nature of Wiki editing), we developed the overall structure of the Wiki and four new projects. Each project engaged with elements of community, communication, digitality, information, and hypertext. A lot of the work and iteration was done in the Wiki itself, providing a living record of edits and changes. This record becomes an important part of hypertextual writing, as well as providing the name for our exhibition??view recent changes?. 
> 
> From the website:
> 
> ?view recent changes is a collaborative project featuring works by artists Oscar Alfonso, Simon Fuh, Matt Nish-Lapidus, and Sophia Oppel, in collaboration with Hearth - a Toronto artist-run space co-directed by Benjamin de Boer, Rowan Lynch, Sameen Mahboubi and Philip Leonard Ocampo. view recent changes presents an assemblage that considers the ways in which the human, digital, linguistic, machinic, vegetal and animal correlate. Hosted as a wiki, a platform that allows for communal contribution, the project foregrounds lateral hyperlinking and reflects on the possibility of a digital commons. This project considers how to circumvent the individualizing, commodifying qualities of online spaces to explore positive forms of relationality and intimacy.?
> 
> To see the four projects and accompanying writing please visit [https://recentchanges.ca/]. 
> 
> 
> 
>> Now, I'm excited to introduce the first guests / artists for this month: Oscar Alfonso, Simon Fuh, Matt Nish-Lapidus, Sophia Oppel, Benjamin de Boer, Rowan Lynch, Sameen Mahboubi, and Philip Leonard Ocampo. The artists will post to the list shortly to introduce their project, View Recent Changes. Please find their biographies below.
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> End of empyre Digest, Vol 185, Issue 6
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