PROGRAM
ONE: IDENTITY MUTATIONS
Challenging the myth of the internet’s liberation from the constraints of traditional
identity positions (race, class, gender), popular modes of net communication
and media entertainment have raised the stakes of artistic reflections on questions
of identity. Rather than diminishing concern with the restraints and benefits
of sociological and psychological categories of identity, cyberspace and its
machineries have energized theoretical consideration of the place of identity
in the fluid, global circuit of communication, entertainment, and politics.
The CD-Roms in this program foreground the representation of identity as an
essential aspect and critical imperative of digital art. Yet, the artists unsettle
critical comfort with the “essential” nature of the identity features so crucial
to their projects--race, ethnicity, sexual identity, and consumer culture. For
they situate identity itself within the context of morphing mutations brought
about by constant intercultural exchange, theoretical reflection, sexual transformation.
The central feature of these artistic projects is their alignment of identity
with the non-cognitive processes of sexuality, fantasy, ideology, and fiction.
Isabel CHANG, Vitual Makeovers for
the Post-Identity Cyborg, 1999 (USA)
Michelle CITRON,
Cocktails & Appetizers, 2001 (USA)
Gisela
DOMSCHKE & Fabio ITAPURA, Mutations, 1999 (Brazil/UK)
Leah GILLIAM, Split: Whiteness,
Retrofuturism, Omega Man, 1999 (USA)
Art
JONES, Culture vs. Martians, 1998 (USA); #FFFFFF,
2000 (USA)
Nino RODRIGUEZ, Boy,
1994 (USA)