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)