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Curatorial Statement

Humans are innately designed to depend on one another. We thrive as a species mainly because we are social beings, existing in community. Our survival and success can be due to our sociality alone. For hundreds of thousands of years we have evolved; how profound that in this moment, our own society is evolving before our eyes. New interactions among individuals, more dimensionality within groups, new practices and ideals – these changes will always occur. However the core of human nature stays true; we don’t exist as individuals if we don’t exist together.

The beginning of communication and language derives from the same notion of sociality. Each person has a vast collection of thoughts, concepts, attitudes and emotions all of which continually change and develop. Although each life-experience is completely unique from one another, I believe the more important measure is actually how similar we truly are. The title of my exhibit is “human nature is a good cat video” which was inspired by one of the pieces in this collection. The exhibit contains work by five new media artists that use crowdsourced material from online to create their work. Social media is arguably the most powerful tool in today’s society. We live in a time where all the knowledge in the world can fit snugly in our pocket. The Internet and its structure have redefined human communication entirely. Social media is not only used to connect with others – it is used to create personal identities, expressing one’s individuality in a widely public domain. Social media urges us to continually invent new solutions to our identity and in turn, leads to habits of voluntary collaboration in evolving cultural meanings. Our collaborative nature sees this as a weakness unless we somehow make it personally advantageous (Horning, 2011). Because humans instinctively exist among communities, with that comes the personal desire to be seen, heard and validated discretely from others. In a public space as large as the World Wide Web, just imagine the abundance of social identities out there. The chatter is constant, but is anything coherent? The works I’ve selected for my exhibit all have a common thread. The five artists differ in their pieces, however the similar conception is what’s significant. By gathering similar occurrence found online using crowdsource methods, they construct a new way of consuming the “junkposts” that flood our newsfeed we aimlessly scroll through. This work functions differently by creating new narratives and forming connections within the disjointed dialogue. It configures a totally new perception of today’s mass culture, it de-isolates individuals alone behind the computer screen.

This exhibit features works that may contain hard-to-digest imagery. Many of the pieces use materials that are taken straight from the original source, with little to no editing – clips are unscripted, awkward, and uncomfortable at times. Overall, the collection reveals different untold narratives about human nature and the deep-seated trends that are fundamentally found in all. These widely ordinary gestures provoke a familiarity and closeness not only to the people or images exhibited, but to all humanity. It forces the viewer to see how undeniably recognizable each displays is. The continual repetition of behaviors, conversations and interactions prompt a more social context. New patterns can always be found.

I named this exhibit “human nature is a good cat video” because I believe at the core, we all just really love a good cat video. Throughout my curatorial statement I discuss how these artists work to reveal underlying themes and narratives found within a society. I believe that social media will continue to be a vital instrument used for anthropological discoveries about culture during these moments in time.

Why are cat videos so prevalent in today’s culture? Why is there so many out there? Why do we bond over them?

Regrettably, I have no clue.

However, I do know that some of the most ordinary things can hold the greatest significance. As one of seven billion, we all have entirely unique experiences in life. We each have distinct personalities and ways of understanding of the world around us. How incredible that somehow, an intrinsic power deep within connects each soul to all other souls on earth. The human race will continue and the descriptors of today may not be the same for tomorrow’s society, but I believe the artworks displayed in this exhibit unveil meaningful stories about a specific moment in history. And these stories will forever be characteristics of today.

#curatorial statement

Natalie Bookchin – “Now He’s Out in Public and Everyone Can See” (2017)

Natalie Bookchin’s “Now he’s out in public and everyone can see” is a powerful piece that reveals interesting truths about American society. The film is composed of online video diaries that feature individuals in front of a webcam voicing their viewpoint of various scandals involving famous African American men, however the subjects of the scandals are never identified, leaving the audience to interpret. Bookchin choreographs the expressive individuals in an even more complex way; each layer unveiling the unseen movements of culture (Durham, 2013). The individual narrators in these clips are no longer distinct from one another. Instead, the collaboration unfolds before us as one moving part. An even more profound narrative can be translated. I believe that this piece translates a powerful narrative about human nature. It only emboldens the implicit racism of a society; it demonstrates the underlying prejudice that can essentially be found in all individuals, of all races, all ethnicities and all nationalities. April Durham discusses the idea of “trans-body,” a unified entity that is created through Bookchin’s work. The “accumulation of small but continual displacements” deeply and intimately translates this notion (Durham, 2013). A more recognizable narrative is being told. And the undesirable self-realization of our biases stare us dead in the face.

#bookchin

Penelope Umbrico – “Broken Sets/Bad Display” (2007 – ongoing)

Penelope Umbrico’s “Broken Sets/Bad Display” is a very beautiful piece that was created using images of broken TV sets for sale on eBay. Umbrico cropped each found image to compose just the broken glitches of the TV screens, creating a very abstracted collection. Umbrico is well known for her crowdsourced technique as the majority of her work uses appropriated sources. Umbrico uses these objects for sale, sometimes obliterating our view of it – in this case – completely isolating the broken screens as individual stories. She sees the “sellers” as wanting to sell us something about themselves (Umbrico, 2013). This collection discusses the idea of the “failure of todays promising technology” and the breakdown of systems which is very telling at face value. I think that this piece stimulates ideas about the dependence society has on technology in general, emphasizing that dependency with the observation of inevitable failure of these products. Even though these tools are now seemingly useless, we still extract every possible affordance – disassembling it even further, selling its parts for profit. I find this to be very telling. There are even more narratives to be drawn from the context of Umbrico’s pieces. This one may be revealing truths about the humans who manufacture, sell, purchase, and re-sell these products. Consumer culture can be strongly perceived. From this, a new realization of human nature – the determination to trade goods and resources in hopes of gaining something in the exchange.

#umbrico

Jon Rafman – “Mainsqueeze” (2014)

Jon Rafman’s “Mainsqueeze” is a totally bizarre yet wonderful piece that translates a very palpable narrative. This piece could be seen as an exhibit of the artist’s personal online exploration of the “deep dark web” however; the work functions so that it could easily be seen as anyone’s online exploration. This compilation of found imagery brings insight to the true magnitude of material that exists out there in both the physical and virtual world. The work reveals a rabbit-hole of perceptual links, chained together, it disgusts us yet we cannot look away (Whyte, 2015). Throughout the piece a strange voice-over is featured. The narrative seems to be aimed at no one and everyone, which only adds to the overall ambiguity of the piece. It challenges the audience to continually form new understandings of the work and the subject matter entirely. I believe that Rafman’s piece reveals more then just the scary underbelly of the world’s web. Rafman draws analogies between the romantic gestures and the debauchery that follows. And the humanistic tradition to feel free to create our own lives still hold true one the Internet (Whyte, 2015). We somehow see these subjects non-objectively – as wildly uncomfortable and strangely intimate it may be. Rafman’s work displays a deeper look at humanity; it exposes mass media in a new light. With this piece, he has created a specific atmosphere where we are now able to take in the absurd truths. There is an unbelievable mass of material that exists online. Rafman’s work captures the vast array quite flawlessly.

#rafman

Lev Manovich - “Mission to Earth [Soft Cinema]” (2003)

Lev Manovich’s “Mission to Earth” is a very dynamic new media artwork. This piece was created using algorithmic software, Soft Cinema, which sifts through online video databases selecting imagery from hundreds of sources. The selections are based on key words chosen by the author leaving most of the control to the computer. In this specific piece, a predetermined narrative about an alien from another planet who’s lived on earth for two decades was the prompt, generating layouts based off of this. The software works in real time and due to its design, potentially an infinite amount of unique visuals can be constructed – no two runs are perfectly alike. This not only a new way of storytelling, it also proves that in time, the narrative is ‘destroyed’ by each new narrative (Gibbs, 2005). Each loop a new distinct visual experience is created. I believe that this piece conveys a significant philosophy about human individuality and the human experience. As billions of individuals walk the earth, how remarkable is it that no two people will endure an identical experience. We may walk the same paths, know the same people, feel the same emotions – but still, a distinctive life is led, our psychologies incomparable. I like to consider each “loop” very representative of the human experience. There is an infinite possibility that you somehow landed in this life. Right here and now you are experiencing something completely specific, you alone. The overall narrative is the same – as humans we all love, thrive, crash and burn. Your “loop” will forever be inimitable, you just happened to drop in at the right time.

#manovich

Cory Archangel – “Arnold Schoenberg op. 11 Cute Kittens” - Parts I, II, III (2009)

Cory Archangel’s “Cute Kittens” is undoubtedly a genius work of art. The three YouTube videos were made from found videos of cats on pianos and sound-match the cadence of cats on keyboards to the score of Arnold Schoenberg’s op. 11 – one of the first compositions to break the traditional western harmony. Archangel extracted the audio from each video note-by-note and matched it to the original score of op. 11 – it’s almost a perfect match! I think that this piece is brilliant both technically and conceptually. The controversy surrounding atonal music was a main reason for the strange pairing. These videos get circulated around, posted on sites where people aren’t aware or can’t fully understand the contexts. However, the Internet is really good at that… somehow certain things find a way into portals they shouldn’t necessarily be involved in. Archangel likes when his artwork references this possibility (Licht, 2010). This idea that “anyone can stumble upon anything” lead me to a new connection. Although there is an unimaginable range of groups, all with opposing views, practices and lifestyles – somehow this damn cat video still reaches all. I believe that this reveals something very significant about humanity. For some unexplained reason, cat videos play a specific role in today’s world. As unimportant, insignificant and unmonumental another cat video may seem, it somehow defies itself, and finds that strange nook in each of our brains, essentially connecting us all. Archangel’s work parallels this idea. It is human nature to intrinsically connect with others. Who knew that kittens playing piano could be such a powerful gateway to do so?

#archangel

Stills from “Arnold Schoenberg, op. 11 | Cute Kittens”

Cory Archangel, 2009

#archangel

Works that you have to learn to love, but which can be loved nonetheless. It helps that Pollini plays them with intimacy and great expressiveness. Though ato...

play this at the same time as “Cute Kittens” :)

#archangel