The Script:
After Kitty Finer’s artist talk and moving temporarily into my childhood bedroom, I realised my view of the post-human formed during my childhood from transitional objects or companions (Haraway, 2003-4. Finer, 2021) and media; I could recycle these objects and drawings in my modern practice. This is scopophilia, there is an importance of tangible, commodity fetishes in my practice (Stupart, 2020). I linked my ruminations on domestic cybernetics and reliance on technology during the pandemic to the unassimilated state of a child’s brain (Howard-Jones, 2011). We become the assimilated cyborg from our symbiotic relationship with technology, but as children, we wished to befriend the cyborg. We must be realistic about the cyborg and how our symbiotic relationship with technology after COVID-19 make us cyborg (Miah, 2003).
Curator Mark Leckey referred to Felix the Cat as his “Avatar, Talisman and Totem”, which promoted critical thoughts around how we connect to objects. Leckey’s connection seems spiritual but also a replacement of himself in the digital realm (Nottingham Contemporary, 2013. Casey, 2021).
“In Symbiosis” (2021)
Multi Media: Acrylic Paint, Tights, Acetate, Printer Paper on Canvas
100 cm x 100cm
Experiments with curation:
“Untitled (Childhood Best Friend” (2021)
Acrylic Paint on Obsolete Router
20 cm x 12 cm
Lino prints
Ink on Paper
297 x 420 mm
“Flesh Prison” (2021)
Acrylic Paint and Printing Ink on 150 GSM Cartridge Paper
59.4 x 84.1cm
Projection experiment
Acrylic on 150 GSM Cartridge Paper
59.4 x 84.1cm
“Unfixable Youths” (2021)
Multi-Media: Magazines, foil, acrylic paint and medium on 150 GSM Cartridge Paper
59.4 x 84.1cm
“Childhood Borders” (2021)
Collage; magazine and double sided tape
280 x 295 mm
“Digital Trauma Site” (2021)
Acrylic on a Router, nail.
25 cm x 15 cm
“If These Yellow Walls Could Talk” (2021)
Oil Pastel and Sharpie on 150 GSM Cartridge Paper
59.4 x 84.1cm
“Dirty Laundry” (2021)
Acrylic on Canvas
80 x 60 cm
“Latch-Key Kids” (2021)
Multi-Media; Acrylic, Magazine, Cotton on Linen
24 x 36 Inches
“The Immoral Fatality of Screens and Teens” (2021)
Archival digital resources (1978-1989), Archive.org, Adobe Indesign.
3-Minute Film
bodies
Should it be known,
When we had sex after the horror movie,
I wasn’t sure when the bodies started
And where I ended.
In this flesh prison,
It felt one in the same.
The Immoral Fatality of Screens and Teens
I once dreamed of the stars,
the sky, the spaceships,
the companions, robots and monsters.
I dream of them now and again,
but I think I am them now.
The robot I am in the morning and night.
The monsters I am inside.
I am united and separated,
All at once.
Communication, media,
newspapers, work,
entertainment, social media,
stressers, relievers,
judge and executioner.
The future isn’t real.
Some kind of mystical end will come
between then and now.
We’ll get switched off.
We’ll become the dinosaurs!
We are the dinosaurs, we are not superior,
they could kill us instantly.
Some wouldn’t give it a second thought.
The top dog got wiped out,
so why do you think we can defeat
the end that is coming?
We won’t see the Pink suit until 2103.
I won’t be able to see how the blood in the fabric has aged,
or not. I’ll be 102.
We don’t deserve to see it, she made her point.
He killed him. They killed him. We all fall down.
I saw his head on the cold table.
Why were those released for me to see?
Even his blood soaked, ripped and drenched shirt.
But they protect a damn suit.
Some people entertain, even in death.
In blood. In body and bones.
He was a human too. Did he stop being human?
When do I stop being human?
Human life becomes human artifact for all to um and er and think about.
Dissected by you and me and some doctor.
And now I see his void and bones in every scalp that walks by.
If you slow it down, you can see his scalp flying off,
isn’t that funny?
Isn’t that funny?
I’m so morbid!
The Challenger explosion looks like a lobster, look at this.
Another man killed himself live on the internet for all to see.
Watch it. Watch it. Watch it all. Know every detail.
Every story. Everything. Consume until it consume you whole.
Add it to your trauma pile like a new skill.
Be positive. Be aware.
Wake up but sleep.
Stay in but stay out.
I’m a mouse between two tigers.
They’re inching in,
claws be drawn,
sinched from their scabbards,
and pointed towards me.
Their teeth snarling,
eyes squinted.
I’m losing time.
This time and the next.
I don’t know who I am.
I am the void.
I’m the end of time.
I stopped being human in the end of it all.
I have that power. But I don’t know how to stay.
here, with you, or anywhere. I don’t owe you anything.
I should be free and open and see where life takes me
But that terrifies me.
I want stability but I’ll feel trapped,
I’ll have to see where life takes me, but that’s not how I want it to be.
So I exist and wait for the tide to take me,
polish me, break me, swallow me, spit me, until I sink.
One day I’ll wash up upon the shores of Cornwall
and I’ll be picked up again, or put in a pocket.
Am I an interesting stone or a tumbled piece of glass?
I can’t tell. Break me open and discover my treasures
or get blinded by my shards as I implode.
I become the star dust.
Floating aimlessly.
But somehow,
I am home among
the company of the cosmos.
Control
We are cyborgs, operating on a circular axis
I think we’re beyond taxis.
“I’m just going through the daily motions,”
That’s an assimilated notion.
rinse and repeat,
lost in the duality; I can’t compete.
I want to lose control.
I don’t,
but I do.
“YES I want the beads to be totally random
No pattern!”
Proclaimed my childhood self,
Having to justify my choices
To the assimilated adults
As I laboured over plastic bracelets.
I was free like the wind,
My mother’s walls
decorated in my felt tip.
My father flipped out
Over walls that will be fields and shadows
which once was a house and home
He took it down another way.
My nail polish is still installed on the television cabinet,
My felt tip persevered beyond constriction
And outlived his existence in my zone.
You are free like me
But you’re not.
When was the last time you began to tweet
And immediately deleted?
Or put your hands on your lap, smiled and nodded.
You can’t wear ripped jeans, do you need new ones?
You should wear a dress more often.
Android
Have you ever felt like you’re suffocating?
Or drowning without water,
a mouse cornered by a cat
with not hole or crack
to shimmy your way out
of this new predicament.
I always wondered
if I’m brainwashed,
if my own thoughts are my own.
Do they allow me to question
to avoid suspicion or am I defecting?
I don’t know what I would do
beyond this life,
I escape to the worlds in my head.
But that’s because I’m bored.
I’m an android walking in the halls
of my ship as I walk to the kitchen.
But if I were a robot,
I would be able to focus,
think straight and turn off that looping programme
where I check my phone every minute.
But I’m not an android,
I’m a cyborg, my mind has been hooked
into the mainframe since thirteen.
Keen to unplug
I can’t just leave my brain behind.
I’m infused,
A hybrid of the new age.
These poems were included in my final BAAAD Press Live Projects publication but were formative for this project:
Do you remember? (From BAAAD Press Live Projects)
I don’t remember
these photographs you’re showing me.
Or that holiday,
Or that one,
Or that one.
There isn’t necessarily
a void in my mind
I feel like a replacement
T-1000, reporting for duty.
We are all cyborgs,
Not driven, but programmed
To repeat the motions
Until we power down
And become obsolete.
To be a cyborg
Is to be a prisoner
To be controlled
You don’t know it
But you are.
They’re holding your breath,
Making your voice break.
In Symbiosis (From BAAAD Press Live Projects)
In biology class,
we were taught about
Relationship types.
Symbiotic –
An equal relationship
Where both parties
Gain.
I’ve always had
A relationship
With things.
Tangible
Tangle-able.
Networks
Networking
Speaking
Performing into the
Signal back loop
How is it not parasitic?
I was plugged in
Or I plugged in.
It’s one in the same
As I’m told.
Now it’s part of me.
Recoded
Wiped clean
Turn off
And reboot
It’s a transitional object
Of life.
Between the harsh realities
And the one in your head.
Wake up.
It’s all curated
You don’t speak like that
You don’t think like that
You don’t look like that
Fragmented
Tabs open
Mind converted
Eyes averted
Where is that sound coming from?
Domestic Cybernetics (From BAAAD Press Live Projects)
Sex,
Fuck
Shit
Duck.
Untold,
remold,
controlled,
retold
Man machine
Fuck machine
Total cheese,
By all means.
Robbed,
Cobbed,
Don’t sob.
Tea,
Stir
Me
Her.
Work:
In Symbiosis and Presentation
In Symbiosis accumulates imagery, memories, and childhood objects into a cohesive visual narrative. I paired the piece with physical objects from childhood (Casey, 2021), but I realised the canvas is stronger without, as there is a materiality to the painted objects.
Routers and Flesh Prison
Inspired by Nam June Paik’s personified painted technology, this piece transforms a router into a common childhood label “childhood best friend”, inspired by The Stone Doll of Sister Brute (Hoban, 1968).
Digital Trauma Site and Flesh Prison respond to Post-Human (Deitch, 1992-3) and my poem “bodies”, transforming sites of digital and physical trauma into flesh in a different approach to personify the site and return embodiment to the post-human (Hayles, 1999).
Projecting
I used a projector sparingly for Unfixable Youths, which carefully used colour and borders for alienation successfully, but using a projector for a whole painting created a piece I could not resolve in time.
If these yellow walls could talk/dirty laundry/latch-key kids
The drawings, collage and paintings develop from In Symbiosis with exploring post-human childhood objects and assimilation of growing up with symbiotic objects, while exploring colour to find a suitable colour palette. By the final piece, I chose a primary colour palette as it coheres with child art and the digital.
Lino
The lino pieces are my post-human “avatar” or “totem” (Nottingham Contemporary, 2013); I chose a childhood drawing and a monkey head toy, both used in In Symbiosis, as I identify with the childhood freedom they represent in my current assimilated state.
Film
The film is developed from subconscious writing, along with my Live Projects BAAAD Press writing, delving into digital trauma from viewing traumatic content and trauma compounding into an internal void, inspired formally and content by Shani (Shani, 2021), Huxtable, Henrot and Al Maria (see Research Document 1).
Artists:
Juliana Huxtable, Untitled (For Steve), 2016
Nam June Paik, Third Eye Television, 2005, Available at: https://gagosian.com/artists/nam-june-paik/ [Accessed: 16/04/2021] (Electronic Superhighway, 2016)
Kitty Finer, Memory tablecloth, 2020 (Finer, 2021)
Albert Oehlen, DJ Techno, 2001, Mixed media on canvas, 360 x 340cm (Electronic Superhighway, 2016)
Camille Henrot, Grosse Fatigue, 2013, film (Electronic Superhighway, 2016)
Tai Shani – see Research Document 1 (Shani, 2021)
Joanne Greenbaum, Untitled (Hollywood Squares #6), 2009, 80 x 78 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas (Greenbaum, J. & Simpson, M. 2016)
Alex Olson, Layer, 2017, Oil, modeling paste and faux pearl on canvas, 129.5 x 91.4 cm (Phaidon Editors, 2016)
Marina Rheingantz, Marinherio Russo, 2010, Oil on canvas, 70 7/8 x 90 1/2 in (Phaidon Editors, 2016)
Ulrike Murillo, Rodeo, Mixed Media, 39.4 x 30.5 cm (Phaidon Editors, 2016)
Kay Donachie, I that know you, 2018, oil on linen, 61 x 46 cm
Eva Hesse – Research Document 2
Njideka Akunyili-Crosby – Research Document 1
Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [Mona Lisa], ca. 1952, Engravings, printed paper, fabric, paper, graphite, foil paper, and glue on paper, 24.1 x 19.1 cm, Collection of Louisa Stude Sarofim.
Celia Hempton, Chat Random series, 2014–ongoing, oil on linen. (Electronic Superhighway, 2016)
Douglas Coupland, Deep Face, 2015, Acrylic on B&W photograph, mounted on diabond (Electronic Superhighway, 2016)
Colour
From Vitamin P3 and Turps Banana, Greenbaum, Olson and Oehlen inspired the playful primary colour palette, while Rheingantz, Murillo and Donachie inspired the use of chromatic greys, transparent colour and limiting colour palette experimentation (Phaidon Editors, 2016.
From Vitamin P3 and Turps Banana, Greenbaum, Olson and Oehlen inspired the playful primary colour palette, while Rheingantz, Murillo and Donachie inspired the use of chromatic greys, transparent colour and limiting colour palette experimentation (Phaidon Editors, 2016. Greenbaum & Simpson, 2016)
Texture
Halley, Hesse, and Crosby inspired texture and multi-media to increase fragmentation and post-internet tactility, with bodily presence.
Rectangles, Nam June Paik and Electronic Superhighway
I use rectangles to increase fragmentation and identification with the internet, to convey overflowing information; inspired by Rauschenberg, Henrot, Hempton and Coupland (Electronic Superhighway, 2016). Nam June Paik and Electronic Superhighway (2016) are vital inspirations as I was able to consider the relevance and function of my work in current technocentric art practices. Paik inspired my playful and humanising approach to technology and transforming technology into childhood objects (Wolf, 2018. Whitechapel, 2016).
External Information:
Word Count: 537 (Excluding titles, poems and captions)
Bibliography:
Deitch, J. (1992-1993), “Post Human”, Catalogue, Multiple Venues, June 1992–October 1993, Uwe Kraus gmbH: Germany.
Howard-Jones, P.A. (2011). “The impact of digital technologies on human well-being.”, Nominet Trust; Oxford, Available at: https://www.academia.edu/23515595/The_impact_of_digital_technologies_on_human_wellbeing_EVIDENCE_FROM_THE_SCIENCES_OF_MIND_AND_BRAIN [Accessed: 16/04/2021]
Miah, A. (2003), “Be Very Afraid: Cyborg Athletes, Transhuman Ideals & Posthumanity”, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 13, October 2003, Available at: http://jetpress.org/volume13/miah.htm [Accessed: 16/04/2021]
Haraway, D. (2003-4), “From Cyborgs to Companion Species”, Lecture: UC Berkley, Townsend Centre, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9gis7-Jads&t=527s [Accessed: 20/03/2021]
Wolf, A. (2018), “LIFE AND TECHNOLOGY: THE BINARY OF NAM JUNE PAIK”, Gagosian [Online], Summer 2018 Issue, Available at: https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2018/10/16/life-and-technology-binary-nam-june-paik/ [Accessed: 20/03/2021]
Whitechapel Gallery (2016), “Electronic Superhighway”, Catalogue, Whitechapel Gallery; London.
Nottingham Contemporary (2013), “Universal Addressability of Dumb Things”, Exhibition Notes, Nottingham Contemporary; Nottingham, Available at: https://cms.nottinghamcontemporary.org/site/assets/files/1927/nc_guide_leckey.pdf [Accessed: 17/04/2021]
Hoban, R. (1968), The Stone Doll of Sister Brute, Penguin Random House LLC, Random House Children’s Books; New York.
Phaidon Editors (2016), “Vitamin P3: New Perspectives in Painting”, 1st ed. Phaidon Press: New York.
Greenbaum, J. & Simpson, M. (2016), “MARY SIMPSON AND JOANNE GREENBAUM A CORRESPON- DANCE”, Turps Banana [excerpt], Issue 17, July-August 2016, Available at: https://cargocollective.com/marysimpson/TURPS-BANANA-Issue-17 [Accessed: 26/05/2021]
Hayles, K. (1999), “How We Become Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics “, The University of Chicago Press Ltd: London.
Exhibitions:
“Universal Addressability of Dumb Things” (2013) [exhibition], Nottingham Contemporary, 27 Apr 2013 – 30 Jun 2013
“Electronic Superhighway” (2016) [exhibition], Whitechapel Gallery, 29 January – 15 May 2016
Deitch, J. (1992-1993), “Post Human”, Catalogue, Multiple Venues, June 1992–October 1993, Uwe Kraus gmbH: Germany.
Lectures and Talks:
- Finer, K (2021), “Kitty Finer” [artist talk], with Birmingham City University [Online], 5th Mar 2021.
- Dr. Stupart, L. (2020), “Dematerialisation of the Art Object: Artist as Dreamweaver”, [lecture], Birmingham School of Art, 9th October 2020
- Shani, T. (2021), “Tai Shani: Artist Talk”, [artist talk], with Birmingham City University [Online], 16th April 2021
- Casey, M. (2021), “Curation as Approach”, [Presentation], Birmingham City University, 22nd March 2021
Further research information:
or
for the Complete Bibliography and Artist List.
Mads Washbrook 