In March I attended the talk ‘When art meets social media’ by the artist An Xiao Mina. She explained the emerging trends in artistic explorations of social media in the internet, using social media as the medium and tool for the performance. This movement started in 2007 when artists started to play with the new social space in the Internet.
She described some of her projects, for example in 2007 she twittered for two months in morse code for the Brooklyn museum. For another of her projects (‘Status update’) she sent postcards with a limitation of 140 characteres to the museum in New Haven. The museum exhibited the postcards in a wall with a configuration similar to twitter’s life stream.
She also showed what other people are doing, for example Marina Abramović’s performance art in the MOMA. This new form of art is accessible to anybody in the world, you don’t need to anymore to be living in New York, Paris, London or Berlin to become an artists. More important, the emotional message becomes bidirectional. When you visit a traditional museum you normally spend seconds looking at the art pieces, but in this new form of art the performer invites the his audience to play with the art piece, commenting about it, manipulating it and changing it into new forms. This new form of art is originated in the mid of an artist but it is not controlled by him but by the crowd.
This form of expression uses Twitter and Facebook. An Xiao asked the audience what will happen in China. Will the Chinese Artists use a VPN to reach people out of the Chinese Firewall? Will they use Chinese social media tools? Will the government allow this form of expression? The audience answered timidly, but they agreed the Chinese artists will not use Chinese social media tools.
I didn’t understand why at that time, but I do now. This same week Ai Weiwei, one of the most popular Chinese artists and the most active in twitter (here his english twitter) has disappeared. In China is difficult to set a line between artists and political dissidents. Furthermore the Chinese social media tools are closely monitored by the government. For example Ai WeiWei’s Weibo (The Chinese twitter) account was deleted hours after his owner disappeared. Social Media Art movement has not flourished yet in China because the artists tend to be politically active so they cannot use Chinese social media tools and if they use twitter, which is blocked in China, their visibility is zero.
Going back to the topic, An Xiao introduced her current perfomance. She seats in the configuration you can see in the picture. She has several barriers between her and the person. First, an intimidating gesture, second a table, and third a computer that records everything that the person do. The person in front of her communicates with An Xiao using social media messaging tools with their cell phones.
She said that in previous perfomances the communication she had with the complete unknown people had a very high level of trust and intimacy. People told her about their lives and problems in a transparent way. She thinks those communications would have never taken place in a normal conversation with a cup of coffee.
The performance reminds of the conversations we have when we talk with people that are physically close to us using social media tools instead of our voice. Far from the perfomance itself, I think it has also interesting applications as it can be an interesting way to accelerate the therapy of people with depressions as they are able to transmit what they are really feeling in an easier way.
This is a video of her presentation in Los Angeles:
An Xiao / Art Under the Influence… of Social Media @ Mindshare Los Angeles
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