Upgrade! Chicago: The Unintentional Art of Digital Cultures & Communities: From 4chan to cam4 & beyond… with Natacha Stolz, Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin :: December 10, 2010; 7:00 pm :: The Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwuakee, Chicago, IL.

What happens when contemporary Performance Art meets Digital Cultures online? How is New Media Art conversational? Who is having these conversations and what are their expectations?

Natacha Stolz performed her Interior Semiotics project at an exhibition/ event called FOREVER(21) in Chicago, Illinois on March 27, 2010. Stolz uploaded video documentation of the performance to YouTube on May 8. Then, as Know Your Meme reports, During the week of August 5th, the video was posted to 4chan. Many more threads were posted and the video soon went viral. The collective entity/ 4chan-/ b/ -based identity known as Anonymous mobilized, responding to the video in various ways including threatening Stolz with violence and rape. Anonymous posted her personal contact information online to facilitate these threats, leaking personal photos that Stolz had previously posted to Facebook while her YouTube video continued to climb in popularity, at one moment gaining 200,000 views in 48 hours. Stolz watched within the feedback and feedforward loops of Digital Culture and responded as all of this activity occurred. Her online responses complicated and confounded Anonymous, enfolding 4chan into her project and causing many to speculate that she was in fact ‘trolling the trolls’ or in other words, entangling 4chan in her performative art process and practice.

Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin interact with the online community of cam4 in explicitly Performance Art oriented interventions. The website cam4 describes itself accurately as being dedicated to “Free Live Sex Webcams - Free Live Cams Sex Chat”. Lin and Jiaxin’s performances play with the expectations and limits of the cam4 community, flowing in and out of variously experimental erotic, comedic and theatrical moments. Their collaborative performances have been met with enthusiasm, attention, dismissal and denial. In particular, their works, although all performed live and in realtime, are often accused of being video playback and therefore violating the rules of the cam4 site and community. This tension between the expectations, realities and performativity of their projects underscores the complexity of their relationships to power exchanges in art and pornography.

Natacha Stolz, Ei Jane Janet Lin & Miao Jiaxin will present their work, discussing the intended and unintended results of their projects. Nick Briz will facilitate a discussion following their presentations.

Nick Briz, an organizer of GLI.TC/H and curator/participant in the Critical Glitch Artware event, will moderate the discussion following presentations by the artists.

Upgrade! Chicago is the local Chicago-based node of the international Upgrade! network, an emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. Upgrade! Chicago presents new media projects, engages in informal critique, and fosters dialogue and collaboration between individual artists. Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year.