Wickerman and Lomax
Online social platforms, systems of governance and new digital languages were hot topics at the 9th Berlin Biennale. Admittedly they may sound like dead zones for exciting inquiry, and yet there are some video artists who have found them to be fecund forums for creativity. Some are using the online format as a way to fearlessly take on prejudices of the institutionalised art world, while others are agitating online corporate information systems to expose more diverse truths. We’d like to introduce you to five video artists who, with their revolutionary works, will most certainly blow your mind.
Wickerham and Lomax
Wickerham and Lomax would define their practice as an amalgam of “fan boy hissy fits.” The Baltimore-based duo made up of Daniel Wickerham and Malcolm Lomax was conceived in 2009 and draws on the exchange of glib gossip and codified information systems. Originally making work under the name DUOX, Wickerham and Lomax use various media to explore identity and the impact of digital technologies and social spaces. Their ongoing digital narrative project called BOY’Dega also looks at the interplay between author, character, actor and fan and they most recently showed “Uncool” at Terrault Contemporary, Baltimore in 2016.
Jacolby Satterwhite
The cord that ties Jacolby Satterwhite to his mother in “The Matriarch’s Rhapsody” is strong. In his most recent body of work, the artist feeds from his mother’s archive of sound recordings and drawings. In it, he pieces together images of consumer culture, medicine, sex and astrology. Satterwhite’s metaphorical body and his mother’s conflate into a shared memory and practice that examines insider and outsider art and queer theory. He uses various media and performance to animate a narrative that – in his words – “perverts” the mundane objects recorded by his mother.
Rashaad Newsome
Voguing takes centre stage in Rashaad Newsome’s “This is What I Want To See” which showed recently at Harlem’s Studio Museum. The video presents a ten year collaboration between Newsome and members of New York’s original queer vogue ballroom scene in the Eighties. The agency, intricacies and talent required for voguing is reframed in Newsome’s work to highlight how performers are represented. In it, he places a critical spotlight on the mainstream appropriation of voguing in the Nineties with the intention of bringing the queer communities of colour from this scene into the institutional space.
Cécile B. Evans
You may have seen Cécile B. Evans’ video piece “What the Heart Wants” recently at The 9th Berlin Biennale. It’s her examination of how machine learning shapes humanity in the digital age which unfolds into a semblance of absurdities. In it, her protagonists assume all sorts of surreal forms, including: a memory cell from 1972 that has outlived its human hosts, robot carers who are the guardians of lab children and a workers’ union comprising only of disembodied ears. It’s Evans’ intention to unravel the value of emotion and in contemporary society.
Constant Dullaart
Constant Dullaart has been described as a digital archaeologist. It refers to the artist’s practice of sourcing, unearthing and manipulating images found online. The artist was awarded the 2015 Prix Net Art for his websites and “offline” performances, installations that are informed by technical, social and political networks. One of Dullaart’s signature works “Jennifer In Paradise”, is a series based on John Knoll’s image of a woman reclining on a beach that was famously used as Photoshop’s first demo image. Dullaart redistributed it as wallpaper and lenticular prints to comment on how corporate entities manage and distribute online media content.