‘Is Anyone Out There?’
Everything seems to have a digital component now, digital cooking, digital yoga, digital pub quiz, digital musical theatre – our lives have slowly, within the past few weeks, migrated to from analogue to the digital platform and we are now reconciling our lives through and from our digital screens. As the lockdown in the UK looms to continue and days roll into one, I can’t help but think about the new ‘normal’ and what it means for my fellow curators, artists and arts institutions.
We are quick to accept and embrace the digital sphere, with countless new platforms, live streams, virtual tours and online art exhibitions, art is now presented, delivered, made and received via our compact and portable digital disseminators. The speed at which we are adapting in a digital sphere is faster than ever, with remote working and social distancing dictating and moulding our otherwise regular daily behaviours. But for those working in the arts, a discipline which up to now more or less depended on the connections made in person, what does this mean going forward?
In Hito Steyerl’s collection of essays, “The Wretched of the Screen”, she writes that “Gazes already become decisively mobile and mechanised with the invention of photography, but new technologies have enabled the detached observant gaze to become ever more inclusive and all-knowing to the point of becoming massively intrusive …[]” It is precisely in this ‘detached observer turned intruder’ that plagues my thoughts during this time. We are invited into people’s most intimate settings with every event turned digital via live stream, we can see into their living rooms, we are able to see onto their book shelves, look at the pictures they decide to hang on their wall, and see the chosen corner of space that they are willing to let complete strangers into. What occurs to me is how the digital sphere is shifting our ideas of intimacy and how a new, digital intimacy, might be shaped.
As museums and arts institutions across the world are temporarily closing its doors and air travel is more or less grounded within Europe, my thoughts turn to fellow curatorial colleagues and what they might make of these challenges. It occurred to me that inevitably, reving up activity in a new, digital gear might allow for further exploration within this newly discovered digital intimacy.
This past week, I’ve been recommending and taking part in a whole host of digital activities. On Monday, a virtual tour of architect Sam Jacob’s computer desktop took place live on Instagram. For me to be able to wander around someone else’s files, folders, old desktop backgrounds and half finished ideas is something I’ve often wanted to hear more about. On Tuesday, a seminar with Brook Andrew, Artistic Director of NIRIN, the 22nd Biennial of Sydney. An event that I might have never been able to work out to attend in my diary. A workshop on Wednesday led by artist Alice Heyward on crying, because, why not, sometimes you do just need a good cry. These are just a selection of moments where this new, digital intimacy has allowed for other ideas, connections and ideas to emerge. A new, different, sometimes worse but sometimes perhaps even closer way to connect than we could before. What might that foster going forward for the curatorial or wider arts community?
Futurecity wants to make the most of this newly gained closeness and follow suit to open up for each of our colleagues to contribute to a public mailer. They will allow each individual voice a platform and with each piece, new opinions and ideas. We want to continue to contribute to this intimacy, foster it, and enable us to be better informed together as we navigate and shape a future digital place.
– Ying Tan, Head of Public Art (Interim)
Read our Futurecity Top Picks for digital art presentation here.
