“Public, Private, Secret” show

 “ We share intimacies with the air as thought unconcerned about who can hear us or the details of our physical surroundings”.  Sherry Turkle

     The exhibition “Public, Private, Secret”, at the International Center of Photography, addresses the current paradigms of self-identity and the role that digital photography and videography play in the social environment and on the personal privacy. Moreover, images and time-based works, which use social media sources like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook highlights on social issues and the implications that digital images have on our current society and culture.

A good example of that is Testament, (2009/16), a two-channels video installation created by the artist Natalie Bookchin.  This installation consists of a series of videos, for example, I Am Not, Laid Off and My Meds, which focuses themes such as, sexual identity, unemployment and pharmacotherapy addictions. These videos, resulting from the montages of hundreds of online self-portraits clips, are presented as a narrative that blurs the borders between public and private life. The videos are displayed on two facing walls, which allows an overlapping of people’s images and voices that make evident today dual social network relationships of connectivity and isolation.

Another example of online re-appropriation and re-configuration is Doug Rickard’s N.A (2013): A sequence of low-resolution videos, voices and sounds edited from YouTube that depict American street scenes of violence, and frustration occurring in areas of social and economic deprivation. These videos’ sequences are the result of three year of the artist’s YouTube research. Firstly, Rickard started his online research using American cities’ names.  Secondly, he looked into words that helped him to explore the American culture landscape. Finally, he expanded his inquiries by using keywords like “Crackheads,” “Gone Wild,” “Passed Out White Girl,” “Gangstalking,” “Racial Profiling,” “Illegal Search,” or “Police Brutality,” which resulted in thousands of videos that depict American violence and social inequality.

An impressive work is the video installation, Lessons I-LXVIII, 2014/16 by Martine Syms, a performer and, media artist based in Los Angeles. Her 10 min video is a compilation of 30 seconds clips selected randomly from online videos, blogs, homemade movies, video diaries, advertisements and police webcams that focuses mainly on the everyday life of African American peoples, their cultural and their underestimated American society’s role.

Additionally, the work of the Swiss artist Kurt Caviezel, Pass De Deux, (2015). Pass De Deux is a series of 72 photographs printed on format 10 x 8 taken from the video of a publicly accessible webcam, of a man dancing naked. He is imitating a professional dancer on TV. Caviezel is a photographer who has been monitoring publicly accessible webcams for nearly 2 decades and has accumulated and archived more than 3 million screen shots focusing on image quality.

Next and almost overlapping to Kurt Caviezel’s work is a sound installation by the American artist Ann Hirsch. Her (2013), installation, YouTube Whispers, is a compilation of low male voices’ reaction to the artist’s webcam dancing, under the name of Caroline, on YouTube.

In addition, Andrews Hammer’s The New Town, (2004/5), is a compilation of images from a mid-western, CCTV surveillance church’s camera, the artist manipulates the camera’s position to give the impression that people are followed after they left the church. On the one hand, the camera’s perspective produces a very interesting photographic viewpoint. On the other hand, it forces us to question citizen surveillance, and in particular, NSC surveillance of American people.

Lastly, What I am Looking For, (2004), Shelley Silver, a New York-based artist, working with still and moving images, present a 15-minute HD documentary, which tells the story of a woman who uses an Internet dating site to post an announcement that invites people to get photographed in public spaces, while they reveal and intimate side of themselves. This work presents a strong visual narrative that explores the limits between private, virtual and public domains.

The works described above, even if they are only a part of the whole exhibition, embody the main themes of the show, because they use Internet sources as the main artistic material and medium to address public and private domains, and to discuss the current network of society’s cultural, political and social issues.

The Creative Act

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was one of the few artists of the 20^th century to renew the postulates and possibilities of visual arts. His ideas, explained on the Creative Act, provides the basis for today’s contemporary art creative freedom, and introduces the concept that the act of creation is the result of the artist and the spectator.

For instance, Duchamp considers that the artist creates out of a state of consciousness, like a medium that elucidates and connects with time and space. A human being who creates based on intuition, in opposition to a rational, self-controlled state of mind.  To illustrate his idea, Duchamp cites TS Eliot’s essay: “The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates”.

According to Duchamp, there is no artist discourse or rational explanation of his/her oeuvre, which will validate it. The importance of a creative act will remain within the public recognition of the artist as a social and cultural producer and his ulterior inclusion into the Art History.

He also makes a distinction among Art, described as a bad or good, Art Coefficient as the non-conscious, subjective, steps and struggles that an artist must overcome to produce raw art, and personal Art Coefficient, which is the difference between the artist’s intentions and the final product.  Moreover, the Art Coefficient is a raw, personal expression of art that must be processed and completed by the spectator. There is the spectator, who decides the esthetic importance of the artwork.

To conclude, Duchamp was mainly concerned with the intellectual aspects of art and not with the physicality of an artwork. He believed that art was an intellectual process, free from traditional constrains and predominant rules. His anti-art objects and intellectual ideas established the basis for future art movements, for example, abstract expressionism, pop art, happenings and conceptual art, as well as participative art.