PERFORMANCE

The //2Weeks residency structure can be seen as a performance in itself and the behaviours that the artists perform within each residency are performative. The performance exists online through the temporal and progressive structure of the //2Weeks residency. As the residency progresses, with each daily ‘check-in’, the body of work changes and evolves incrementally with each daily ‘check-in’. This experience or performance can never be repeated or recaptured. The performance exists for both the artist and the viewer, engaging with and viewing this performance through the selected platform such as Instagram, YouTube or Tumblr.

“In what amounts to techno-social interplays, human bodies also make digital technologies perform, through, for instance, embodied movements, gestures and habits, and the practices of streaming, updating, capturing, uploading, linking, saving, sharing, trashing, trolling etc. (Chun 2016)” (pg 11)
- Martina Leeker, Imanuel Schipper and Timon Beyes,
Performativity, Performativity, Performance Studies and Digital Cultures (2017)


The digital behaviours of the artists online are captured through the medium and reflective of the platform. These ‘embodied movements’ are too in turn, iterated by the behaviours of the viewer. The viewer engages and performs while viewing the work: scrolling, watching, liking, sharing, and commenting on what has artist has produced online. These ‘sets’ of actions and behaviours enable the work to exist online, for it to become part of the embodied network.

“Digital cultures are performative cultures. They condition and are shaped by techno-social processes and agencies, and they afford new possibilities for performative practices and interventions […] How is performativity shaped by contemporary technological conditions? And how do performative practices reflect and alter techno-social formations?” (Leeker et al. 1)
- Martina Leeker, Imanuel Schipper and Timon Beyes,
Performativity, Performance Studies and Digital Cultures (2017)


For ‘performance’ I have identified two artists whose connections are reflected on the map, Tabita Rezaire and I S S I I S S A whose residency and description you can view below.


Tabita Rezaire
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwcriLCE5VE0E7bOMxnquHA
(‿ꜟ‿) LOOK @ HER BUTT (‿ꜟ‿) digital thoughts on twerk

Rezaire investigated and researched twerking culture and how it was perceived in Johannesburg South Africa and online. She created daily videos, combining interviews with people in Johannesburg and online content. Each video becomes a performance through YouTube referencing online culture and behaviour.





ISSIISSA
https://www.instagram.com/issi_issa/
14 vases

ISSIISSA conducted interviews with various artists and thinkers and used these interviews to create digital 3D, architectural forms of each person, revealing the process of making and the results on Instagram. She positioned her content both as Instagram Stories and Instagram Posts. Each portraits becomes a performance from the process of interviewing, the making of the 3D objects, to navigating through them and allowing the viewer to view selected and crated components of the forms.