Abstract
The chapter is dedicated to demonstrating artivist aesthetic discourses produced in converging relations between urban space, street art, intersectional feminism (gender, class, ethnicity), and digital technologies in a post-pandemic context. The research results derived from three stages: a survey of state-of-the-art study on relations between street art, feminist artivism, and digital media art; production and application of autoethnographic data in the creation of digital artistic artefact; and curatorship of video-installation. The analysis focuses on the case study of the post-digital art artefact Make me up! an immersive and cyberperformative experience that connects augmented reality (AR) technology, street art, Instagrammism and Selfiecity. The digital artefact Make me up! was launched during the “10th International Conference on Digital and Interactive Arts - ARTECH 2021: Hybrid Praxis: Art, Sustainability & Technology” in the historical city of Aveiro, Portugal, also known as the “Portuguese Venice.”
TopIntroduction
Since the emergence of the pandemic in 2020, the experiences in the arts in the digital field have been intensified in a progressive and exponential way, including the intersections between public space and digital creations. One can list numerous practices that have been adapted with the use of digital and telepresence technological resources, especially those focused on performing and scenic arts, and made available “through digital platforms, exhibited via streaming, or on social networks such as Facebook and Instagram” (Wexel, 2021, p. 43). Discussions of the kind that are commonly part of the scenario between the relationship of digital technologies in the construction of new aesthetics and languages in the performing arts, “such as cyber-performance, have obtained even greater relevance after the pandemic, new points of view and necessary confrontations regarding the insertion of the artistic panorama in digital languages.” (Wexel, 2021, p.43), as well as their displacements concerning street art, urban art or public art. The chapter presents the case study of a digital artefact of cyber-performative and immersive character, of post-digital concept, developed in 2021, in a post-pandemic context. The artwork Make me up! was developed from the resource of augmented reality (AR), using street art creations circumscribed in aesthetic discourses that present a feminist and intersectional character. The discussion also derives from the production of aesthetic discourses from the artefact's cyberperformative (Jamieson, 2008) character. Make me up! is based on their relationship with the epistemological power of artistic images (Zielinski, 2017), coupled with the condition that images in contemporaneity cross bodies (Baitello, 2017) and the interpretation of the body itself as a place of combat and disputes (Bento, 2017), along with the idea that the space of the city is also a body (Baitello, 2017). Based on the idea of the “all-screen” (Lipovetsky & Gilles, 2010) and transmedia language (Scolari, 2013), the Spark AR Studio platform resource was used in the creation of augmented reality and facial recognition filters, modelled from 12 works produced by feminist artivists operating from Portugal, Brazil and Italy. For the design of the artefact Make me up!, we invested in an autoethnographic and ethnographic (Foster, 1996) research methodology for artistic creation (Candy, 2006). The journey is part of the research for the doctoral degree in digital media art, originally entitled Gender, urban art and media art: the aesthetic discourse of arti(vi)stas in an autogynographic map and currently under the new title Vulva art, art(vi)smo and digital media art: Imagetic contributions in new feminist aesthetic discourses for a culture of equity. The research results derived from the instancing (Marcos, 2016) of 3 stages: a survey of a State of the Art Study on street art, feminism and digital media art; production of an autoethnographic map of works produced by feminist artists, application of the ethnographic data in the creation and curation of the AR artefact Make me up! and, finally, in the exhibition of the artefact in an art installation at ARTECH 2021 - Hybrid Praxis - Art, Sustainability & Technology - the 10th International Conference on Digital and Interactive Arts - held by the University of Aveiro. It is understood that this product is part of the scientific exercise of contributing to a transversal and interdisciplinary debate between digital media-art applied to urban artistic interventions, intersectional feminism and artivism, besides new visions in the field of post-pandemic arts.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Instagrammism: Lev Manovich coined the word in the book !Instagram and Contemporary Image” (2016). The term deals with the contemporary phenomenon of aesthetic construction of images and their sharing, which emerged between 2010 and 2011, especially with the platforms Instagram and Kinfolk .
Augmented Reality: Augmented reality (AR) is a computer system technology that enables the integration of vision between physical and virtual environments. Augmented Reality creations offer interactive, sensory, and immersive experiences. An example of an AR product is QR Codes and Instagram filters.
Intersectional Feminism: Theory-based perspective on understanding how oppressions in patriarchal society manifest themselves beyond gender inequalities since they also permeate social class and ethnicity, among others. Through the viewpoint of intersectional feminism, we analyse how these multiple aspects relate to each other and interfere in women's lives. The prism of intersectional feminism is also used as a theoretical-methodological tool in feminist movements as a resource for the analysis of socio-cultural structures such as the lack or presence of privileges, the dismantling of mechanisms based on structural machismo and the construction of egalitarian public policies of access to human rights.
Graffiti: The word graffiti has Italian origins and is the plural of graffito, which in its translation means writing done with charcoal. Also called muralism , it is one of the main categories of pictorial expression of street art, where artists use techniques such as spray art and stencil art to paint surfaces such as walls, façades, and other devices on public roads.
Selfiecity: It is the name of the first systematic study of the selfie phenomenon worldwide, an initiative led by the digital culture theorist Lev Manovich and the American laboratory Software Studies Initiative since 2012. The project “Selfiecity” investigated the phenomenon in five global capitals (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Moscow, New York, and São Paulo) through the social network Instagram and updated questions about self- representation, “self-fashioning,” and interpersonal communications by visual means.
Cyberperformance: It is about performance in the digital space, also known as digital theatre, online performance, telematic performance and networked performance. The term cyberperformance was first used by Helen Varley Jamieson in 2000 to identify a specific artistic genre in the performances and theatre where performers/actors and audiences meet synchronously in virtual space. While body expression is key, cyberperformance can include pre-recorded multimedia elements. Precursors of cyberperfomance can be found among experimental projects using strategies and technologies of participation and distribution, such as mail art, radio art, and satellite art, among others.
Digital Media Art: Art that uses digital media technology as a process (means) and/or as a product (result) where technology is a tool at the service of creative ingenuity (artistic, cultural, educational, playful, among others) or as an engine for innovation in terms of creating new forms and aesthetic discourses that explore the informative, sensorial, and interventional expressiveness of multimedia content.