Annie Abrahams’s Experiments in Intimacy
Symposium:
Session Title:
- SENSORIUM: Interdisciplinary Practices of Embodiment and Technology
Presentation Title:
- Annie Abrahams’s Experiments in Intimacy
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Panel: SENSORIUM: Interdisciplinary Practices of Embodiment and Technology
“What makes for a livable world is no idle question. It is not merely a question for philosophers. Somewhere in the answer we find ourselves not only committed to a certain view of what life is, and what it should be, but also of what constitutes the human” (Judith Butler Undoing Gender)
“In fact, all my work emanates from one big question: how can we live in a world that we don’t understand?”
_Annie Abrahams, in interview with Maria Chatzichristodoulou
This paper explores the work of French-based pioneer of networked performance art Annie Abrahams, in relation to notions of intimacy in mediated performance practice. Specifically, it explores two of Abrahams’s pieces: Shared Still Life/Nature Morte Partagee (2010) and L’Un La Poupee de L’Autre (One the Puppet of the Other) (2007). The paper suggests that, unlike a plethora of other technologised practices, Abrahams’s work resists the celebration of utopic notions of the technologies of connectivity and interactivity. Instead, its focus is on broken links and miscommunications, that is, the failure of both technological and human connectivity. The article argues that the acceptance of failure as an element that is embedded in the make-up of networks is what renders Abrahams’s Internet embodied and visceral, “an Internet of feeling” (as termed by Ruth Catlow in her essay accompanying Abrahams’ If Not You Not Me exhibition at the HTTP Gallery in London). It further argues in favour of a “banality” that characterises Abrahams’s work. This banality is not the safe zone of intimacy identified by Dominic Johnson in his recent lecture Live Art and Body Modification, but a far more troubling manifestation of it. Finally, the article proposes that Abrahams belongs to a generation of female artists who, as Morse has suggested, seek to challenge their very artistic medium.
