The main topic of my work looks at how we, as a society, shape our identity and intimacy through mediated environments such as the internet and how these environments inform each other. My work ranges from mixed-media installations and online-based work to more traditional forms of narrative. I work from a mix of theoretical and practical research to bear upon the creation of textured work that explores the implications of the intimate relationship we have with technology and the online world.
I see my work as a free space; a place where morality gives way to nuance, humor and empathy. In my practice I explore the way we look at online culture and our own positions within it while remaining critical of the social, cultural and economic structures that create inequality within and outside this sphere of online intimacy. By treating subjects with subversive humour, I try to seduce the viewer to ask questions, which are enclosed in the way I approach everything, but not in a dogmatic way.
STUCK - STUCK is a video installation that reflects trends in online pornography.
The images in this installation are collected from Pornhub.com. The videos show a new trend in which porn, actresses getting stuck in (usually domestic) objects such as washing machines, ovens, sinks, windows or even in the trunk of a car. Although it creates humorous images, it also raises questions about the notion of consent and abuse within and outside the world of pornography. By editing and recreating the images, the social obsession, the material glorification of the physical object and the cultural paradoxes that drive the primary impulses remain.
is it also hot in cyberspace - is it also hot in cyberspace is a (non)performance (2022) done during a six week residency at /rosa. During this period I broadcasted myself and my computer screen through live-streams on the popular website twitch.com.
Spending my days doing research, it became a project that interrogates the value of the production of labour. What is the value when not producing art? At the same time I was interested in how my presence in an online space compare to my physical presence in the gallery. During the course of the residency I created a 3d model of the project space to replace my computer screen.
currently_off_sight - Currently Off-Sight (web and video) investigates visibility on sex webcam platforms through the testimonies of webcam performers. Despite the asymmetry of power between them and the sexcam platform, Currently Off-Sight resists a binary understanding of what is and what is not visible in that context. In this way, the project questions the purpose of rendering things (hyper)visible at the expense of others while exploring the many shades of online perception. Foregrounding webcammers’ voices, this project examines the ways in which visibility manifests on the platform, and the various degrees of agency the different actors have there.
Both in its web and video versions, the project is divided into chapters concerning the different topics addressed by the webcammers. Quoting the aesthetics used in the camming
environment, these elements are placed on a simulated desktop that works as a stage and place of observation, while it also acknowledges the presence of a user in this entanglement.
Currently Off Sight has been created in collaboration with researcher and artist Antonia Hernández.
fröbel - fröbel is a work that started during the COVID-19 crisis. Being locked-up at home, fröbelen (a dutch word for tinkering / crafting) got extremely popular. Puzzles were sold out, crafting business made enormous profits. At the same time Pornhub started with their free-acces to premium content. Visitor numbers spiked during quarantine with traffic increasing from around 5% to 50%.
Fröbel combines these these two popular ways of spending time during quarantine; porn and crafting.
The work consists of a puzzle, diamond painting and a tufted rug.
bedscapes (2021) – multi-media installation - Bedscapes is an installation consisting of a video work and a printed piece of fabric. The video shows 3D renders of beds with wrinkled sheets, scattered personal objects and occasional stains and other material. They are shown as landscapes, the camera slowly floating over the sheets and bedding. In front the screen, on the floor, there is a piece of printed fabric, a cotton sheet that shows a life size render of a 3D model of sheets.
The project explores how personal space translates and mediates to the digital and how the digital in it’s turn translates back to a physical setting. How does intimacy translate to a digital world?
The 3D models of the personal beds are created with photos of the beds, using a method called photogrammetry. The printed model is created in a 3D program.
The project was created during a 10-day residency residency in Kyustendil, Bulgaria. The beds shown are the beds of the other residency participants.
A big thanks to all the participants of RESET 2021 and the team and mentors of Kontempora Art Residency.
Tokens (2020) - Tokens is a multimedia installation that explores the implications of the terms of use and the monetary conditions imposed by sexcam-platforms and their payment partners on sex-cam workers. It does so by implementing the ‘viewing conditions’ directly into the exhibition in the form of an installation that applies them to the different works exhibited.
There are three works presented in the space: 1) a video showing cam-performers reading out different excepts of the terms-of-use imposed by the webcamplatforms, 2) an interactive web-sculpture showing different reviews, personal issues and other information about payment platforms linked to online sexwork through different fora and 3) a newspaper ticker showing stock-data, Alexa rankings and visitor counts of different cam websites.
Sexcam workers are completely reliant on big tech companies to provide them with payments. Where visitors of these sites can easily pay with their MasterCard or PayPal to purchase ‘tokens’ (the payment currency on many cam platforms), performers are struggling to get paid because these services don't want to 'engage in sex work-based services’. At the same time the performers have to agree with an extensive terms of use ‘contract’, that basically takes away all the rights of the performers and negates any liability by the platform.
Click here to read the text Antonia Hernández wrote for this project.
Tokens is made with the collaboration of artist and researcher Antonia Hernández
This project is produced as part of the Summer Sessions Network for Talent Development in a co-production of V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media.
Liminal connection - In Liminal Connection a comparison is drawn between the physical webcam spaces and the concept of liminality. The video shows different webcam studios whilst in audio we hear pieces of interview with different webcam performers. The images show multiple webcam rooms, spaces created for the online. They are neither real nor unreal. They act as a synonym for the relationships created within this in-between space.
Liminal Connection is an experimental documentary that examines how intimate connections and sexual encounters within the world of ‘private camming’ affect the digital and corporeal space connected to them, and what relationships are formed within these spaces.
BRB - BRB a short experimental documentary where absence is the focus of the work. The images are composed of recorded sex-cam streams. We see empty spaces, in these spaces scattered teddybears and sex-toys. Occasionally a cat or dog yawns and walks across the screen. In text we follow the chats of various members talking amongst each-other in different chatrooms, whilst waiting for the performer to return in front of the webcam. The viewer is left to wonder who inhabits these spaces an and what has happend in the moments before, with only some clues to help them imagine. The chats that occur when the performers are gone are occasionally very humorous, where others have a darker context.
I became interested in how this physical space informed the digital space and vice-versa. I started screen-grabbing empty rooms of webcam performers in the ‘open’ chat areas of free sites, when the performers were on a break. I recorded the empty spaces that show hints of human presence, like signs saying; ‘Be Right Back’. The chats that occur during the absence of the performers are made visible in text. There is a very strong sense of community on websites like chaturbate.com where users talk amongst other users about far more than just sex.
A lot of the active ‘visitors’ spend a lot of hours online and on these platforms, sometimes even befriending the performers or other members. With this work I wanted to create a reflection on the presence and absence in existing and performing online and the resonance on the viewer that’s left behind.
On Memory - On memory is an ongoing project. This movie is an excerpt of the first experiments with the subject of memory, involuntary memory and personal memory.
I was inspired by a text on how we ‘outsource’ our memory more and more towards digital memory. [1] Through this I got fascinated with this idea of constructing memory’s, or how memory is always a construct. A recent publication compared studies that examined whether photographing objects impacts what is remembered about them. The results were interesting. When participants took photos of whole objects after viewing them, they remembered fewer objects and remembered fewer details about the objects and the objects’ locations than when they only observed the objects without photographing them. [2] Despite the added time or attention required to angle the camera and adjust the lens so as to capture the best shot of the object in its entirety, the act of photographing the object appears to enable people to dismiss the object from memory, thereby relying on the external devise of the camera to “remember” for them.
This video is completely made out of digital constructions of personal ‘memories’. It also includes part of the video InAflash. InAflash is a short video where around 11.000 photographs taken throughout my childhood, teens and adult life, flashes in front of your eyes. Like the life review phenomena experienced during near-death experiences.
Talk neural to me - Talk neural to me is a one channel video projection. On a big piece of wall a video of a blurred porn movie is projected. It's only vaguely recognisable by the movement of the pink blurred parts. In audio we hear a computer generated descriptive voice translating what the computer 'sees' behind the blurred image.
Using an open-source written code and an open-source database I let the neural network analyze a still from these Pornhub movies every 15 frames or so. These descriptions are later translated into a computer voiceover and put under the actual moving film again. Since the used database has no porn or even nude-related pictures in it, these descriptions are often humorously close to the actual ‘act’ but not ‘smart’ enough to recognize the object. This results in descriptions as; “A woman is brushing her teeth in the bathroom,” whereas the viewer knows that what she is holding is definitely not a toothbrush.
I am very interested in the relation between viewer and object and how the interface influences this relationship. In these works I tried to create a distance from the viewer towards internet pornography, usually seen in a ‘private’ relationship between browser and person. In this work the computer itself is taking the place of the viewer. In this way, I hope to raise multiple questions about our relation towards pornography and technology. As AI is growing and neural networks are used more and more as ‘smart’ objects, the question remains to the human influence on these networks. Clearly, in this case, there is not a ‘pornographic’ database, and still, these databases are only based on ‘human’ descriptions. The humorous result also creates a distance for the viewer to question their own relation to online-pornography and the meaning of these images.
