On the occasion of her show “100 Tweets” at Dumbo Arts Center,
I had the opportunity to interview Michelle Vaughan about her project, twitter,
language and copyright.
Karl Erickson: Twitter is of course, tied into celebrity
culture. In ways, it is a way for the hoi polloi to get closer to the stars,
the culturati. In "100 Tweets" there are a few celebrities that you
re-present, both mainstream (Sarah Silverman, Anthony Bourdain) and art world
(Jerry Saltz, Paddy Johnson). Is there anything about “100 Tweets” that was
intended to get you closer, or more in touch with these figures?
Michelle
Vaughan: I was hyper-aware, and no, getting "closer" would be weird.
I am very sensitive about celebrity culture; it scares the bejesus out of me
that people can be such insane narcissists. Yet wanting attention is a human
emotion, and I think that is a big undercurrent throughout the entire
Twittersphere. I've had exchanges with a lot of people I don't know; some are
famous, most aren't. Batting snark around or exchanging information can be
thrilling; it's a bunch of conversations happening at light speed. But at the
end of the day, this project is not about the authors; it's my own
narcissistic, moody and unapologetic project, which says a lot more who I am
than who they are.
KE: For you, and/or your twitter community, is the platform
more about broadcasting or conversation?
MV: Well it's both, but people use it for different reasons.
I follow a lot of people who share links, this is where I get my news!
KE: With the project, did you come up with any "ownership" issues of the tweets? The project has some appropriation strategies inherent in it, and given the recent Richard Prince case and the phonedog lawsuit about who owns a former contractor's twitter account made me wonder about your project's placement in these debates.
MV: Sure I thought about it while putting this project
together. My instinct is to make the work first and deal with the aftermath
later.
Both cases you referred to fascinate me; these are strange
times. I was glued to the Richard Prince case (discussed at length on Twitter)
and went as far as purchasing Greg Allen's book that documents the case.
Appropriation was something widely presented in art school long ago. We were
shown this photograph of Sherry Levine's repeatedly, as if it almost
single-handedly represented post-modernism. I drank the Kool-Aid; appropriation
is a conversation and my main intent is to communicate with my audience and
strike a chord with my colleagues. It's simple energy.
There's a ton of discussion on image rights and fair use on
the internet right now. I think the older generation/corporations will try and
legally dig their feet into the ground and claim rights to media lists, images,
etc. Hopefully the old dinosaurs won't get a chance to shape these laws. But it
will be unacceptable to the new generation. As much as my Schadenfreude switch
gets flipped on watching Prince eat dirt, his case is bad for art. I hope his
appeal is successful.
KE: In our recent show with Aeron Bergman and Alejandra
Salinas, they had a series of laser-etched prints of defaced (by the artists) Wikipedia entries It was their way of preserving something digital and ephemeral in the
most archival way they could devise. Is there
an archiving impulse to "100 Tweets?" If so, to what end?
MV: Yes, the spirit is the same. "100 Tweets" is
like the Slow Food movement but for art. Anyone can throw up a tweet in a
matter of seconds, but I grabbed these and shot them through a long, laborious
process that now gives them permanence. Process was half of this project.
KE: Do these particular tweets have something intrinsic to
them that is more deserving of reflection and remembrance than others?
MV: No. This project reflects random observations of 9
months on my Twitter feed. It completely depended on my mood and something
which struck me as funny, or personal or political. No one can keep up with
Twitter and I'm sure I missed zingers.
KE: As these are letterpress prints, I know you have spent a
lot of time with each tweet. Did this time with them provide you with any
particular insight into the individual tweets, twitter in general, poetry or
language?
MV: Although I've never thought of myself as interested in
poetry, I probably did get closer to it. I do love language and adore cleverly
written stories, which probably influenced my gleaned tweets. I have especially
been interested in word play, but only after I moved to New York. I was raised
in California and wasn't regularly exposed to everyday wit until I spent more
time with New Yorkers, Canadians and Brits who represented everything I never knew
I loved in conversation.
KE: So, given that the project has made you more aware of
language, have you learned something about how to compose in twitter?
MV: There's no one way. People have to be themselves, or in
the case of doppelgängers, people have to be really entertaining at being other
people. But your style is all your own.
KE: I noticed while you were installing the show, and in
some of our communication leading up to the show, we would mention something,
or I would be at my desk and you would be up on the ladder, and suddenly I
would find a tweet from you, sometimes about the show, sometimes not. I began
to believe you cybernetically linked to your twitter account. Are you addicted
to twitter?
MV: For better
or for worse. Mostly for news and opinions.
KE: What does twitter provide for an artist? Obviously, not
all of your work is about twitter or even social media, so it does something
for you.
MV: I only began working in art full-time a couple years
ago. Before that I spent several years working around other people. Being an
artist is mostly an isolating experience, and I was reintroduced to it with
mostly positive but sometimes mixed results. Twitter abated cabin fever, I
could plug in. This wasn't for simple chatter; I gained incredible insight,
knowledge and exchange from journos, writers and the art community I would have
never had otherwise. I've met some very smart people.
KE: With the process of choosing the colors for the
individual prints, you have an oblique nod to Gerhard Richter. Is it a stretch
to think of his paintings of banal subject matter and interest in repetition as
a touchstone for "100 Tweets?"
MV: The banality in some of the project has nothing to do
with Gerhard Richter, only the randomness of colors and placement from his
color chart series. It's true that I admire his work.
More about Michelle Vaughan and her projects can be found
here:
twitter: black_von
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