京子 DREAMING
Christiane Peschek
2020
Artist Statement
京子 DREAMING is a post-internet dream created after a lockdown travel to Japan. Created especially for this open call, the installation consists of two parts: the portrait of my virtual alter ego named Kyoko and a poem written by her for the online exhibition. Kyoko's existence is solely virtual. She is based in the online culture of Japan’s second generation of digital natives. Following retouch trends on Instagram profiles of young Japanese girls I retouched my own selfie according to their aesthetics to generate Kyoko's face, imitating an average female selfie in an half-loaded state of visibility. For the physical exhibition I decided to give Kyoko a manifestation on a sensitive and sensory-soft material. Kyoko is UV-printed on fleece, a material that evokes physical touch. The installation is accompanied with a short intimate poem. Based on keitai shousetsu (cell phone novel tradition) the text is a smart phone adapted poem written from the perspective of Kyoko, reflecting on her cultural surroundings. For the setup in the exhibition space this text will be activated on the visitors personal smartphone via a NFC chip placed in the exhibition space next to her portrait. For the virtual exhibition it comes along with the portrait on the screen.
The idea of what a body is changed with the COVID 19 lockdown this year. With the impossibility of physical traveling, the importance of digital cultures increased. The unlimited online availability of currently unavailable cultural exchange due to the lockdown of the real world caught my interest for this site specific work. I did research on the extension of what is physically given to us to also what virtual bodily represents us and our identity in the internet era. After returning from my one month lockdown-travel through the online culture of Japan I had an intense period of dreaming. Post-Internet dreaming, an act of dreaming IRL after virtual travels, allowed me to access a new possible dimension of consciousness based on processed online experiences. In that idea I dreamed of my alter ego, the Japanese girl that I call Kyoko. She appeared as an afterimage of a cultural experience of internet-based traveling.
Artist Bio
My works live between emotional alienation and gender-neutral body image production in an extended virtual space. In multi-sensory installations I create dialogues sculpted by virtual exhaustion, intimacy and idealization, between body and screen, between on- and offline representations. These interfaces between post-photography, post-internet, text and painting become hybrids between analog processes and digital/virtual transformation. In interaction with near-body technologies such as smartphones and iPads, I explore the hyper-ego using the surface of touchscreens. My works have been internationally exhibited e.g. at FOTOGALERIE Vienna, U10 Belgrade, UNSEEN Amsterdam, Salzburger Kunstverein, Benaki Museum Athens, MAK Vienna, Photon Gallery Ljubljana and Sanatorium Istanbul. I was awarded with several international prices such as the UNSEEN Tesla Art Trail award, honor price Emergentes DST and lately with the bang.prix price for innovative art practice. In 2019 I was holding the state scholarship for artistic photography from the Austrian Government. My works are found in collections such as ING DiBa Art Collection and the Kupferstichkabinett Vienna. Offline I am based in Vienna.