Flung Baby
I have been thinking largely about the relationship between the natural and the virtual. In recent years, the Kid’s Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has removed words relating to nature and replaced them with technology-related terms, deeming these to be more ‘relevant’ to children today. My 2 year old niece is terrified of the Roomba vaccum that roams her home, but not of large livestock animals that live in her backyard. Why is this? I ask her if she thinks Roomba is alive, and she says “I don’t know but he is still scary.” What does the changes in our relationship to natural/virtual words mean as we increasingly split our time between online and outside? What happens when a natural and virtual landscape share the same term, such as with “Amazon/.com?” The Amazon is a natural landscape that is dense, abundant, and ripe for exploration; its virtual analog, Amazon.com, is also dense, abundant and ripe for exploration. While the Amazon is nurturing, life-giving, and threatened, Amazon.com exploits, denies life, and threatens. The internet and the natural world are not equivalent; each has a distinct affect and offers a distinct experience. However, each also allows us to explore, discover, and get lost. Especially now, in the midst of quarantine, our relationships to online/outside are constantly changing.
I also have found that my artistic practice is rooted in multiple images conversing with one another and my thinking about the internet is helping me better understand my practice. This is largely a result of growing up online, where we scroll, click and maneuver from image to image, topic to topic, rapidly. By being native to the nature of the Internet, I learned how to build connections between disparate ideas and synthesize information in a distinctly ‘online’ sort of way. I am a queer, nonbinary maker and I have found this way of networking ideas together to be resonant with other experiences of liminality, the in-between, and marginalization that come with my identity.
In this series of images, you meet Flung Baby, an avatar of myself as child, as girl, as without control, exploring the virtual, physical, and emotional world. No matter where she is, the worlds she encounters are non-linear, fragmented, and layered atop one another- just as our experiences are. I imagine Flung Baby thrown endlessly from situation to situation; but she is also strong, flexible, and adventurous. I use Flung Baby as a way to explore my transness and the ways I feel multiple, virtual and chaotic. I am interested in pulling the internet offline and into my hands, either as drawings or textiles. I hope to make physical, whimsical, soft representations of the virtual landscapes I trek. Watch as Flung Baby appears in multiple, discovering herself via google search, clickbait, and file folders. Join her as she interrogates questions such as: What do we expect the internet to be able to tell us about the world and ourselves? How do we decide to trust online? How do we respond when these tools fail us, surprise us, teach us?
Reading:
The Second Self – Sherry Turkle
Mixed Feelings- Naomi Shimada
Landmarks-Robert McFarlane
If Beale Street Could Talk – James Baldwin