TAKING SPACE

Abstract

As a media artist, I introduce a collaborative art project I´ve been working on since 2020 together with artists from Sweden, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. It takes place on UpStage, an open source online platform for networked “cyberformance“, initiated in 2003 by a group of women around Helen Varley Jamieson and Vicki Smith in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

From 2020 until 2024, we have been involved in the project “Mobilise/Demobilise”, co-funded by the European Union Art Program “Creative Europe”. 

“Mobilise/Demobilise“ deals with the problems of mobility in the age of climate crisis. The project addresses human mobility within the contemporary political and environmental context, and the impact of mobile technologies on human life and the environment. It is an artistic and discursive response to a world of increasing conflict, crisis, and emergency.    

UpStage works intentionally with small files to be accessible to everybody around the globe. With simple graphic elements, text, sound, online drawing, and video we work together in real time – low tech and with irony. Our “cyberformances“ are often hybrid, with live online audiences and audiences in real spaces. The audience can interact via chat and sometimes influence the performance.

All our cyberformances are research-based, sometimes we work together with scientists, philosophers, and theorists in all fields.

At the moment we are developing our next move: “Taking space“. After the resources on earth are exploited, humankind looks to the stars. One of the UpStage developers works for NASA, and she drew our attention to their endeavors to mine the moon.