mean body \ i absolutely know i exist / by nichola feldman-kiss

one 3D whole body laser scan — 360 inkjet prints cold mounted to Sintra PVC foam board 14.5 x 8” each, installation variable 95’sq 2001-2005

mean body (as in Standard) is a performance document and database of surface anthropometric data sets (3D body shape scans) that I created while a guest artist with the National Research Council of Canada (2001-2003 and 2004-2006).

Inspired by study of established human body databases such as the Visible Human Project¹ and CAESAR², I embarked on a performative process to establish my own body shape as a baseline for scientific research. This gesture was motivated to critically engage with certain oppressive cultural norms, standard and averages that have prevailed in the colonial west, especially since the birth of anthropology, ethnography and photographic technologies… read more

feldman-kiss works as an artist. They are interested in categorical systems, liminality and the dissonance of inbetweens where meaning is leaky, slippery, defiant, fugitive, violent and erotic too.

normals standards means bodies skins borders boundaries. rules limits margins. edges thresholds and horizons. language Classifications definitions discipline expectation roles. Species tribe caste creed status containers boxes and compartments. viewfinders lenses screens. Nation States island prisons security fences (Human) zoos. Anthropology Ethnography Photography. index and evidence and Museology too.

The things feldman-kiss makes result from focussed looking, chasing references, finding out. Burrowing through the network into curiously real and visceral worlds. Alice fell through the trembling liquid crystal, landed somewhere factual, palpable, sensate. feeling Movie-ish. Big Screen. VR for its strangeness but for that people are flesh, embodied narrative –olfactory on fire. Witness…

feldman-kiss submits to art as life and process to live by, aiming to work intuitively, sensually and from their animality as a conscious migratory creature of our earthly bed. They are conspicuously bodied. Their artworks deploy body as instrument. Fact, agent, material. The body embodiment continuum. They do not create with the topic of bodies as purpose or intention. feldman-kiss’ work is not conceptual in that way. Their artworks are stills for persistent, unsettling and thorney awakenings of life enslaved to their times. Native of nowhere on Colonized land, mammalian. Historic / contemporary. digital. informational, touchless, late-binary. urban, Capitalist, millenarian (end times). They create with whatever surfaces then sticks around to assert itself.

project | website

Digitized Diasporic Memory by Candide Uyanze

https://demo.diasporamemory.com/

Digitized Diasporic Memory explores the relationship, intersections, connections, and divergences of experiences between Black diasporic people. With an understanding of diaspora as networked, rhizomatic, and tentacled, the project seeks to create a space for connection, in an environment where connection is not easily accessed or sustained.

The project visualizes audio segments from synchronous and asynchronous conversations between several members of the diaspora residing across Turtle Island. Each audio node represents a response to the previous participant’s contribution.

Digitized Diasporic Memory expands Le Cunff’s idea of personal networked thinking into collective thinking, or what can be described as mind-to-mind networks, wherein several individuals connect their ideas. The project is part database, part conversational archive, part open-access library, part collective memory bank, part digitized memory, and part chain of memories which bring to the fore the possible connections between Black diasporic experiences and narratives. It addresses the need for intra-diasporic validation, belonging, understanding across differences, and knowledge-sharing.

Candide Uyanze is an award-winning creative technologist working at the intersections of digital media, access, and open source. She’s particularly interested in exploring themes of memory, identity, and virtually-mediated human connection between members of the African diaspora. She does so using web, video, photography, and tech-driven interactive installations.

project | website