Aurora Sander. Trust no one, 2015; Mixed media, variable dimensions. Courtesy of the Artist and insitu Berlin. Photo: Markus Georg

The group show Vic at Insitu Berlin presents a fictional persona whose effect on viewers oscillates between seduction and repulsion—a hedonist, narcissistic character of internet culture. Artists Britta Thie, Christian Falsnaes, and the collective Aurora Sander construct Vic’s ego out of metadata and self-referential information, asserting a ritualized self united through the repetition of data and virtual, not actual, relations with the world.

The first room contains motivational YouTube videos, books, and films focused on self-enhancement and manipulation. Stammtisch (2015), an installation by the collective duo Aurora Sander (Bror Sander Berg Størseth and Ellinor Aurora Aasgaard), contains anthropomorphized sculptures and props: traces of toast and a beer glass posed over a table with traces of blue and pink paint. The effect is an absurd situation of absence. In Christian Falsnaes’ video work Influence (2012), the artist performs the seduction of a group and the group’s subsequent compulsive dementia.

The dreamlike atmosphere of the back room includes Bretta Thie’s video work Having a Coke with U (2014), which offers a quasi-sadistic symphony of impersonation as her sultry voice recites Frank O’Hara’s 1958 poem of similar title. Thie’s other video work, Transatlantics (2015), builds up a narrative about a “generational syndrome” that results from the shift from analog to digital technologies, suggesting that this condition is generated from the desire for depth in artifice.

Aurora Sander’s installation Trust No One (2015) presents a “wishing-well” fountain in a commercial mall setting, sustained by a hand that is embellished with a plastic flower arrangement. Its colorful and sharp appearance invites the spectator to touch the piece and by extension their own desires. In a text accompanying the piece, the artists humorously portray a wishful character who is seduced by the fluidity of fantasy, a negotiation between fiction and faith.

Vic offers a humorous perspective of the situation of the self that also embodies a nostalgic feeling of loss. The show suggests the internet is not just mediator but the whole omnipresent power that reins over contemporary life, recalling Hito Steyerl’s statement that “The all-out internet condition is not an interface but an environment.”[1] Identity becomes a faceless screen where only surface exists. Where is the character of Vic to find a form to this chaos? The show’s answer is frustration and anxiety, with only counterproductive symptoms of Vic’s loss.

Vic is on view at Insitu Berlin through October 2, 2016.

Carla Fernández is an independent curator and collaborator at Marso Gallery based in Mexico City.

[1] Hito Steyerl. “Too Much World, Is the Internet Dead?” E-flux journal (2013), accessed August 2015, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/too-much-world-is-the-internet-dead/

Jesse Peretz. “Bad Friend,” Girls, 2013 (film still); 00:30:00. Courtesy of HBO.

[…] Helping to keep the artist/heartbreaker stereotype alive today is the character of Booth Jonathan (Jorma Taccone) from the HBO series Girls (2013). The creation of writer/actor/director Lena Dunham (daughter of artists Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons), it’s fair to assume—given the show’s exaggerated yet realistic tone—that he is based on people Ms. Dunham has actually known in the New York art world. Booth is the kind of cocky, womanizing hipster who sleeps with his dealer and hates the High Line.

His persona is nothing new, bringing to mind Adam Coleman Howard’s “Stash” in Slaves of New York or Steve Buscemi’s role as Gregory Stark in New York Stories, both coincidentally from 1989. These bad-boy art stars exploit their successes to get what they want from others, usually with little consequence. Indeed, in Girls, Booth’s allure is often proportional to his misogynistic behavior. Even after locking the starstruck Marnie (Allison Williams) inside one of his video sculptures against her will, she later praises him for his talent and then has creepy sex with him. “I’m a man,” he tells her, “and I know how to do things.”

It isn’t long before Marnie believes Booth is her boyfriend, but she is actually falling in love with what he represents to her. Having been fired from her gallery job and turned down for another, she is struggling with her own identity. Booth’s “aura” as an artist is clearly attractive to Marnie; perhaps she sees him as a window back into that world, and a way to enter its higher echelons.

Like actors, artists have public personas, which their audiences can mistake for the genuine, private self. Many have intentionally exaggerated their eccentricities to attract attention, such as the outwardly flamboyant Salvador Dalí. In the case of Girls, the Booth who Marnie sees (as opposed to whom we see) is largely a projection from her own imagination. When it later becomes clear that he was just using her, Booth evades any responsibility by throwing a tantrum about how “no one even knows me” and “everyone just uses me for what I represent to them.” These protests elicit little sympathy since, no doubt, there’s likely another admirer willing to be the next victim of his abuse in line behind Marnie.

Read the full article here.