Fandom as an Alternative Network

[reeraw]

Fandom as an Alternative Network

Description

The interdisciplinary creative practices of fandom — whether it be fanfiction, fanart, or cosplay — challenge our previously held notions of authorship, but also uphold the open internet’s emancipatory values. Networked-based online creations thrive within particular fandoms, and its community-based model has enabled authors to create works that bring in feminist as well as queer and critical race studies approaches, especially through genres like slash. So how are these fan methodologies reshaping the practices of artists and curators? This conversation will map out the ways in which three “fans” AKA contemporary artists/curators are bringing these so-called fan perspectives into their work, and explore how fandom cultivates alternative means of capacity-building and storytelling.

Type: [talk | panel ]
Length: [1 hour]

Session Objective

• Re-assessing the importance of networked online creations within fandom
• Examining how fandom methodologies can be taken seriously as viable emancipatory tools/tactics of the open internet
• Looking at how artists/creatives who self-identify as "fans" are bringing these art-making values into their work

Material and Technical Requirements

• Access to projector and laptop
• Capabilities to Skype/Google Hangout one of the presenters
• Microphones, if needed

Presenter(s)

Name: Rea McNamara
Email: [email protected]
Url(s): http://www.undervolt.co/Rea-McNamara
Twitter: [@reeraw]
GitHub: https://github.com/reeraw

Interested in attending the sprint July 16-18: [Y]
Interested in a community billet: [N]

Presenter Bio

Rea McNamara is a Toronto-based artist, writer, curator, and public programmer. She has developed an expanded practice that includes on/offline space development, image making, performance and critical engagement with networked publics. Her works have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Société Des Arts Technologique, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and Moogfest. McNamara currently oversees public programming at the Gardiner Museum, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Music Gallery.

Owen G. Parry is an artist and researcher working across live art, theatre, installation, moving image, sound and writing, exploring subjects including gay sex, biopolitics, fandoms, online cultures and Yoko Ono. With an interest in minor, colloquial and collective processes, the submersion of avant-garde aesthetics into the mainstream, and modes of sincerity within late capitalism, he uses art to ask questions, to heal, to subvert power structures, and to imagine other more-pleasurable ways of living or just being together. He is currently an associate lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts.

Maya Ben David (MBD) is a Toronto-based Jewish-Iranian Anthropomorphic Airplane. Working in video, installation and performance, she creates worlds and characters that aid her ongoing exploration of anthropomorphism, cosplay and performative personas. Ben David presents the origin stories of her characters in the form of video and performance, and expands on them via her online presence. They often inhabit alternate universes accompanied by nostalgia, such as the worlds of Pokémon and Spiderman.