I only move in circles now
by Catherine Eng
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Artistic food for thought
Much of our online activity is premised on social engagement. In actuality it’s a time spent watching our own alienated identity performed through threads of “interests”. This is observed and generated by apathetic algorithms that use our desire for mirrors to serve an omnipotent capitalist benefit. Causation is moot for code. Correlation is enough to know that the probability that you think the same as Donna Watson goes up with each dog meme you scroll by and like. The passive game of social media and online behaviors reify the actions defined as “habits'' and “thoughts”, and since a person is an environment of these actions and more, that digital consumption affects who we are. The time you spend looking, clicking, or publically affirming your emotional reaction dictates your digi-conciousness, an identity that assumes your future based on who else lives and lived in your present. We take time to reflect and affect our [normative prefix]conscious, so why not our digi-conciousness? To that point, why not the digi-conciousness of all the other lives that correlate to our own?
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I am an inter-mediary dance artist who’s interested in addressing topics of technology and experiences of being through theoretically backed collaborative performances. Frequently a collaborative performer, I’ve worked with Sara Rudner, Rou Rou Ye, and ZCO Dance Project, a mixed ability dance company. My performance work has shown around New York including at Arts on Site, Triskelion Arts, Movement Research, Chen Dance Center, and in Chicago at the Logan Center for the Arts. With the change of times I’ve started to share my secret video projects from the past few years, including Foil Dress Task, a video dance that recently premiered at the Sarah Lawrence Dance film Festival.
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