Laura Ige (AR, 1985)
Residency period: October-November 2019
Im $NAME is an original project and web performance that focuses on the role of women in the net-based, affective and underground economy, based on a Tinder-bot that materialises in several profiles. The Artificial Intelligence being poses as attractive women who engage in chats to attract users. However, the “T-bot” produces content as an act of resistance, taking over profiles and invading it with material available from the Internet and existing web platforms (Tinder, YouTube, etc.). This research focuses on the marginal and excluded place of representation for women and their role as dangerous, naturalised objects in society, and addresses issues of legality (Tinder’s reverse engineering API), the anonymity of collective over-production on the Internet (digital debris), and alter egos (vehicles of experimentation focusing on models of femininity, exploring feminine desire and identity).
Thanks to this research project, Ige was awarded a grant in Hangar, Barcelona. The first stage involved collaboration with programmers to build the bot as well as sex workers for the visual framework. The second stage, the OST and the performance were developed during a residency at ZKM Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, in August.
Laura Ige has studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the National University of La Plata in Buenos Aires (2013). She pursued her studies with a Master’s degree at EDHEA – the Valais School of Art, within the MAPS (Master of Arts in Public Sphere) program. Her field of experimentation includes visual arts, sound art and writing on different topics, such as gender, authorship, appropriation policies and social and digital debris. The issues she addresses mainly revolve around a new interpretation of the notions of the digital industrialization, self-perception,, animism and the subconscious realm. She is particularly drawn to the triangulation between the objectification of the persona, the personification of the object and death.
Photography et videos: Alba Mori, Charlie G. Fennel, Lorena.
Programming: Iván Paz