Stay

I see you...

Well centered in a dark hallway, we demonstrate procedural unity – I am the artist and you are the audience in a spoonful of space-time.

Roleplay: your arrival allows my presence to have executable content. We adopt the corresponding attitude.

Like a spider web, my space with performative potential spreads out in a small dark and quiet hallway. A trap set. Standing. I’ve planted signs, linguistic markers meant to guide our encounter – a base and a computer for me, the same for you. Between these two poles, a virtual space. Modem, satellite, Skype. Nothing simpler.

[...]

Skype is started. It draws from an independent high-speed satellite network to maintain a bridge to its local network counterpart, operating on a second computer placed directly behind my back. In front of me, the closed void of the hallway. Behind me, the open void of potential encounters. My gaze dives into the screen of my computer, which captures it, twists it, sends it through the stratosphere, and spits it directly behind me, onto the webcam of the second computer, awaiting the glimpse of an intruder. I’m no longer observing the hallway; it’s simply any space. A simulation, a chat room, a probable connection. My whole standing body is there only to support the tips of my fingers, ready to react in surprise to a virtual visual appearance. On my ears, headphones. All my senses succumb to amplified virtuality at the expense of procedural physicality. I no longer need to perform as an artist, to inscribe myself in the historical series of performative art events, because I’m no longer there. My presence is equivalent to a network node. Ping. Pong. I see you.

For two hours, precisely between 7 and 9 p.m., my knees locked to draw the straight line of escape from my performative being toward a probable networked space. I saw other beings come and go, even stay at times. At 9 p.m., the temporary network was closed. I left without ever knowing what happened in that hallway while I was absent.