Output details

Transitions (2009 - 2010)

‘Transitions investigates online social networking, and how teenagers conduct their social lives and build identity through their profile images. The work explores social media and its use in communicating long distance desire. New media, digitalisation and consumerism in the world of the teenager are explored through the construction of ‘virtual’ selves in online social networks. In seeking a new identity for themselves, teenagers toy with different personae, and project themselves in a variety of different roles or virtual identities. Language and desire, the projection of image/identity and the consumption which accompanies it are at the core of the project, as it aims to explore how emotional expression is conveyed through images, and how desire creates the need for social online engagement.

The piece consists of a set of long duration videos where teenagers face one another presented on split screens, plus accompanying sound interviews available on headphones; around twenty old televisions with their trailing cords and wires are combined with data projections and plasma screens, crossing antiquated and cutting-edge technology. Facebook profile images from the teenagers in each country form the basis of three slide shows, revealing the importance of being seen, being documented and being archived on their social networking systems.

Residencies which enabled and fed into the making of the work were the Creative Lab at CCA, Glasgow; the Breathe Artist’s Residency at Artspace 501, Chongqing, and Artist-in-Residence at The Lab, San Francisco 2009/10. A sabbatical from Anglia Ruskin University allowed time for this research and travel along with an Arts Council England grant that funded the making of the work.