Struggling with the demand to be everywhere and everything at all times, (despite having only the ‘capacity to exist in one point in space and time’) Jenna Sutela is a Helsinki based writer, curator and New Media experimenter who has recently probed discussion by creating the ‘living’ media project, New Degrees of Freedom (2013).
Realised with graphic designer (and frequent collaborator) Johanna Lundberg, the project, existing offline and online, entails the creation of an avatar that transitions back and forth between real and virtual space. Featuring contributions from fields such as architecture, programming and music, the body (avatar) continuously alters its presence, acquiring a new flexibility. As the divisions between online and offline, work and non-work, presence and absence dissolve, Sutela offers a refreshing take on what actually defines the body today.
On New Degrees of Freedom there’s a line that reads ‘every new link between one’s online and offline identities removes a “degree of freedom”‘…edging towards the implications of Zuckerberg’s claim ‘you have one identity’. Is a singular identity the ultimate prison?
I guess Zuckerberg’s notion originally referred to the blurring of boundaries between private and working life. In that case, my question would be – when everything is turning into work, is there anything that’s not work? What could non-work be? How can it be enabled? To me, his statement also speaks about how the freedom to invent identities has disappeared together with the Internet turning into a visual arena where we are exposed to constant imaging, surveillance, and the workings of information economy. The idea of adding degrees of freedom to our existence by means of real-life avatars can be read as an attempt to obscure our behavior in real space, leading inconsistent lives, or atomizing our presence in order to refuse the identity politics of marketing communications. It’s time to assume physical formlessness.
Your projects span across both the digital and physical – what medium do you most enjoy working with?
I have worked on several printed publications before, such as artist’s books, and these objects continue to appear magical to me. However, the experience with New Degrees of Freedom, producing a sort of living medium and including performances and installations, feels even more relevant right now. It has allowed me to explore narrative constructions beyond the physical limitations posed by pages and screens, ephemeral stories and illustrations. I find this interesting in the face of a general information glut.
Do you think the separation between the real and virtual is a permanent one?
I believe that there is a constant oscillation between the real and the virtual – between what can be imagined and the dimension that imagination has in reality. For example, digital technology once had an alien quality in our lives, but now it represents the norm. And what happens on the Internet also changes our relation to its surrounding world.
ADD METAPHYSICS is a publishing project that thinks about the digital through materials and vice versa – what drew you to this subject in particular?
I was asked to edit a publication at a digital fabrication laboratory where artists, designers and architects meet mechanical engineers and material scientists. The publication was to spur new subjects and perspectives for approaching the shared workspace between digital representation and physical realization. ADD METAPHYSICS turned out something like an experimental foundation course on digital materiality: a schoolbook of sorts, with invited essays and assignments around topics such as the autonomy of objects, the ‘mediality’ of matter, reproduction as a site for revolution, the ideological origins of computational design…
How important do you think it is to think about the digital in terms of materials and ‘the physical’ rather than as something formless?
The Internet, for one, depends as much on material and energy as it depends on information. A network of machines and cables supports our online activities. It’s a jungle of conducting, reflecting and insulating materials—an air of electromagnetic radiation and solid residues, mixing with atmospheric currents and bodily fluids—inseparable from the Earth’s geo-processes.
Text by Monique Todd
New Degrees of Freedom, Act 2: The Spirit of a Real-Life Avatar(2013) at Antagon art event. Photos by Hertta Kiiski.
Tags: Jenna Sutela, Johanna Lundberg
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