What is Artswipe?

It seems The Telegraph has found me out. After all this time of artworld anonymity, it has been revealed. The Artswipe is "cyber granny", not supernanny as some have conjectured. The Telegraph "outing" is timely, seeing it came just after Simpleposie from Toronto pondered in her "question for the day" a querie that most Sydney-siders stopped asking long ago, "What is Artswipe?" (scroll down to question #2156 - I thought I had lots of questions!)

Apparently it doesn't stop there. YouTube has found me out as well. Smile, smile, smile.

Identity Politics

Artswipe has been flooded with fan mail of late. Bags of it. Weekdays at approximately 3:27pm my favourite postie, Maxine, arrives on my doorstep to unload those canvas sacks. It's around the same time of day that the kids in the neighbourhood walk home from school, occasionally stopping to play hopscotch, trade marbles and compare Nike logos. I might paint that image one day. In oils.

The recurring questions my fans ask: "Who are you?" and "What do you look like?" As I stopped buying letter-writing stationary around the time I signed up to Blogspot dot com, I thought I'd reply en mass with a little lesson about identity politics and a collage I made of my name.

Identity is never singular, never constant and is in continual flux. In contrast, a dictionary I consulted defines identity as "the state of being identical or absolutely the same; selfsameness of character or quality."

I prefer flux - or Fluxus, to use her full name.

Strange as it sounds, people regularly consult my homespun take on identity politics. I always use the medium of dance (genre: contemporary) to demonstrate identity's multiplicity because I guess none of us really understood Judith Butler's work, but carry on regardless, daily debating "performativity" at the office watercooler.

My backup dance troop, The Hegemony Dancers, accompany my act (when they're not touring the Westfield circuit). Today we promise to make meaning like never before.

iSpace

In recent weeks I have been really fascinated by the phenomenon of MySpace. So many of my (actual) friends have contacted me to encourage me to create a MySpace page: "You don't exist without MySpace," they say, "We can be friends online." (And here I am, thinking it's sometimes hard enough maintaining friends in the real world!)

So what is it about MySpace that has everyone moving in? I don't make it a habit to answer my own questions, as Philosophy was one of my hobbies back in the day. (Philosophy taught me that 'negotiation,' 'engagement' and 'dialogue' are words to be used in any sentence where an answer might be required). I think web-nerds (bloggers included!) are moving into MySpace because most net and new media speak specialises in a myth of self-recognition. We believe the hype of a new computer-mediated phenomenon if it is invested with a sense of (pseudo) individuality. Apple has a corner on this market, having named their product range after the 'i' of identity. The customisation of the iPod, iTunes, iPhoto or any other Apple product is stressed by the 'i' – a reference to lowercase selfsameness.

Even iPod ads cash in on the oldest advertising trick: presenting silhouetted figures blanked out and lacking identity to facilitate the psychic projection of ourselves onto these human colour fields. And the iPod and its wife iTunes present the illusion that we're in charge of the digital music revolution. By creating customised Playlists, the consumer is championed as a unique author, the artist a secondary effect. If iPod ads are to be believed, mp3s of our favourite songs provide a mere soundtrack to our identity and singularity. But not a days go by when I don't see the world overrun by iPod people, including myself. Where's the individuality here?

While the Artswipe got serious on some veiled Marxist critique of the iPod and its friends, an automated email from iTunes announced that it's New Music Tuesday. Following I bet, another MySpace Monday.