Digital Natives, Twitter, Public Art & The Skwxwú7mesh Nation
Digital Natives
April 4 – 30, 2011
Electronic Billboard
Burrard Street Bridge
Vancouver, BC
Canada
Other Sights for Artists’ Projects is pleased to announce Digital Natives, a public artwork sited on the electronic billboard at the Burrard Street Bridge.
Curators Lorna Brown and Clint Burnham have invited artists and writers from across North America to contribute messages to be broadcast over the month of April, coinciding with the 125th Anniversary of the City of Vancouver.
Digital Natives intervenes in the physical, social and historical context of the site, the billboard and the city with a series of ten second text messages interrupting the rotation of advertisements. Taking the form of Twitter messages, invited contributors respond to the site’s charged history, the ten-second format and the 140-character limit of tweets. The sign itself becomes an artistic and literary space for exchange between native and non-native communities exploring how language is used in advertising, its tactical role in colonization, and as a complex vehicle of communication.
The Vancouver Courier reports that the project hit a roadblock just as it was about to go live this week when Astral Media asked for translations of the messages it was given two weeks ago and initially held back 25 of the posts, according to Burnham. As a result, messages in Squamish weren’t seen on Squamish land where the billboards are rooted, and the Kwak’wala message that included English Twitter-speak “OMG” for oh my God wasn’t posted.
Encouraging dialogue among artists and writers, between First Nations and non-First Nations communities, and between artists, writers and the public, Digital Natives is public art that the public not only ‘receives’, but may also produce. Local and remote audiences are welcome to tweet their messages to @diginativ, and they will be considered for broadcast.
Check out the billboard as a medium
The Vancouver Courier article here
Peter Combe, THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG, 2011
Cody Trepte, Everything Has Always Already Begun
Everything Has Always Already Begun, 2009
Hand drawn ink on paper
23 x 17 inches each
Barbara Kruger, Past/Present/Futures
Open August 2010 – Next January 2011
Stedelijk Museum
Paulus Potterstraat 13
1071 CX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
LINK >
My Writing for Marc-Antoine Léval
Delighted by the mail delivery today. Paris based artist, Marc-Antoine Léval, “The Immaterial Art Emperor”, asked me to contribute some writing about his work for a book that was being published to coincide with an exhibition of his work in Paris. I wrote the piece in early February and all but forgot about it. Was rather pleased to find a signed copy in my mailbox this afternoon. My written piece is pictured right in top photo.
a tale of a few cities 
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