ARTIST STATEMENT: FEMMEGLITCH

Intuitive. Sign. Deletion. Obliteration. Constructive. Beauty
These pieces are glitches (digital) using three different subjects or topics that are all interrelated: t-shirts appearing in social media ads, images of the sound of my voice, and images of my body. My work concerns the intersections of sexuality, voyeurism, performance, Capitalism, and gender more broadly. I am influenced by asemics and abstract expressionist women like Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler.

The glitch is not the environment of the thing, it is the thing itself. I am less interested in exhausting the definitions of asemic writing (if the glitch is ultimately denying meaning from a semantic form is arguable) and more interested in seeing the possibilities of the glitch. I wrangle the “data bending” on phone apps until I get the desired image. That is creative and productive. This does not impede, however, the obliteration of the original image.

Most of my glitches start with ads on my Facebook (on my phone) that offer new complexities when considering its form. I am now introducing Capitalism, data mining, privacy infringement, assumption, targeting, and an inextricable combination of those that can only begin to attack the implications of a thing. I screenshot the ads for t-shirts that appear in my feed (based on the above) that usually show “positive” messaging for and about women, or perceived “feminist” messaging. Glitch apps then layer, destroy, and rebuild what I have consumed. Then I can resist or subvert by taking ownership of the whole mess. I make it what I want it to look like.

I use glitches to break down patriarchal structures. I think of the glitch as a sex act. It is a dominant/submissive binary. There is intention in glitching that is beauty. We know it is not ugly. The ultimate infringement of the digital—our human mistake of knowing and understanding.

Femmeglitch: I have used this moniker or description that includes gender. I think identifying the gender in the act is claiming the social and cultural implications of oppressive systems and the glitching is bending those systems, often to their demise. This makes glitching an art form.