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About
This is the landing page for The True Sexual Tales of the Exotic Zoë Kitsu, a digital media series by An Xiao. It has been featured at 2nd City Council in Long Beach, CA, and Art Knows No Borders during LA's downtown art walk.
To read more about my art, please visit my web site at http://www.anxiaostudio.com and my personal blog at http://thatwaszen.blogspot.com.
The True Sexual Tales of the Exotic Zoë Kitsu
Once distrusted in the 90's as a world of shadowy anonymity, the Internet in the 21st century allows for greater interconnectivity and publicity than ever imagined. Individuals who might have once had regional renown or no renown at all can now achieve global name recognition thanks to a clever blog, a catchy YouTube video, a colorful MySpace or any other host of Internet spaces, and users are very well aware of how every word, image, video, link and Twitter they post affects others' perceptions of them.
The True Sexual Tales of the Exotic Zoë Kitsu is an exploration of these themes, and of the larger idea of a new experience of self-identity. I'm interested in templatized expression, i.e., art and identity in an Internet-driven culture. For the work, I've created Zoë Kitsu, a young woman in New York exploring her sexuality. I install these blog posts as 16"x16" pieces, with enough content for the average 5-10 second reading time that one can expect for a blog. She expresses her thoughts through pithy, reflective prose.
By installing the pieces side by side in a gallery and by showing the blogs within a blog, I want to re-create the experience of reading a blog. We come in, we read, we leave. Then we come back. The template is the same, but the content has, we hope, changed.
This is the basic idea behind Internet expression--unpredictability within predictability, depth within brevity; like a television program, each person has their own "brand" imposed upon their site, with variations in content day to day. As the Zoë Kitsu entries are withdrawn from the actual experience of clicking and browsing over the course of days and weeks, they demand an unlikely approach, perhaps a more critical eye, to the lure of blogging.
Beyond a surface-level study of public branding, Zoë Kitsu is a study in Internet-based identity. I want to challenge viewers to re-examine the blogging experience, and the mechanisms that drive digital fame and renown. I'm interested in the constructed identity of the blogger, and how the blog and other social networking sites have fueled the now-popular concept of the branded self, an idea no longer reserved for celebrities and politicians. Now, ordinary individuals find themselves juggling a public and private face in daily life.
How has templatized expression brought about a cultural shift in the 21st century of how we think about identity? What function does blogging play in the very construction of our sense of self? Why do we think we know a blogger personally when we see only this very public and controllable face? The idea I wish to present is that maybe the personal ego is no longer confined to physical and mental space but is now expanded to digital space as well. What are the properties of the digital self? How do they differ from and remain the same with our traditional concepts of self?
To read more about my art, please visit my web site at http://www.anxiaostudio.com and my personal blog at http://thatwaszen.blogspot.com.
The True Sexual Tales of the Exotic Zoë Kitsu
Once distrusted in the 90's as a world of shadowy anonymity, the Internet in the 21st century allows for greater interconnectivity and publicity than ever imagined. Individuals who might have once had regional renown or no renown at all can now achieve global name recognition thanks to a clever blog, a catchy YouTube video, a colorful MySpace or any other host of Internet spaces, and users are very well aware of how every word, image, video, link and Twitter they post affects others' perceptions of them.
The True Sexual Tales of the Exotic Zoë Kitsu is an exploration of these themes, and of the larger idea of a new experience of self-identity. I'm interested in templatized expression, i.e., art and identity in an Internet-driven culture. For the work, I've created Zoë Kitsu, a young woman in New York exploring her sexuality. I install these blog posts as 16"x16" pieces, with enough content for the average 5-10 second reading time that one can expect for a blog. She expresses her thoughts through pithy, reflective prose.
By installing the pieces side by side in a gallery and by showing the blogs within a blog, I want to re-create the experience of reading a blog. We come in, we read, we leave. Then we come back. The template is the same, but the content has, we hope, changed.
This is the basic idea behind Internet expression--unpredictability within predictability, depth within brevity; like a television program, each person has their own "brand" imposed upon their site, with variations in content day to day. As the Zoë Kitsu entries are withdrawn from the actual experience of clicking and browsing over the course of days and weeks, they demand an unlikely approach, perhaps a more critical eye, to the lure of blogging.
Beyond a surface-level study of public branding, Zoë Kitsu is a study in Internet-based identity. I want to challenge viewers to re-examine the blogging experience, and the mechanisms that drive digital fame and renown. I'm interested in the constructed identity of the blogger, and how the blog and other social networking sites have fueled the now-popular concept of the branded self, an idea no longer reserved for celebrities and politicians. Now, ordinary individuals find themselves juggling a public and private face in daily life.
How has templatized expression brought about a cultural shift in the 21st century of how we think about identity? What function does blogging play in the very construction of our sense of self? Why do we think we know a blogger personally when we see only this very public and controllable face? The idea I wish to present is that maybe the personal ego is no longer confined to physical and mental space but is now expanded to digital space as well. What are the properties of the digital self? How do they differ from and remain the same with our traditional concepts of self?
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