Circle Jerks @ Minut Init Art Social

Walking into the third floor shoplot space, the visitor is greeted with projector screens, a stack of papers on a pedestal, one turntable on the floor, and a couple mobile printers. Is this a post-internet art exhibition? Where are the digital renderings, the memes, or the video mash-ups? Does circle jerks refer to masturbating men? The curatorial statement clarifies, “…in employing this relational strategy was to open up themes via the performative dimension of messaging, rather than negotiate them as a central agency in full command of one’s own language, ‘gestalting’ a curator as an empty space between conditions that inform his identification with a consumer of information.”

As a confessional booth in the form of a YouTube playlist infers, this exhibition is put together from online chats, about the constraints of virtual interactions. Technology connects people from around the globe, but the chatroom is an enclosed area for recorded conversations, effectively trespassing physical personal space in its real-world manifestation. Nebulosus Severine’s ‘Too Many Flowers’ sets the scene via a burning Second Life room, with floating quotes that state gendered imbalances. ‘The Olo Method’ sees Katy Roseland copy-pasting chat messages between WeChat users without saying anything herself, thereby recording social inhibitions which are expressed in a coded and abbreviated language.

Another one of Katy’s project and Gabriele de Seta’s “Radio 朋友圈” confine media sharing within a private circle. This cacophony of recorded sounds and phone camera pictures are meaningless by itself, but within the context of this exhibition, supplement nuanced forms of personal performance that stem from an innate need to express. Facebook news feeds from two opposing politicians are printed on purchase receipts, the amusing installation by Ikan Bilis questioning too the value of such rhetorical transactions. Social media perpetuates its own ethics – where clicks and scrolls become moral decisions – as I browse an Instagram account featuring sexual harassment messages. Who’s jerking around now? Lol

- Excerpt from bbbRANKEVILVIOLENTPOLITICSDISCURSE, an email exchange between Aurelia Guo and Hela Trol Pis, exhibited at “Circle Jerks”