Creating Spaces: Net Art In the Real World” by Michelle Kasprzak
Artist Wayne Dunkley sometimes characterizes his work as “creating spaces”, and with his work Removal and Degradation of the/a Black Male he created an online space that also effectively interfaced with public space. Dunkley used a photographic image of his own face, slightly degraded by photocopying it, and postered over four hundred copies of this image in Toronto and Montreal. The image had either the article “the” or “a” followed by a blank under his face, inviting written responses on the posters from passersby. Later Dunkley rephotographed the posters, capturing the effects time and weather have had on them, as well as the captions provided by the public.
His work challenges and confronts us with our greatest fears, but also invites us to consider our hopes and aspiration. Through this work, we are confronted with the fact that despite hopes for a diverse and harmonious Canada, some members of the public would still scrawl blatantly racist epithets on a simple image of a human face. We are also welcomed into intimate moments in the lives of others, sharing hope in their stories of overcoming and acceptance.
Dunkley used his photographs, in combination with his skills as a storyteller, to develop the “books” on the Removal and Degradation of the/a Black Male website. Dunkley’s act of naming the segments of the site as books deliberately leads us to focus on the narrative elements, cleverly drawing attention to the core of the work, despite the novelty of the technology he was using to deliver it. He combined this grounding in classic storytelling with use of the cutting edge tools of the web then: animation, graphic layouts and inviting the user to participate not just by clicking through but also by creating their own compositions of graphic elements.
Presaging the interweaving of personal voices that was to become the hallmark of the weblog revolution. Dunkley then invited users to contribute their own stories of otherness, of overcoming fear, and of the many facets of identity that define us. He added to the website, incorporating the stories of others and building on the style of the site. This work is a leading early example of using a creative action in public space as the bedrock upon which to build an interactive experience.
Michelle Kasprzak is a curator, writer, and orator based in Edinburgh. Michelle has exhibited and lectured across North America and Europe. She has appeared in numerous publications and on radio and television broadcasts including BBC Scotland, BBC Wales, CBC national, and other programmes syndicated worldwide. She completed her MA in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal in spring of 2006, and later that year was awarded a curatorial research residency at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland.
She has written critical essays for Spacing, CV Photo, Public, Mute, and several online journals on a wide range of subjects in the realm of contemporary culture.
