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giovedì, aprile 12, 2007

Gazira Babeli: Collateral Damage

PRESS RELEASE(revised)
April 12, 2007
For Immediate Release:
Gazira Babeli: Collateral Damage
- a comprehensive survey of works from 2006-2007
location: Odyssey (38,30,23)


On April 16th 2007, the ExhibitA gallery on the Odyssey simulator within the
online virtual world called Second LifeT, will present the first
comprehensive look at the pioneering work of Gazira Babeli.
Gazira Babeli is an artist creating works within Second Life and a member of
Second Front - the first performance art group in Second Life. Gazira
labels herself a "code performer" and indeed the code is at the heart of her
work, tying it to the system at a deep level and reaching out to the viewer
in ways that inherent to the SL platform. Her pieces are alive with scripts
created using the Linden scripting language - a core component of Second
Life. A Campbells soup can that is a trap, and a self proclaimed menace
disguised as pop art, encases the viewer and takes him on a ride proclaiming
"you love pop art, pop art hates you" until the unsuspecting avatar manages
to run fast enough to escape. The sky filled with question marks, a
vengeful tornado, these are a few of Gaz's signature works that can be seen
on her site: gazirababeli.com. In the spirit of opensource - Gazira has
licensed much of her code via creative commons, and you can download it for
your own use on her site: gazirababeli.com.

Please join us for the opening of this exhibit. Press are invited to attend
at 1pm SL time. The general opening is at 6pm SL time. Inquiries may be
directed to Beavis Palowakski: rushchris@mac.com, or to Sugar Seville:
sugarseville@gmail.com.

following are some press excerpts regarding Gazira Babeli.

"Born in Second Life on 31st March 2006, *Gazira Babeli*
(http://www.gazirababeli.com/) is an artist who turns the performativity of
the code into performance itself. Weedy and flexuous in her long black dress
which covers fashionably her polygonal haunches, Gazira radiates a strange
charm that makes her somebody in between a Voodoo witch and an X-men
heroine. Her charm that becomes even more evident during her masterful
performances, in which she activates scripts as if they were spells, makes
earthquakes happens, provokes natural fatalities and invasions of pop icons
(in the place of the biblical locusts). Gazira Babeli is NOT the project of
an artist who works in Second Life. She IS an artist, who makes, records and
signs performances based on code. She is real, like you and me, even if her
action platform is a world of bits."

- Domenico Quaranta
2006-12-02

"Linden Labs is a Fluxus-Project", jokes Gazira Babeli, the pizza-throwing
Second-Life-Artist and makes a reference to the Slogan of Linden Labs. "Your
World. Your Imagination". This is a indication for the fact, that in the
metaverse art and life are connected as far like the fluxus-artist would
have wanted to, she remarks ironically.

Gazira Babeli is one of the few artists, who has created works, which are
subversively inflitrating the friendly environment of cyber-suburbia SL.

- Kunstzeitung
March 2007

_

We keep forgetting that what we call Real Life has been a virtual frame for
a long time. Second Life offers the chance to build and deconstruct this
space in the form of a theatre performance. What's the difference? I'm
trying to find out. For the moment I like to say: my body can walk barefoot,
but my avatar needs Prada shoes.

March 23, 2007
Interview with Gazira Babeli by Tilman Baumgärtel
http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/003987.html
_

Gazira: To realize an "artistic" or "aesthetic" experience, it requires a
frame-space that is contemporarily physical and conceptual; it could be a
frame, a museum, a computer network, a bedroom... or just a plain box
'dressed' like a RL art-galley. This referential "cube gallery" reminds me
of the ironical artwork made by Marcel Duchamp called "Box in a valise"
(Boîte-en-valise, 1942)
Although the "box gallery" could be a valid expression, I prefer thinking
the whole SL environment as (a kind of) frame-space. It means that scripted
and built objects, avatar-people and their behaviors become essentially
parts of the artwork...a "world in a valise", in this case. :)

Interview with Jeremy Turner (Wirxli Flimflam) for Slatenight magazine