Virtual Embrace Symposium

Friday 30 June 2017, 4-8pm + after-party till 11pm
Booking via eventbrite essential, tickets £0-5
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/virtual-embrace-symposium-tickets-35169727602

Performances: Annabelle Craven-Jones, Elizabeth Mputu // Screenings: Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Shu Lea Cheang, Ayesha Tan Jones // Speakers: Victoria Sin, Helen Hester plus more tbc // Refreshments: #makehomebrewfemme

Through performance, screening and discussion, Virtual Embrace will explore the streamed, disrupted, bodily substance – intimate, awkward, live, therapeutic, sexual, alchemical.

Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz’s 1980 public communication sculpture ‘Hole In Space’ connected pedestrians on the streets of NYC and LA via life-size transmitted video projections of themselves in a strangely intimate science fiction fantasy. Nearly 40 years later what we are now familiar with as a ‘live feed’ thanks to the ubiquity of Wi-Fi, Skype and Facetime, is invariably interrupted by the friction of imperfect technology. Jittering, rather than flowing from source to mouth, the fantasy of the encrypted liquid body is interrupted and awkwardly jerks one back to the material lack of physical proximity.

Virtual Embrace has been developed by Res. from research carried out in the archive of media art curator Kathy Rae Huffman. The archive is formed of a collection of catalogues, videos and rare books on cyberfeminism, broadcasting, net.art, and early new media art from the 1980s to early ‘00s. For the past 12 months with Goldsmiths Library, Res. have been working on a programme of practice-based research events and commissions based around these materials.

A selection of books and catalogues from the archive is installed at Res. and will be available to browse during the Virtual Embrace event. Alternatively you can make an appointment to visit at any time.