Michelle Teran explores the interplay between social and media networks within urban environments and creates performances, installations and online works. She received numerous grants and awards (recently: Prix Ars Electronica honorary mention - interactive art and
the 2nd prize in the Vida 8.0 Art & Artificial Life International Competition)
http://www.ubermatic.org/

Contents:
* 1 art background...before current practice
* 2 contexts/processes of development
* 3 ...inspiration/methods...
* 4 surveillance/observation dichotomy?
* 5 parasites & failures- limitations/inhibitions
* 6 articulation of work in/with public sphere
* 7 art as instigator or symbolic critique

art background...before current practice

ZB: What was your background and previous work before engagement in critical media art practices?

I studied painting and drawing (OCAD in Toronto). My painting career lasted about two years. Shortly after finishing my studies, that ended with a one year independent studio program in Florence, I went to the Czech Republic where I stayed for almost two years. It was the early 90s and I was living in the south eastern part of the country. There were a lot of historical sites in ruin and many possibilities to organize art projects for and within them. I met a group of artists active since the 80s who were doing site-specific, sometimes critically engaged works. Some of the places they worked included a city called Most that had part of its historical centre destroyed to allow the mining of coal, the Terezin concentration camp and a church. With another Canadian artist and local group of Czech artists I organized a three week installation symposium in an unoccupied Baroque monastery in Moravia. It was located in Sternberk, a town of about 15,000 that had been almost completely emptied after the war when most of its citizens were forced out because they were Sudeten German. In addition to its designed function, the monastery had also served as a bunker, a mushroom farm, wine cellar, german school, hospital and storage place for the part of the town's archive. The archive was still there and contained radiation suits, gas masks, may day flags and files outlining citizens' political profiles. Artists and performers from Eastern and Western Europe and Canada were invited to create works within the monastery that in some way responded to the political, historical or architectural information of the site. The artists had the choice of working within approximately 100 empty rooms.

Later on I traveled to Russia and stayed in St. Petersburg for one month, hanging around a squat that contained, among many things, a gallery connected to a bar that would have one day exhibitions. I was invited to created a work for the gallery and created an installation of assembled objects and text from a 48 hour Dérive that I made in the city.
One year later, in 1995, I co-organized exhibition of four artists from Canada and Croatia, including myself, Richard Stipl, Aleksandar Ilic and Ivana Keser, and Norwegian performance group Origami within the Synagoga Na Palmovce in Prague. I developed a site-specific installation for the exhibition and collaborated with Amanda Steggell, who temporarily joined Origami as a dancer.

So I think that the experiences of interacting within different environments and people provided the background for my current practice. I found the transition of returning to Canada, after living for several years in Europe, quite difficult. I didn't have possibilities for making the similar kinds of work. It took me several years before I started to find my way again, when I started to work with live video, telepresence and performance. This started in 1998.

contexts/processes of development

ZB: In what processes/contexts you develop your artistic practice?

I use participatory performance, live installation and outdoor projection as urban interventions that explore the ontologies of hybrid space created through the overlapping of communication and audio visual networks with the built spaces of the city. These projects involve working within different locations, social and cultural contexts and are the direct results of occupying spaces and cultivating exchanges. Therefore it is very important for me to spend time in these locations and basically 'be there'. I use different processes such as walking and conversation coupled with theoretical exploration as my research. Essentially what I do is occupy spaces. Irit Rogoff uses the term 'inhabitation' to describe the different modes of occupying and performing location. These processes are not about arriving at fixed meaning or identity of a place but in thinking of, again her term, 'relational geographies'. 'Relational geographies' speak of 'place' as a complex layering of the local and translocal, of buildings and networks, flows of information, capital and migration, culture, politics, race, economics, history, etc. So when talking about a 'here' one can also think about how it relates, or doesn't relate, to another 'there' and so on. Also not everybody has a similar experience of place. I prefer therefore to think in terms of catalyzing spaces to allow for different relations and meanings to unfold. Of performing space.

...inspiration/methods...

ZB: Do you get moved/inspired by social issues than engage in interacting with environment and people or have other methods (which)?

As soon as you start to work with technology and media, the social and the political become inherently part of the discussion and practice. The technological is intertwined with the social and the political. Fundamentally I am interested in the production of information, at the everyday consumer level, the kinds of spaces they produce and how they come in contact and interact with the built spaces of the city.

I have been thinking about these relationships in several ways.

One way to think is how networks are ubiquitous and merged with physical environments that are themselves social networks. For example, think of a wifi hotspot that one uses in a cafe. Because it is wireless the cafe environment becomes immersed in connectivity. Therefore the space created by the wireless hotspot is merged with the socially codified environment of the cafe. This creates an interesting hybridity, especially when considering the social interactions happening within the cafe, with set customs and rituals, and the simultaneous interactions happening through the wireless network, with similar but also very distinct protocols for exchange.

I've also being thinking about social/cultural conditions for setting up the public and private and how these divisions break down when our spaces are awash in transitivity. We are experiencing increasing control and privatization of public space. How do these architectures of control affect the body? My ongoing research of private use of wireless CCTV fits within this inquiry while also looking at the meaning and value of the images that are produced through the use of these technologies.

The information landscape, at any given street corner of any given city, is something that is extremely heterogeneous, created by different sources, public and proprietary, commercial, personal, recreational, military, each with individual concerns of ownership, maintenance, power consumption, visibility and access. How do we understand and deal with these complexities?

How global events affect the local? In A20 Recall, an online map created during an artist-in-residency at La Chambre Blanche, I used the event of a very violent anti-globalization protest that occurred during The Summit of Americas in Quebec City (2001) to research the affects of the militarization of urban space created through these multinational neocapitalist events. I researched this by revisiting the sites where the protests took place and having chance encounters, interviews and conversations with different people in the city over a three week period. Conversations where held with people in parks, street pedestrians, within homes, a group of firemen in a fire station, the concierge of the hotel where where George Bush stayed, local activists, etc.

Essentially I am interested in the overlapping of the technological and the social and also interested in the complex layering of different social issues that form that environment and affect the people that live there. I also find people infinitely interesting and their stories inspiring.

surveillance/observation dichotomy?

ZB: Is there a fine (ethical?) line between surveillance and observation? where does one become another

According to the description given by dictionary software on my computer, surveillance is 'close observation of a suspected spy or criminal'. whereas observation involves 'the action or process of observing something or someone carefully in order to gain information'. Both involve the process of careful monitoring but with different intent. Most of the surveillance in operation I would consider to be mostly about observation but what makes it surveillance is that it is placed with premise of crime prevention. One fine ethical line is that the camera is not observing a criminal per se but the potential for criminal action, which makes everybody potentially a criminal. In his book 'Loving Big Brother' John E. McGrath provides an interesting perspective to this process of observation by theorizing that what the camera is actually monitoring is a potential death. This is what makes an image of a sleeping child so unsettling. There is the possibility of witnessing some harm to this child, somebody smothers it with a pillow, molests it, kidnaps it, or it simply dies in its sleep.

When we observe a surveillance image (which is actually quite banal and still) there is a fear and also fascination that something bad is going to happen. One of of the main questions that people ask about my work is if I have ever encountered something disturbing and what I would do about it. When I ask what I should be encountering, the answer is usually a murder, rape or somebody having sex. I find this interesting because these are already projections of what should be taking place, when most of the time nothing is happening.

McGrath also gives the example of the numbers of surveillance cameras went up after 9/11, where the argument was used that that more data and information would prevent future attacks. Before the mediation and repeated footage of the attacks, there was a brief moment when we all had a direct, uninterpreted confrontation with live, televised images of bodies falling from the towers. In the absence of journalistic mediation, what we experienced was a face-to-face encounter with what Derrida calls 'the aporia of death' or the impossible possiblity of our own non-being. According the McGrath, the sudden proliferation of cameras, set up to prevent future attacks, could be seen also as an attempt to understand these images of falling bodies. In order to understand, one must closely observe. So what does this become then? Is this surveillance or observation?

ZB:For me this is mostly a matter of power politics (ownership + control + management of setup and acquired material) as well of framing of specific aesthetics (how is it framed/seen/presented and set to look 'for' or look 'at').

parasites & failures- limitations/inhibitions

ZB: In your recent essay "" you refer to the word "parasite" (outside of it's biological and sociological meaning) which is used in French language as "static" and "noise" (informational interference) - quoting work "Parasite" of philosopher Michel Serres.
His differentiation of strive for design of ideal systems (which fail in practical realization) and design that embraces noise/failure for the sake of complexity and it's quality to introduce transformation, seems
to be the technical core of your media practice. When do you find these technical failures useful and inspiring, when limiting and inhibiting?

I address the familiar and limiting advertising narratives surrounding consumer (wireless) technologies and electronic objects and create alternate readings and realities about perceived function, form and location. Common technological narratives are based on the premise that technology is the solution to every problem. The value systems of these narratives are based on functionality, seamless productivity, efficiency, progress and control. Recently, on a flight to Prishtina, the words "Technology can be used to fix the mistakes that it makes" appeared on one of the plane's monitors, to describe the recent technological solutions concerning CO2 emissions on commercial jets. This points to an engineering approach towards a problem, where technology is used to fix something instead of looking at the underlying issues that have created the particular state of that society. It points to the idea that technology makes a better world. In my work, I'm interested when these technological narratives, based on functionality, efficiency and progress, start to break down.

I am interested in the more complex realities that can be entered when these value systems are disrupted, by misuse of simple electronic products. This can happen by making them function in ways not intended by hacking or re-customization, or by simply exploring the unintended by-products created by their use.
For example, in my work with wireless surveillance, I am interested the psychological dimensions that arise through the incidental production of images, the representation of self, the breakdown of conventional borders between the public and private, inside and outside, the relation of the body to space, and also the different relations between these video images and the built spaces of the city. Some technological gadgets already contain pathological elements in their design. For example, the gauss or EMF meter which is used to measure magnetic field strength around electrical objects, such as a computer monitor, refrigerator, lamp, etc. When I bought one, it arrived with two texts; one describing how to use it for ghost hunting, and one discussing the possible harmful effects of EMF pollution in the home or work place. In each case, the gadget itself starts to embody subversive, conspiratorial and even mythical qualities.
So concerning technical failures, which are actually the failures in the narratives, I'm continually interested what complex realities arise, concerning inhabitation, ownership, permission, boundary, embodiment, from their intended or unintended use. Concerning limits I think that I speak for all artists working with media, that it's always desirable that something works when presenting something to an expectant public.

I did a lot of network performances using unstable internet connections and flaky software. So many times I would wonder why I was doing it in the first place when there were so many things that could go wrong. But this is always the charge for me. The instability of the media. And now that I'm working so much in the city. To be outside with the knowledge that I could experience failure at any moment, because my whole work is based on the transient and ephemeral. It's quite risky.

articulation of work in/with public sphere

ZB: What is the relation of your media hacking (technological act) and social hacking (performative act) in the process of articulation of performance dramaturgy and/or installation setup? What made you decide to exclude more direct educational component out of performances?

IIn order to communicate the relation of media, body and the city I have chosen to articulate this through performative action. This takes the form of various urban interventions, outdoor projections, installations and tours or walks. The explanatory/educational component is not always directly present but still there. For example, in some of the performances of Life: A User's Manual I offered no explanation of what was going on and decided to perform silently. If I started saying "This is a 2.4 Ghz receiver that is currently intercepting live surveillance images which are being displayed live on this monitor" then the performance would become either too much of a technology piece or a conventional political piece about privacy issues. I preferred to allow for multiple meanings and interpretations of the event, both at the moment that it was happening as well as what happened afterwards.

Because it was very apparent that this was a live image and that it was coming from somewhere nearby, it wasn't really important to know exactly how it was working on a technological level but that this live transmission was part of the local urban environment. This proved the catalyst for several conversations that would occur around me, within the audience itself.

I get invitations to talk about my work and have used these as opportunities to disseminate information as lectures and seminars. I consider these more than artist talks as I also incorporate theory to contextualize the practice. I've also started to write a bit.

art as instigator or symbolic critique

ZB: How do you see your art practice in terms of capacity to engage,instigate, inform or articulate opinions of public (based on reactions from audience/participants you encountered)? Do you position your work more easy in larger context of counter culture or symbolic critique within art system?

I think I've already partly answered your question above. The important thing for me is that there is always an element of public engagement, some more direct than others. I think that performing the media, meaning highlighting, utilizing and in some way transforming information and networks already present within the urban environment, opens up possibility to inform and instigate exchange. Sometimes I get immediate feedback and sometimes I do not. In an interview with Allan Kaprow about his 'Happenings', of which very little documentation exists, he talks about gossip as documentation. There were actually very few people at these events, but the stories that different people told about it afterwards disseminated the experience in ways that were uncontrollable. I like this idea of the transfer of information through story-telling. On occasions I have instigated walks that have involved active conversations between myself and audience. Although, as I mentioned before, many of the 'Life: A User's Manual' performances were staged silently, I did try a couple of iterations of the project where direct interaction was encouraged. During Impakt Walk, I gave up to three people video scanners and then walked with them through Utrecht looking for wireless surveillance. Although based on a shared activity of finding surveillance video, there were a lot of conversations that would take place, around urban development, privatization of space, architecture, philosophy, politics as well as personal experiences and observations, that might or might not be related to what we were doing together.

In 'Impakt Walk', as in 'A20 Recall', I incorporated these conversations into several online maps that become reenactments of these exchanges. In LF:TK, a project where myself and Canadian artist Jeff Mann set up telepresence picnic parties in public locations, each intervention instigated different exchanges by both passersby and those that would sit with us. The more time that somebody spent with us, the more information would be exchanged. In Friluftskino: Experiments in Open-Air Surveillance Cinema, live surveillance was intercepted and re-projected back onto city walls, transforming that space into an outdoor cinema. Chairs were laid out and people could sit and ask questions and discuss what was going on.

In a recent work Parasitic Video Network, I set up a wireless video installation in various public locations, an office building, a shopping mall and a park. When I set up the installation in the shopping mall, I met every single person working there, from the building manager to the salespeople to the security personnel and stayed there for a week. I sat at a booth in the mall, to receive any questions, concerns and opinions arose from my intervention. Finally I just completed a work called Buscando al Sr. Goodbar for Techformance, an exhibition curated by Oscar Abril that creates links between new media, performance and public participation. For 'Buscando at Sr. Goodbar' I created a bus tour throughout Murcia, Spain searching for the locations and authors of various YouTube videos produced in the city. At certain points the bus stopped and we entered into people's spaces where we would meet some of the YouTube authors who then presented for us a reenactment of some of their performances, creating an intimate encounter between video producer and public. I wouldn't consider these activities to be a symbolic critique within the art system but within a larger context of counter-culture. I also just love working with and within the city. The socio-political aspects become unavoidably a strong part of the practice and makes it more connected with what is actually happening within everyday life.