Luba Drozd creates immersive video and audio installations that underline connections between things we experience and experiences we create for others: the micro and macro simultaneity of violence through space. These constructed architectural interventions reorient space with projected video, sonic vibrations and nonintrusive materials such as vellum and acetate. longcat, created for InbetweenTheories is her first browser-based art piece.
Motivated by contemporary forms of incarceration – such as prisons and borders – that deprive individuals and communities of an establishment of space, Luba’s work gestures to how intangible spaces within us – such as memory space, knowledge and perception of time – are also controlled and regimented. She is interested in the interplay of tangible and intangible structures, zooming in on the details of everyday life that are symptoms of larger issues in society. Through this she presents concrete experiences that result in abstraction and concepts that seep into the concrete molding of our lives. Luba’s longcat presents the space of the internet as a real space of visual communication that also opens into vast worlds of image, commentary, dialogue, and spam.
Luba Drozd’s longcat is here – click image to see full screen
Luba Drozd on creating the longcat:
I think I was just using the tools utilized by the community that created the longcat and feeding it back to it. Just creating kind of along loop, the self-perpetuating loop. I also think of it as the idea of an Occam’s Razor – the simplest solution for the problem or for an issue, and I feel like the cat is not necessarily a solution but an embodiment of the problems – Occam’s Razor – the simplest answer is usually the correct one. The most direct and simplest form has no ways of being misinterpreted. I’m wondering, by using GIFs, about the net neutrality vote and what could we do in the future, after the vote happens?
I think there’s a culture of recycling happening everywhere and ideally, I would like [it if] this longcat could become open-sourced, with pieces added throughout time, so it grows longer and longer and longer, until we’ve gotten out of this situation. I hope we can.
What is a longcat? From http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/longcat
“Longcat is one of the most recognized cats on the Internet. He is known for his epic length, spawning photoshops and even an entire mythology around his magnitude.
Origin
“The original photo of Longcat, whose name is Shiroi (白い – “white”), first appeared on Futaba channel (2chan) sometime between 2004 and 2005 by a man from Japan. On 2chan, she was referred to as “nobiiru,” which means “stretch.”
Readings
“Digital Debris,” from Duty Free Art by Hito Steyerl:
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3501-digital-debris
[Luba’s been thinking about] the universality of the comeback of fascism in Europe also, that sneaked in through [an] “everyone for themselves” idea. (Thinking of the recent march in Poland.)
Example is this guy’s manifesto:
http://oddculture.com/the-pekka-eric-auvinen-manifesto/
Bearing witness, a link to the Marie Colvin Center, named for the American journalist who was killed in 2012 while reporting in Homs, Syria:
http://mariecolvincenter.org/
Suggested:
Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide by Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Verso, 2015, http://www.versobooks.com
Links
Websites
Know your meme
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/longcat
Re Donald Trump as assemblage versus longcat collage,
[Luba’s been] Thinking about assemblage in art right now ,the sculptural trend of assemblage artists such as Mark Dion for example:
http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/mark-dion%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Ctwenty-one-years-of-think-in-three-dimensions%E2%80%9D/
Net Neutrality, from the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/11/21/the-fcc-has-unveiled-its-plan-to-rollback-its-net-neutrality-rules/?utm_term=.7ebad85d109c
About Luba Drozd http://www.lubadrozd.com/
Born in Ukraine and currently working in Brooklyn, NY, Luba Drozd earned a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Bard College. Her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum, LUBOV Gallery, Jamaica Center for Arts and Language, Carver Center Gallery, Ukrainian Museum in New York, Apexart, BRIC, Smack Mellon, Anthology Film Archives, the New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center and Art in General. She is the recipient of a MASS MoCA Visiting Artist Residency, Eastern State Historic Site grant for new work, BRIC Media Arts Fellowship and the Bronx Museum AIM fellowship.