Throwing Voices: Celebrity and the Attention Economy
- Submitting institution
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Staffordshire University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Lists 81
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- mac, Birmingham, UK; Arquipé Lago - Centro de Artes Contemporâneas, Azures, Portugal; Die Raum, Berlin, Germany; Goldsmiths, University of London, UK; Rampa, Porto, Portugal
- Brief description of type
- A collection of practice-based artefacts, solo exhibitions and conference paper that address different aspects of a single project and are collectively greater than the sum of their parts.
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2021
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- Yes
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- The submission includes all of the final audio/visual material that will be part of ME, The Total Show and visualisations of how this will be installed in the gallery space. There is no documentation of the performance elements, as this will take place once it has opened, but a description of the activity is provided. There is no documentation of the objects that will be activated in the exhibition space but there is textual description and visualisations of the role that these play in the context of the exhibition.
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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2
- Research group(s)
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A - The C3 Centre: Creative Industries and Creative Communities
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- The research evolved over a 6-year period (2016-2021) progressing through four substantial artistic projects and a conference paper, which have been disseminated through venues and events with different cultural, geographical and theoretical contexts. The research sits within emerging cross-disciplinary research on ‘attention’ ‘celebrity’ and forms of ‘ventriloquism’ and as such it has been explored and situated in relation to these developments over this extended period. The research has advanced time-consuming methods and processes (recontextualisation, appropriation, editing and translation of digital and physical forms) for application within this particular context and in the context of wider debates in contemporary art.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This research examines how popular culture can commodify an audience’s attention. It involves artworks and exhibitions produced and delivered with the artists’ group Common Culture (Brown, David Campbell, Mark Durden). These works identify and disrupt relationships between ‘celebrity’ and the ‘attention economy’, the environment where services compete to capture and monetize audience attention.
The works employ humour and contextual displacement to ‘throw voices’ into unfamiliar viewing experiences, enabling critical reconsideration of celebrity speech acts. By appropriating and recontextualizing material from celebrity interviews, YouTube vlogs, and their online responses, the research demonstrates that ventriloquism can interrogate the underlying attention-capture processes operating within television and online media.
Vent (2016) is a three-screen video installation, commissioned by mac, Birmingham. The work translates celebrity television interviews through a ventriloquist act, exploring how traumatic personal content is repackaged as entertainment. By reframing ventriloquist, dummy, and audience, the work pinpoints and interrupts the prompts that drive audience participation in the cruelties of television talent shows.
The Age of Chopping Off Heads (2017-21) consists of a series of songs and two video works: Dying is for Amateurs and Trial by Media. The films depict choreographed dance performances, interpretations of pop songs written and recorded by Common Culture with lyrics adapted from celebrity confession interviews. They confront audiences with the question of what a ‘proper’ response is to a celebrity’s public performance of a typically private emotional state.
OMG I love common culture !!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️ (2020) and ME, The Total Show (2021) respond to an internet celebrity who trademarked ‘Common Culture’ to sell a range of products to his fanbase. OMG… converted the Die Raum gallery into a Common Culture shopfront. ME, The Total Show altered Rampa into a retail space. The exhibitions explore how celebrity can convert followers into consumers by repurposing engagement and intimacy as commercial branding.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -