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Christian Jankowski «Let's get physical/digital»
Christian Jankowski, «Let's get physical/digital», 1997 – 1998
© Christian Jankowski
(Excerpt of the chat) The Fireplace – Thursday Christian Jankowski: Your sentences are strange. They repeat themselves. Is your computer doing that on its own? An echo on the Internet or an Andy Warhol performance. Una Szeemann: My love, Una is not repeating herself. It is the computer. C: I love you. U: I love you too. And that's that! I find this a bit strange. I love you too. And that's that! I find this a bit strange. C: I can forgive technology, as long as it is connecting me to you. U: I love you too. And that's that! I find this a bit strange. C: The echo again. I would miss it if it didn't show up.


 
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Categories: Installation | Internet | Text

Keywords: Dialogue


 

 Christian Jankowski
«Let's get physical/digital»

'How do I appear to you in this medium. Do you find any qualities here that you already know?', asks Christian Jankowski during his week-long love-chat on the Web, which he is using to test the medium for its love-friendliness. Communication is the starting-point for a work that exploits the possibilities of media as disparate as the Internet, video, installation, catalogue and performance and questions their validity – when visibly related to each other.
Separated from his girl-friend Una, who works in Milan, Jankowski sets up a chat-room on the Net in 1997, and they met there daily: the idea of a room is a central reference point for the lovers‘ thoughts here. Every day, Una and Christian design a place of fulfilment, which in furnishings and function is linked with the longings and visions of being a couple: a 'belly-dancing corner', the 'Bed of Cream' – Jankowski started to realize the fantasy interiors immediately: he published his list of request for the necessary props on the Internet, everything had to be acquired via the Web.
The daily dialogues on the Net were accessible to the public. They were immediately translated into Swedish and acted out by amateur actors who were cast electronically through websites. Each actor was allowed to bring his or her partner. Jankowski limited his intervention to insisting that the actors should be emotionally compatible. The conversations, apparently spontaneous and superficially intimate, were presented in video form at the exhibition, which opened up as a sequence of six rooms when Una arrived in Stockholm.
As in other works, Jankowski designs a stage, using deliberately selected props and including the public. On this stage he conducts a thorough examination of his own identity and current psychological conditions on the border between controlled self-representation, artistic performance and ostensible exhibitionism.