On self-love and the digital – Brigid Hansen
The internet is obsessive; an intermedial space of creation, connection, formation, aggravation, pleasure, pain, remembrance, reiteration and discovery. Stanley Street represented artist Tom Christophersen and his internet-acquaintance-cum-collaborator Michael Simms are both a product of and a testament to the expressive, compulsive and collaborative artistic potential of digital friendships.
An unseen aspect of a garment’s structure, interfacing is integral for moulding, strengthening and stiffening, giving the appearance of cohesion. From a computational perspective, the interface is the gateway to communication and the sharing of information. Cleverly taking into account these definitions and their respective contexts, the artists put forward the idea that a cohesive self is comprised of both digital and non-digital counterparts. Using selected figures from both of their own online connections, the artists explore the functionality of digital space and social media in their suite of paintings and drawings. Stylised realism both documents and imagines an intangible and ever-changing self-perception, often looking through physical and imagined screens to illustrate this notion.
Photography by Michael Simms
Christophersen and Simms’ collaborative long-form music-video-esque work builds upon these ideas in an engaging and tangible way, glitching between their faces and building a complex, aggravated and pixelated half-human. A strong sense of anxiety and the compartmentalised self is present here, with both artists conveying their respective insecurities – Simms exuding cords and reels of a tape and Christophersen becoming distantly entranced by his own pop-mantra.
