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Seven interactive essays on digital nonlinear storytelling
edited by Matt Soar & Monika Gagnon

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Context > Participation

The efficacy of art resides not in the model (or counter-model) of behavior that it provides, but first and foremost in partitions of space and time that it produces to define ways of being together or separate, being in front or in the middle of, being inside or outside, etc.
Dissensus: On Politics and AestheticsJacques Rancière

I think of the Internet as a public space but I want to expand the definition of who constitutes the ”Public” in this context and create a more inclusive public sphere. As an artist I function as a context-provider – shifting the concept of artistic creation from making content to making context. I provide the means, or tools that will induce others to speak for themselves, and the context in which they may be heard. I engage with groups of participants who live at the margins, outside the social order, and attempt to create a space for the assertion of their political subjectivity. This process of subjectivation occurs both through speaking and being heard. For injection drug users living outside the norms of society in the shadow of the criminal justice system, and women trapped inside the prison system, the statements they make, and allow me to record, are acts of juridical and political testimony. If heard and understood, their speech can turn the capacity for empathetic response toward broader social and personal change.
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