Liz MacDougall (Halifax)
Are You Subhuman?, 1999
bio
Liz Mac Dougall has been practicing media art since1984. She has produced
several videos including both art and documentary that are currently
in distribution including "Time to Heal" and "the Birth
of Sybling". She is a graduate of NSCAD, spent time studying media
arts in San Diego, and has been both an employee and a member of several
artist-run film and video spaces including Cineworks Film Co-op in Vancouver
and the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax. She has also edited broadcast
documentaries since 1986. In 1996 she was the founding coordinator of
the Incomplete Dislocations Collective, a group of Halifax artists who
create and exhibit new media works. Liz's work is issue-based and accessible
and has included critical examinations of issues such as militarism,
native rights, child sexual abuse, dissociative disorders and technological
progress. She is concerned about the social distribution of power and
she creates her work through playful applications of new technologies.
Are You subhuman?
Are You Subhuman? is the corporate web site of the fictive Corporeal
Corporation. This corporation puts a positive slant on the increasing
valuation of humans for their ability to contribute to economic growth
through an affinity with new technologies as compared to the decreasing
value of those who struggle within the techno-corporate paradigm. The
Corporeal Corporation offers, through the Quotient of Humanity Survey,
a means by which you can be assessed for your ability to contribute to
society in the context of increasing technological demands. In the value
system of this corporation, one's humanness is correlated to their potential
productivity. Those who do not engage with, or ideologically support,
notions of progress dependent on technological development are deemed
Subhuman. It is a beneficent gesture on the part of the Corporation to
allow you to see in advance, what value you hold, in time to consider
changing your status by either adapting, or by resisting even more.
The Quotient of Humanity Survey asks you to rate yourself for personal
characteristics, political values, technical skill and endurance under
the stresses of a increasingly technological and non-organic environment.
Those who need the organic world are warned by a poor rating that unless
they adapt they will not survive. Animations on the site indicate the
values of the CC.
This site uses a pop culture form to question the value of progress and
our deference to the ubiquitous corporate agenda. My aim is to infuse
critical thinking with enjoyment and insidiously plant the seeds for counter
culture thinking amongst those who are unwittingly complicit through constant
internet browsing.
presentation
Video, Interactivity and Audience
Wednesday, February 2, 7:30pm, Salle Fernand-Séguin, Cinémathèque
québécoise
In English.
Looking at her digitally created video, the Birth of Sybling and her
1999 "Are You Subhuman?" web site, Liz Mac Dougall will re-examine
the approaches she has taken to creation which are both allowed and constricted
by these respective mediums. Compared to computer animation and digital
video manipulation which offer access to powerful and engaging narrative
devices, interactive work (in its currently accessible forms) is minimal
and somewhat limited. But the performative qualities, the potential for
endless re-construction and the challenge to authorship in an interactive
environment invite us to see new media as a living thing, an endless work
in progress and a responsive medium. With this in mind, Liz will discuss
the politics of audience engagement and passivity.
Liz MacDougall
