sext me sometime
Devin Brown & Parker Thornton invited audience members to live sext them in a six-hour performance at The Mammal Gallery as part of the group show "Beyond the Vernacular". The performers read the texts aloud as they were received. A projection of a live Google Voice feed displayed each of the messages against the wall in the performers' boudoir. The video, created by David Matysiak, played on a loop all night, displaying the performers phone numbers and encouraging the gallery attendants to SEXT US NOW.
The artists designed this project as a way to explore the fantastical, often exaggerated sexuality people perform through online communications systems such as text, instant messaging, and online dating. The disconnect between the role-play of sexting and reality of what the sender or receiver is doing when they exchange these messages is, in many cases, idiosyncratic at best. This dissonance can be absurd, humbling, pathetic, lonely, hilarious, and productive. The performers' experiences sexting with strangers for several hours during "Beyond the Vernacular" provided the performers and the audience an opportunity to become intimate with each of these sensations in a condensed period of time.
The artists designed this project as a way to explore the fantastical, often exaggerated sexuality people perform through online communications systems such as text, instant messaging, and online dating. The disconnect between the role-play of sexting and reality of what the sender or receiver is doing when they exchange these messages is, in many cases, idiosyncratic at best. This dissonance can be absurd, humbling, pathetic, lonely, hilarious, and productive. The performers' experiences sexting with strangers for several hours during "Beyond the Vernacular" provided the performers and the audience an opportunity to become intimate with each of these sensations in a condensed period of time.
Video by David Matysiak
Beyond the Vernacular. Mammal Gallery. 2014.