BROADCAST VIVIAN ROSS-SMITH
BROADCAST was a durational performance piece disseminated over the Shetland
Webcam network in July 2020. The work uses digital communication and interference to explore perceptions of place, my identity as an island artist and accessibility of the art world. Each performance saw me selecting a wearable painting, travelling to a webcam site and interrupting the video stream.
BROADCAST was developed within the artistic displacement of being a postgraduate student amidst Covid-19, which halted my studies at Glasgow School of Art and copy and pasted me back into the sublime island landscape of Shetland. As an island artist, I rely on the internet to disseminate my practice. Once away from the city centric art world, I
returned to my work being filtered through screens and streamed over the internet. In an attempt to be present and understand where art belongs post-covid, I used my physical form to awkwardly occupy the digital and public space of the Shetland Webcams. Some performances only lasted a couple of minutes — with the recording of my physical presence being my main objective — whilst others were longer and centred around communicating in some form with the space or with the small and committed audience that inhabit the network each day.
I made a performance to the Webcams consecutively for 16 days, the durationality
and experiential outcomes of the work, gesture to an anti-capitalist, anti-artmarket, anti-single-artist-ownership mode of practice, which allows me to question both the audience and the art space. Each intervention was site specific but with no set performance times, making the artwork inaccessible to experience live. Reminiscent of my usual position in the art world, I tried to become present in the digital but invisible in the physical. During each performance, I had no way of knowing if I was being watched, whilst physically inside the paintings I only had a small slit to look through, meaning I was unaware of what was around me and digitally, viewers could be scrolling past my presence or missing it entirely. My use of the webcams first and
foremost is about occupying a public broadcasting platform that anyone with the internet can access. It also holds obvious connotations of surveillance which acknowledges the transparency of living and working within a small community. The frequent viewers of the webcams, based across the globe, started noticing and discussing what/who I was on the websites' comment section: “that is very strange behaviour and what a strange thing to be wearing�.
BROADCAST questions the narratives and perceptions we build around place and the communities therein. Each performance attempted to disrupt an expectation
and
a
perceived
image
of
island
life
via
an
intervention
of
something representing contemporary fine art. The webcam viewers were expecting to see a puffin fly by but instead a painting appeared on their screen. Is my presence irritating as it agitates a postcard-perfect understanding of place and community? Does that painting belong on the screen? Where does art belong post-covid?
Vivian Ross-Smith
https://www.shetlandwebcams.com
very strange behaviour and what a strange thing to be wearing
but I think a bit
this is too much
...maybe she's just enjoying
the publicity...
someone needing some online attention I think
Hahaha!....that is an extreme anti Covid mask!....
at least it’s a distraction
LOL!!!!!!
Vivian Ross-Smith is an artist who lives and works from the Shetland Islands. She adopts a collaborative and systematic approach to making and sharing through painting, textiles and the digital. Her work creates a space to discuss island life from a contemporary, fine art context and explores the textures, qualities and values of material and space. Ross-Smith’s work builds relationships and conversations between material, place and people and is as much about experiencing as it is about seeing.
@vrosssmith vivianrosssmith.com