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This is the second scren shot of an online vigil against war that took place at several virtual communities. In these online communities, people at home chose a character (avatar) and wonder through virtual landscapes interacting with other avatars.
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These performance stills were taken from a series of "vigils" performed in the
public chat space/application "The Palace" specifically in "Mt. Olympus" and "FireBirdz Forest".
We performed it three times on 9/15/01 and then a few more times after that.
Some of the women are in New York, and some in New Zealand & Italy.
We walked a silent vigil across rooms with people in them.
At various times, these women were up there:
karla ptacek, vicki smith & paolo grippa, helen varley Jamieson,
adriene Jenik, Ann Snitow, Connie Samaras, Lisa Brenneis
Responses varied (& still vary as we meet on a regular basis & this
is one of our current activities). On the nights that you see the
pics from- responses included chatters calling us "black turds with
foliage", joining us in our silent vigil across the screen
(following our avatars), making pro-war comments, expressing fear at
our image, being silent (not sure if this was ignoring us or
respecting the "vigil" space we were bringing in), laughing at us -
"lol" or "lmao" - (this happened when people from israel or eastern
europe recognized the group from "real life" feminist anti-war
protest actions), and of course we shared the screen with avatars
named "bye-bye afghanistan" and "bedtime for democracy" - the chat
space is definitely a reflection of culture at large.
I was in NYC during the month of September doing an artist residency. Obviously it took a fateful turn on 9/11 -- I
switched gears & started to work with others to produce alternative media (doing camera for Demoncracy Now in
exile - Amy goodman's news show that was moved to broadcast from DCTV & is now a TV show as well) & also
did a series of performances as "Women in Black" in the public visual chatrooms that I (and the DT troupe)
perform Desktop Theater in - we went in every day at a
certain time & performed silent vigils walking across the spaces (slowly) where people were. It was fascinating to see the response.