“Inbox Zero Residency” by Kyle McDonald
가옥 단기 레지던시 작가인 카일 맥도날드의 레지던시 주제는 ‘인박스 제로’ 입니다. 이메일로 소통하는 일이 활동의 중요한 부분을 차지하는 개념 예술가에게 하루에 몇백통씩 오는 이메일을 읽고 답장하고 처리하는 과정은 단순 사무에 그치지 않고 창작의 일부라고 볼 수 있습니다. 이 레지던시에서 카일은 매일 오는 메일을 다 읽고 답장하는 데 집중합니다.
Description: by Kyle McDonald
The Inbox Zero Residency provides an opportunity for artists who spend
a significant time engaged in online discussion to finally clear their
inboxes.
As digital beings, email is one of the primary media of our daily
life. We spend hours in correspondence with friends, family,
colleagues, students. Writing personal emails, asking questions,
answering questions. Or maybe on a mailing list, monitoring updates as
an outsider, lurking, or directly engaged in larger discussion and
debate.
Our inbox is the site of this discussion. It serves as a surrogate
memory, a reification of the responsibilities we’ve accepted. While we
all use our inbox differently, it’s common to leave messages in our
inbox until the they no longer represent an unfulfilled
responsibility. It follows that by reducing the number of messages in
your inbox you are also shedding responsibility, creating a context in
which clearer reflection might occur.
But the goal of the residency is two-fold: not only to clear the inbox
over a prescribed period of time, but also to engage with the notion
of email answering as artistic practice. Providing a residency for the
sole purpose of answering emails may seem counterintuitive at first,
because email answering is generally seen as a supplementary activity.
But how often are ideas honed and refined through discussion with
friends — and how often do these discussions happen over email? Or if
the artist is acting as a mentor, are they not engaged in a creative
act with the student when they brainstorm via email? What keeps the
artist’s work relevant except for maintaining a connection to active
discussions with friends and colleagues on mailing lists? If the
artist has a social practice that involves building communities or
sharing tools, how else can those tools and communities be maintained
but through discussion and criticism over email?
It is exactly in the context of an art residency that it can become
most clear: answering email is an essential part of artistic practice.
Furthermore, by labeling it “art”, we are providing an opportunity for
it to take on characteristics of more traditional performative
actions. Announcing the number of emails every day, crafting a
narrative of “email answering as trial”, and most importantly:
inspiring the audience to reconsider how they view their own inbox. In
this way, the Inbox Zero Residency follows the example of Fluxus
artists, or certain happenings: treating daily life as a readymade,
providing an opportunity for it to be seen from a different
perspective.
An Inbox Zero Residency may be performed by anyone. The requirements
are as follows:
1. It is sponsored by an entity independent from the artist.
2. A definite period of time is determined in advance.
3. The resident’s inbox status must be regularly reported.
This first Inbox Zero Residency will take place at GaOk in Seoul for
one week starting on March 11th. Every morning I will post an update
to twitter reporting how many emails are in my inbox, how many are
unread, and a short description of my mood.
https://twitter.com/kcimc/
https://twitter.com/kcimc/
https://twitter.com/kcimc/
https://twitter.com/kcimc/
https://twitter.com/kcimc/