The Artist's Presence

The Artist's Presence for the AVBody Symposium hosted by Huddersfield University

The Artist’s Presence uses Augmented Reality (AR) technology to question the importance of presence in performance art practice. Using a scannable design on the backrest of a chair, the artist (Zara Worth) becomes ‘present’ - appearing to be sat on the chair when viewed via the smartphone screen. Symposium attendees will be invited to download the AR app, take a seat and ‘face’ the artist. The work references Marina Abramovic’s performance at MOMA, New York, in 2010; a work and exhibition criticised by Amelia Jones for its heavy reliance on documentation whilst supposedly foregrounding the ‘purity’ of liveness. The Artist’s Presence is a playful response to Abramovic’s work, and questions the possibilities and meaning of ‘presence’ and being ‘present’ in light of audiovisual technologies. The work would be presented as two chairs facing each other approximately 1.5m apart. Details on how to download the application through which to view the artist would be provided. On sitting, individuals would be able to scan the code on the chair opposite through the application in order to activate the Augmented Reality and see the artist (Zara Worth) apparently sitting opposite them when viewed on their smartphone screen.