This post was updated Feb. 19 at 8:28 p.m.
With the ever-growing surge of the female gaze, the era of the “Girl Crush” has begun.
Held at Heavy Manners Library in Echo Park, “Girl Crush” was the debut event for Heart House – alumnus Maya Man’s newly established curatorial endeavor. A collection of software- and video-based art, “Girl Crush” featured the work of 12 up-and-coming artists, including Man and fellow alumni and student artists Isabelle Amaral, Yuchi Ma, Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, Karrington Lewis and Sara Yukiko. Before Thursday evening’s 40-minute screening, Man gave a brief introduction and read Biz Sherbert’s “Lucky Girl Serum,” an essay written for Man’s recently published book, “FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT.”
“I’m really interested in work that’s engaged with the internet, that either lives on the internet in its native form or is about the internet, so that’s a really heavy theme in a lot of the work that you’re going to see,” Man said. “But really, the focus of a lot of the work is about femininity and desire and the performance of self online.”
Filled with various chairs pointing toward a central projector, the Heavy Manners Library’s backroom became the makeshift screening room. Ann Hirsch’s 2009 video “caroline poem” opened the screening by posing a series of binary identity-based questions. Speaking in a technologically enhanced robotic voice, the artist concluded that everyone has come to terms with being watched, though the act both validates and negates one’s existence.
Entering with the swell of chimes, Olivia McKayla Ross’s “my teen bedroom” was a collage-like compilation of domiciliary clips of Ross overlaid on top of stretched and blurred images of greenery. Yukiko’s “Present” depicted a rapid series of photos timed to a wistful, staccato melody and “Present (Timeline)” demonstrated its creation.
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Presenting a six-minute digital “Meditation For Releasing The Capitalist Patriarchy Within,” Zarina Nares opened with a quote from gender studies scholar Zillah Eisenstein. Incorporating a variety of TikToks, Nares represented main takeaways and mantras, such as “I Have EVERYTHING I WANT,” “I Am Not A LOSER :(” and “Kendall Wears It All The Time,” using vibrant pink text. A rapidly depleting bank balance resided in the top portion of the screen as various influences recounted their latest purchases while feigning contentment.
“If you want to think politically, the site you should start with always is the female body,” Eisenstein said in the recorded clip. “If you can find out what is happening to the female body, you can have an understanding of politics.”
A somber harmony washed over the TikTok sound bites as Nares used the repetition of select phrases for emphasis. One particular instance was a segment dedicated to Amazon, with the words “✧ 963 Hz ✧ Connect to Your Spirit Guides Frequency ✧” adorning the screen as mass quantities of packages flashed by. To conclude the manifestation, Nares strung together several TikToks to construct a fictional conversation about happiness, juxtaposing the mundane serenity of one speaker with borderline comedic, emotionally driven entries of others.
Marking the screening’s return to short-form content, Mackenzie Thomas presented three TikToks reading diary entries from November 2012, December 2014 and February 2017 revolving around vanity-driven mishaps and failed quests for love. Guiding the viewer, Thomas’ painted fingernail pointed at each word as she traversed the doodled, black-and-red inked pages of her notebooks.
[Related: Avant-garde exhibit ‘Only the Young’ explores artistic rebellion of Korea’s youth]
With a mellow synth-style beat, Lewis’ video game, “FOR F*CKIN FUN,” offered a variety of colorful 2D fashion choices as players decide how they’d like to dress up for a theoretical night out. Another web-based project, Man’s “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” was scored by a cascading series of notes as images of red ballerina flats flickered onto the screen with matching italicized red text.
Tsagkaropoulou’s “The Real Violetta – Act III” followed, characterized by elegance and sensuality as an individual seated on a chaise lounge grazed their face, while another figure wearing nothing but a ruff and undergarments pole danced with slow, fluid movements. The animated work visible on the “Girl Crush” graphic, Amaral’s “False Idol” saw a visible darkness overtake an idol, accentuated by a shift in the pulsating, peaceful hyper-pop melody. Returning to her original state, the sequence ended nearly the same way it began.
With subtitles in English and Chinese, Ma’s “HORSE GIRL + SELF CARE” told a story of personal growth. Bubbles occasionally filled the screen, composed of a circular video of a digital horse overtop of changing landscapes. After a series of TikToks from Honor Levy, the night was brought to a close with Molly Soda’s “Me Singing Stay By Rihanna,” which featured a deliberately cacophonous rendition of the song as multiple YouTube cover videos were played simultaneously.
Design media arts alumnus Bobby Joe Smith III said seeing a curated collection of digital works that are traditionally viewed individually allowed for a more contextualized experience of femininity in online spaces. Because algorithms substantially impact who consumes certain media, he said there are subsects of the internet that he is unfamiliar with, but events such as “Girl Crush” can bridge that gap.
Furthermore, the alumnus said that while developing technologies are typically made with the defense industry in mind, seeing software used for art can open new pathways for engineers to innovate for creation as opposed to destruction. After the screening, Man said that though software is not typically viewed as a feminine concept, the internet has a very girlish quality. This reasoning and her passion for internet-based art are why Man said she wanted to share the evening’s works.
“I often feel very frustrated that a lot of those artists are not shown in traditional galleries or institutions, often because work made with new technologies has largely been ignored for years in the art world,” Man said. “I wanted this (Heart House) to be a DIY practice for me where I’m just trying to show people what’s possible and what I think is the greatest work out there.”
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