Artists and Hackers

SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY: A Meditation on Power on all Levels

Lee Tusman
You’re listening to Artists and Hackers, a podcast on art, code and community.

We talk to programmers, artists, educators and designers in an effort to critically look at online art making and the history of technology and the internet. We’re interested in where we’ve been and speculative ideas on the future. I’m Lee Tusman.

This season we’ve partnered with the New Media Caucus, an international non-profit formed to promote the development and understanding of new media art. We’ve interviewed 5 new media artists working today, both individually and at a live in-person event in February. This season of the podcast is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts grants for arts projects.

Just a heads up for our listeners, in this episode we acknowledge and discuss sexuality throughout the episode.

On today’s episode, I’m speaking with SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY. Holloway is a Chicago-based new media artist and poet. Known for her noisy experimental electronic and performance practice, Holloway shapes the rhetorics of technology and sexuality into tools for exposing structures of power. She has spoken and exhibited work internationally since 2012 in spaces like Performance Space New York, The New Museum, The Kitchen, The Time-Based Art Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), The Knockdown Center, and the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. SHAWNÉ is currently Assistant Professor of Video/New Media in the Kinetic Imaging department at Virginia Commonwealth University and is the Digital Developer and Technology Manager with Black Lunch Table’s archives team. She was selected by the Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2022-23 New Works Initiative as the current Chicago Performance Commission recipient. In addition to her fine arts practice she is a dedicated open source software advocate and a powerlifter.

Lee
You’re a new media artist and a poet and a performer and these are perhaps oversimplifications of your work. So I’m just curious how you describe yourself as an artist.

SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY
Yeah I definitely go by new media artist and I’ve always maintained that the kind of definition of new media is whatever the newest media is that reaches the most people on the most daily level. And because of this I’m really invested in this term “real time.” And real time is, I mean it is what it says it is. It’s “real time” but it’s processes that are happening immediately and that are responsive and I really picked this up from the kind of Chicago school of live performance and computer science kind of mishmash of folks. This is really important to me because of that idea that media is reaching us all of the time and that’s looked different over history. And so my practice of being a new media artist really is tied to trying to understand ways that we interact with one another in real time through technology and how that’s always happened. So not just like you know, fancy computer graphics and cryptocurrencies and the newest thing like that. But also what does that mean in drawing and painting and written language and all of these things that are effectively technologies. And so that’s why I also am very invested in performance as a way to really communicate that exchange that can happen there with media.

Lee
And can you say a little bit about that scene or community that you’re coming out of in Chicago? You had mentioned it. I’m curious, is that like a community based around SAIC where you went to school or kind of a larger performance or new Media network?

SHAWNÉ
Yeah, definitely. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is where I was, kind of one pinpoint in a very very very long history of folks working across universities. You know the ways that we become academics or who is an academic or what academic life is has changed a lot over the years. And the ways in which this community formed was really on a sort of experimentalist level, from academics that were working in computer science at the University Of Illinois at Chicago, and there’s a lot of histories of dancers and those computer scientists coming together. I would say the way that I was taught and told, which always excludes a hundred billion people, is that a lot of this community revolved around the electronic visualization lab at at the SAIC and Dan Sandin who made the Sandin Image Processor and this is a kind of indication of a wider practice of experimental electronics and how those things were maybe put forth in testing with dancers and musicians and things. Everyone who comes through the film, video, new media departments kind of new media focus program. You learn about all of this history through technology that was really there and so that’s also I think indicative of this idea of real time, making these machines in the city with people across all schools. Everyone at least when I was doing things was welcome in the the DIY spaces. And I think when I say everyone, it’s really important to kind of put forth that in Chicago I was accepted, you know maybe not without some struggle but like into this scene efforts to be inclusive in that sense are really present and that’s also very much documented by, I am forgetting the book title, but it’s something like you know 40 years of women in technology, and a lot of those folks are in Chicago specifically.

Lee
It’s really cool to hear about the scene and community. Maybe even we could walk back a little bit further, which is, how did you come to be a new media artist or performer? Someone working in DIY space, these realms. You don’t have to go all the way back to childhood. But I’m just curious how you move towards working in art?

SHAWNÉ
Yeah, I was supposed to be a lawyer. That was what I wanted to do. And be, yes, and that’s how I got invested in history and how history can affect the present.

Lee
Really!

SHAWNÉ
And I took a class called Media Art Histories and Genealogies, which I have actually now have taught years of that now, that same class that really galvanized me as a new media artist. And I feel really proud of the fact that I was able to do that. I’m my own fan girl or something, I don’t know.

Lee
Funny.

SHAWNÉ
But in that class I learned about the ways that magic really comes through history, through the built world. And I looked at my two teachers which were John Cates and Daniel Eisenberg at times and I said, I have registered for all of your classes next semester. You’re spending a minimum of 12 hours a week with me. And I just received the mentorship that I needed. And I was a sculptor and a painter at the time and I had been sort of deterred from continuing that because of some accidents in the welding studio. Ah, LOL. Which to this day you will hear me say I don’t like to make things. I don’t like to build things. I know how to build things. But I just didn’t receive the mentorship that allows me to feel like really fluid in that space. And so these folks really said “okay,” and as a result you know of being persistent, I was able to kind of join up forces with them as many you know students do with their professors in college and learn the ropes of also how to administer and create space for experimental work which is not the kind of work that you do when you’re alone in the studio all the time. So it was a chance for me to get out and talk about things and and connect with people.

Lee
That’s wonderful. It’s really nice to just hear that you found that support and that it’s unlocked some doors for you. I’m wondering since this is a podcast. We’ve just got audio to work with and your works are so expansive. And so breaking of genre and format. I was hoping maybe we could describe one of them. And just as a jumping off point to go further into your work, I I don’t know if this is one to pick, you know, ah open to you, but one that I thought we could describe would be one of your most recent kind of performances, which is also an installation called ._SUITABLE.FOR-[EXE]CUTION that was presented at Performance Space New York. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SHAWNÉ
._SUITABLE.FOR-[EXE]CUTION was a real big experiment into how many processes of real time I could put into one room at one time in as many different forms as I could. And that says nothing about what it looked like, but I think it’s important to note that all of my titles are somehow describing the way in which the programming of the work works and happens as you see it. But also as it’s documented. The way that ._SUITABLE.FOR-[EXE]CUTION is written is a file type structure. So at the end it says like dot exe and then it extends to execution but that was really important for me to to massage that title into something that would be software indicating because of the ways that in real time this work ._SUITABLE.FOR-[EXE]CUTION was executed. So to describe it on a visual level, it was a performance that happened over 3 nights and there was a cast of folks enacting directions, commands, effectively, which is a play. And I cringe because I think I learned a lot about what is a play and what is a performance here in this work. But of a story about a power struggle. And that power struggle was informed by a comic called We3 in which dogs and cats and all these animals were put into a laboratory and made sort of cyborgs. And this was really about this question of, well what happens when they escape? What happens when we escape? And the ways that Donna Haraway might talk about dogs as man’s best friend, and AI, and it really just felt prescient in this current time talking about how do we deal with this AI thing? And that was really before the reality of AI and Chat-GPT and all of these other things that we have now set in. And so the way that this performance looked was a lot of desperation coming from folks that were acting as animals in captivity in the space.

SHAWNÉ
There were four big cages that also housed fourteen to twenty-five screens in various places and as these performers were enacting this play or this story in real time Isadora was running a 40 minute long film. And in this film there were instructions. And as the performers were on the stage the instructions were playing to them in real time. So without the instructions the performers may not have been able to do the performance. So effectively the performance becomes not only an interactive real-time kind of device, a piece of device theater, but it’s also a computer program that’s constantly running and compiling code. And at the end of this there was a kind of very dramatic lights up and then a poem ran for I think it was approximately 13 minutes with the lights on after being completely in the dark, in smoke. And there was kind of no end to this computer program. And I thought that was really important as an executable file. You know where does something that we execute end? How can real time end? And I think the gag is that it doesn’t, but the thing that really also makes my performance work different than others is that everything is connected. It’s a push to start system.

SHAWNÉ
And without that push to start system, that big red button, this would not work. So what does that also have to say about the initiation of power, the initiation of a computer program the way that we interact or touch something for the first time to like create a ripple effect. It’s just a meditation on really power at all levels in the computer programming moment, but also in the the ways that we sit with how computers run our programs.

Lee
Yeah I mean your work often deals very explicitly with power and sexuality and in particular also the aesthetics and the ethics of BDSM. I was curious if you could say a little bit about how sexuality in general shows up in your work and maybe in particular how submission and domination are are parts of your practice?

SHAWNÉ
Definitely. I want to kind of preface this and say that that part is me, that part is my life. That part is what I enjoy seeing and looking at. You know as an artist I think one of the most simple pieces but also best advice pieces of advice that I’ve ever gotten and also like to tell to my students is just like make what feels like you and make the things that you don’t see in the world that you want to see and that for me recently has been something I’ve been talking about less or. Maybe let me reframe that, something that I feel less obligated to explain or take a stance on because BDSM is something that’s not to say I’m not going to answer the question. It’s just like BDSM is something that is always in Flux and always something that is going to mean so many things to different people and so for me what that does to be able to sit with that iconography of the leather and the chains and all of this is remind me of the kinds of escape that are possible. So the sexuality that I’m bringing to the table is a meditation or a gift for how I see an experience being a black, lesbian leather dyke-identified fantasy haver, you know, and so I want to just like de-sensationalize that part of my work other than it being like this yummy thing that I really love and the lens through which I understand the imbalances and possibilities of power.

Lee
I’ve seen a few of your works in different kinds of exhibits and so one I wanted to ask about was The Chamber Series. I saw a few different kinds of representations or presentations of that. And I think you started working on it in 2017 and continue to work on it and it might be a good representation of your practice overall. Or maybe not? But you know it has a lot of different permutations and one of the things I found really interesting about it is that you’re using the form of the graphic score which is inspired by classical music. But instead of, you know, a score for music that you’ve written out these are scores for a series of different kinds of performances or acts that either a performer or an audience member or potentially both are required to enact. Could you describe this a little bit more, maybe some of the different projects within this?

SHAWNÉ
Yeah, actually ._SUITABLE.FOR-[EXE]CUTION is the last installation of The chamber Series and that’s to say that this series is so vast. There were 20 parts to this series in different museums and institutions across the world. And I am so grateful for every opportunity that I was able to morph and really change and push my understanding of what a score is, but also what the question of how do we create the blueprints for a fantastic life or if you know a life that meditates on fantasy. And for me that is BDSM or the space to be deviant or fugitive, and that says something about my practice I think or maybe even the space to be safe. But The chamber series in general was inspired by the practice of puppy play, which is acting like a puppy and it sounds really innocent and it’s because it is. It’s escape through displacing one’s humanness. And the kinds of protections that we receive and maybe even give as a being that only responds to kind of like you know food, water , shelter, sex. Ah you know, physical urges. Yeah love.

SHAWNÉ
And this was really important for me to do over that twenty part series because of this concept of real time. How can we create a practice or a meditation around a question you know through discipline and I don’t know what is more BDSM than that, you know? It’s like creating a life of discipline and the culmination of that really was this executable file and and I think that’s also really important to underscore The Chamber Series sort of ethic with is like do what you want to do, make it happen, execute the file, right? Like only good things will happen and bad things happen, then you learn a lesson which is always a good thing. So yeah.

Lee
Yeah, it’s Interesting. You know, this is a performance. There’s a graphic score but your work you know is… you’re committed to creating with software. You’ve also worked in net art. I guess I was interested in hearing about the importance of that in your work.

SHAWNÉ
Definitely you know I haven’t thought about net art in a really long time and I really am excited to have the privilege to do this because one of the things that I don’t have a dedication to anymore is the image. Like what is an image is like…

SHAWNÉ
I write it down every single day in my little notebook, my digital notebook of like, what is an image? I don’t get it because so much of the realm of thinking in software is about connections and networks and executable files or these things that are like completely intangible fantasy, right? It isn’t something. It Is not an image. I mean you can conjure images through fantasy but they’re not an image and so I think being really invested in software or being really invested in libraries in particular… You know the concept of a library being something that is a collection of things, also is not an image. You can’t really read a library. You can go pick up something in the library but the real true heart of the library lies at an aggregate and I think software is the same and so my practice creating software, contributing to software projects, or even most recently I worked for Black Lunch Table as their Digital Developer and Technology Manager really dedicating myself to understanding how do we create interfaces through which we look at connections and Black Lunch Table is this amazing organization that chronicles Black life and and Black artists and what they do through testimony and conversations around the world. And so my my job in software, my job in community really is to say how do we plan out these connections and you don’t even find me in images anywhere in connection to these things because I’m just really dedicated and sort of like heads down at how do we execute the file. Because at the end of the day communities need action and I’m not the person always to make that action punch through the wall you know, but I certainly can make sure that the little touch points are there to make that action happen.

Lee
I know you’re a fan of open source software. Could you describe what that is and and why you think it’s so important?

SHAWNÉ
Open source software are tools whose source codes or perhaps processes that go into creating the tools are open and free and shareable and discoverable and I think that word discoverable is really important because there’s varying shades of like how open a given tool is or how open a given community is. But more importantly to me open source software is defined not by like the license that it uses. It’s not by necessarily the content of the tool or how open the the contributing tool is but more by the community that has opened that software and the contributors that are able to cultivate what that software is.

Lee
I Wanted to also ask a little bit about your your experience as a teacher and professor and what brought you to that in general?

SHAWNÉ
I had a really big lesson when I was just making my work. So there was a series I did called Personal Project and, yes, I make works in very long and arduous series for better or for worse. I was a cam girl at the time and this is all documented so I’m not going to necessarily go too deep into that but one of the things that happens when you’re a cam girl is that you kind of accumulate hundreds of videos of you just doing like random things like the guy that I remember the most is, he wanted me to put beans in tennis shoes and then go outside and like walk around in these beans. True story. I love it. I love this, everybody’s trying to get free.

Lee That sounds like a fluxus performance or something!

SHAWNÉ
Okay yes, and well I think that’s what ended up happening was my professor was like all right? You don’t have time to cultivate more video. Why don’t you just use the video that you already are doing so I had brought some in at various times and you know at that time I was just using it to kind of learn how to do Final Cut and whatever else. But the thing that really kicked me in the mind really was there was this question from that same professor that was like why are you kind of keeping these videos for an arts audience? You have to reciprocate that if you kind of want to be about that life. And so I started putting my videos on XTube which is the place where I spent the most time. So this question of how does the communities that you are involved in directly impact you and change you and you know like change the course of your literal life because this was happening to me while I was a student in college I was exhibiting things and really just very lucky to be recognized for my work and I said that the ways that I was responded to allowed me to just have so much more connection in my life and I think that that same ethic is how I see arts. So as I progress in the arts the ways in which the community gives to me I just want to be able to give that back and not necessarily in some like, “I’m so great I have everything to say,” but more like we have to have all hands on deck. I have two hands. I have a sort of functioning very chronically ill-bodied but very you know, I’m here when I can be! I can do that and I just feel like I have a responsibility to kind of make that reciprocity happen. I will say that it is in spite of the academic world. I don’t want to be here, but it is the best way to reach the most people with the most support and be able to redistribute that support amongst the people that need it the most, which is our youth and our young kids. And so I do that and I love every single day of it.

Lee
Totally. Is there anything that you wish I had asked or you wanted to say or that you feel like we should touch on?

SHAWNÉ
I feel, I don’t think so. I think you know it’s been a really long time since I’ve been able to reflect in this way and I just really appreciate your time and thanks. I feel very um seen.

Lee
Cool. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you spending time talking with me today.

Lee
It goes without saying that new media artists are interdisciplinary. SHAWNÉ is an artist, a poet, a performer, and a digital developer and community steward. She worked for Black Lunch Table as their digital developer and technology manager, supporting archival work documenting Black artists and lived experiences.

One area that comes up in many of my interviews with new media artists is a discussion of their tools, those that they make or use. And as more and more artists are using a variety of tools and software, they end up impacting our understanding of them, what software and tools mean and their place in shaping culture. I found it really interesting how as a performer Shawne integrates the ecosystem of software into her performance work.

For example in ._SUITABLE_FOR.EXE[CUTION] the name itself embeds dot exe, an executable file. This is also sometimes called a binary file. And the executable file contains specific encoded instructions for the computer to follow. This is both a specific reference to a performance score, and it also ties into the idea of an event score, in my mind, Fluxus event scores and happenings, which Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort in the New Media Reader describe as scripted theatrical events for an audience with limited audience interaction. It’s long been a staple that artists use constraint to set self-imposed rules to help them guide the creation of their works. In SHAWNÉ’s work, she’s creating the rules for the performers to follow, more fundamentally, rules around submission and domination in BDSM become part of the ecosystem of the work. And many of her projects and performances feature this idea of performers submitting to the rules of the event score.

Interestingly, there’s a piece of software that runs the work, and she describes it as being a push to start system that can only run when the whole system is started up, the software itself calls the shots, so there’s music, film, performers, and even poetry, all part of the score.

SHAWNÉ’s use of constraints, pain and pleasure, speak to issues of power, both in private, intimate space as well as in the public sphere. Many of her works feature animal training, algorithmic scores or controls, and a reference to or use of robotics - speaking to the time we live in now, anxiety and pleasure, as we embrace, and are repulsed by the latest technologies, and these complicate the connection between power and desire.

It stuck with me that some of SHAWNÉ’s grad school work that sounded like it really started to come together for her was when a professor of hers embraced her bringing in these different parts of herself and her life that were separated, integrating them into her art practice. I loved her story of where she had created a video of walking around in shoes filled with squished beans for a client and then presenting it as part of her art practice, taking on another resonance. What came off as a hilarious story to me, also comes off as touching. And it sounds like as a professor now herself, SHAWNÉ sees her role as being a supporter for her students, making them feel supported and celebrated, just as much as she felt that way herself.

Thanks to our guest on today’s program, SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY. My name is Lee Tusman. Our audio producer is Max Ludlow.

This season of the podcast is produced with the New Media Caucus for New Rules: Conversations with New Media Artists. You can find out more by visiting www.newmediacaucus.org/

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov

Special thanks to Jessye McDowell, Rebecca Forstater and Nat Roe.

Our music on today’s episode is:

Kaleidoplasm - Poison Control

Podington Bear - Reflector

S-B-J - Be As Terror - Beast Error

Lobo Loco - Fingerorgel Kalimba

Kirk Osamayo - (Ambient) Fight

You can find more episodes, full transcripts, music credits, and links to find out about our guests and topics on our website artistsandhackers.org You can find us on instagram at artistandhackers, and on mastodon at artistsandhackers at post.lurk.org You can always write to us on our website. Please forward this or any of your favorite episodes to a friend. And be sure to leave us a review or feedback wherever you get your podcast.

Thanks for listening.