Artiste, écrivain et performer, vivant à Los Angeles. Kate Durbin, représente la nouvelle génération d'artiste féministe travaillant sur les médias sociaux, la pop culture et les nouvelles technologies. Elle a publié de nombreuses fictions et poèmes, notamment "E! Entertainment, ABRA, The Ravenous Audience".

 

Nous l'avions découverte à travers sa perfomance "Hello Selfie!". Elle était accompagnée de plusieurs jeunes filles habillées de manière identique, déambulant dans les rues de Los Angeles, sur Union Square à Manhattan et à Art Basel, tout en se prenant en selfie. Les photos étaient postées en temps réel sur les différents réseaux sociaux.

 

KATE DURBIN : "The girls were taking the selfies, they were uploaded in real time to the Facebook event wall and to our various Instagrams and Tumblrs. The project was unfolding in both spaces simultaneously. I wanted to take what girls do online in the protection of their bedrooms and put it in a public IRL place where people would be forced to confront their reactions—both tender and violent—to female narcissism and the selfie phenomenon. I’m interested in the ways in which violence toward women’s images online ties into violence against their bodies in real life. And the ways in which women seem to bear the brunt of narcissism accusations, even though everyone’s taking selfies. [...] The rules that I was a stickler about were no talking, they could not talk to the audience or each other. It was really important that they be in their own world of selfies and their own little bubbles of narcissism. If people tried to interact with them, they could only respond through their phones passive-aggressively. I’m interested in the ways our connections with each other are mediated through technology, even when we are in public IRL spaces, such as Chinatown in Los Angeles and Union Square in New York, where two performances have taken place. The square is such an ancient meeting space, and also conjures for me the brutality of the mob. Can the phone be a weapon? Can it provide protection? These are questions I considered."

(source : http://thehairpin.com/2014/12/kate-durbin-interview-in-progress/#)