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Kate Durbin

KATE DURBIN

Artist, writer and performer, living in Los Angeles. Kate Durbin, represents the new generation of feminist artist working on social media, pop culture and new technologies. She has published numerous fiction and poetry including " E! Entertainment, ABRA, The Ravenous Audience " .

We discovered her through her perfomance "Hello Selfie!" . She was accompanied by several identically dressed girls, strolling the streets of Los Angeles, Union Square in Manhattan and Art Basel, while taking a selfie. The photos were posted in real time on the various social networks.

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. 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 pas sive-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/#)


Photography by Emily Raw

Lately, she has performed a new performance "Hello Selfie Men" , this time with men, shirtless.

Written by Lonely † Boy

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