Annie Abrahams (born 1954) is a Dutch performance artist specialising in video installations and internet based performances, often deriving from collective writings and collective interaction. Born and raised in Hilvarenbeek in the Netherlands, she migrated to and settled in France in 1987. Her performance work challenges and questions the limitations and possibilities of online communication and collaboration.
Abrahams describes her body of work as "an aesthetics of trust and attention." Studying biology became an inspiration for her future line of work. "When studying biology I had to observe a colony of monkeys in a zoo. I found this very interesting because I learned something about human communities by watching the apes. In a certain way I watch the internet with the same appetite and interest. I consider it to be a universe where I can observe some aspects of human attitudes and behaviour without interfering."
Life and career Abrahams was born in a small farmers' village in the Netherlands with four younger sisters. She gained a doctorate in Biology from the University of Utrecht (1978) and a diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts Arnhem (1985).
Brought into a world of agriculture, her academic pathway led her to become internationally known for her pioneering networked performance art and collective writing experiments. After gaining a Doctoraal (M2) in Biology from the University of Utrecht (1978), she was assigned as an assistant researcher at the university. At the same time she studied painting, and after gaining a Diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts Arnhem (1985), Abrahams received arts funding from the Dutch government to practice in France, where she moved to in 1987 and continued painting. Abrahams began to work with computer software (specifically DOEK, created for her by Jan de Weille in 1993) to develop and construct installations based on the complexities of her paintings. In 1992 her computer drawings were exhibited in her show Possibilities, located at the l'espace Forum in Nice, France. After a first experience in 1996 with a website especially made for an exhibition in the Hollandsche Spoorweg in Nijmegen, Abrahams decided to start working specifically for the web. From 1996, Abrahams delved further into networked performance, with an emphasis on space and distance social networking entails, by creating a physical space to interact with the 'virtual world' in a show in Nijmegen. She developed a website called Being Human with net art works she described as performative interventions in the public space of loneliness = the Internet (1997–2007).
Abrahams taught at the University of Montpellier as part of the arts department from 2002 until 2005. Following this, she curated InstantS for the net.art platform panoplie.org (2006 to January 2009) and the online performance series Breaking Solitude and Double Blind (2007, 2008 and 2009)
Abrahams continued to explore computer functions, telematic performance, and visitor choices through artworks that are concerned with an appreciation of beauty through contemplation and observation of aesthetic detail (for example Separation, Painsong, Karaoke). In a 2005 interview by ARTeMEDIA, she makes reference to her educational background in biology and her engagement with social networking, comparing the new and continuously developing form of social networking to the engagement and communication skills of monkeys in her studies, concluding that the internet has great potential as a universal platform for many new modalities of interaction.
Abrahams also engaged with the traces left behind from a performance on the personal level, as well as generating a new collaborative voice, as can be seen in her 2006 collaborations with Clement Charmet in The Webflaneur; "a Data Dandy trip" and with Igor Stromajer in Operra Internettikka.
Since 2007, Abrahams' work delves into and contextualizes how people react and form relationships in distributed online groups, for example in Huis Clos / No Exit and Angry Women. She has collaborated with a number of artists including Mark River, MTAA, Nicolas Frespech, Igor Stomajer, and Antye Greie. Her interactive performances often follow a desired 'footprint left in the sand' imprinted and left by the duration of the piece as well as formulating and creating a collective language from many different ethnicities and identities of individuals. The key factor of investigation revolves around the notion of human behavior when presented with a new interactive archive of networked based performance; she explores how participants 'click' and 'choose' opportunities to create new behaviors and perhaps a new way of thinking, for example a personal interaction without any interference from peers in ViolenceS, a 2009 collaboration with Nicolas Frespech.
Works
Being Human (1997–2007)
Abrahams developed the concept of networked performances with the project Being Human. This project explored the capabilities of participants in developing online relationships whilst in the comfort of their own space. Abraham's performance work engages and intersects with the physical space and networking technologies, creating the ability to produce new creative mediums, spaces and artworks such as networked performances, net.art pieces, installations, videos and collecting writing projects. Being Human attempts to outline both the capabilities and the restrictions network communication can bring. Abrahams states "[t]he site [Being Human] is based on the idea that the internet is an artistic medium that permits addressing people in their own intimacy, non-mediated by an art context." Being Human is reviewed in, which explains the relationships that Abrahams provides between moods, emotions, words, fonts, screen, and color. The meaning here depends on different visual interventions to underline different emotional states and intensities.
The project and parts of it have been exhibited in various forms of new media from video festivals to international shows. and discussed at electronic poetry venues and magazines and websites.
Double Blind (love) (2009)
The telepresence performance Double Blind (love), in collaboration with Curt Cloninger, presented the two artists' first encounter in real life. They were located in different places, Abrahams being in the Living Room in France and Cloninger was at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts centre. Both performers sang repeatedly to each other through real time/space and online social networks; they used the words "love, love, love" with their webcams showing a close-up. They were both blindfolded, in order to create a sense of isolation in the space they were confined to, and to allow them to connect with each other. They continued to sing until one of them decided to stop. Both video projections were visible to each other as well as in a space where audience members could watch both screens. The performance was broadcast on Selfworld.net (an online web streaming platform that no longer exists) and audience members were invited to see it in a live performance space.
If Not You Not Me (2010)
Abrahams first networked performance from the UK, If Not You Not Me, took place at the HTTP gallery in London in 2010. It incorporated previous projects such as the One the Puppet of Other (2007) and The Big Kiss (2008) with its central communicative medium entitled Shared Still Life/Nature Morte Partagée. The exhibition held the event entitled Shared Still Life/Nature Morte Partagée which was centralized with a telematic still life for mixed media and LED message board. Participants were given the opportunity to communicate with those at Kawenga – territoires numériques, situated in the media arts centre in Montpellier, France where they played and rearranged objects in still life whilst sending messages between each other.
On 12 February, On Collaboration Graffiti Wall combined text and audio communication: participants reflected on the problems that persisted in online collaboration on a website created for the exhibition. This documentation and reflection were displayed to other participants throughout the duration of the exhibition. Subsequently, Huis Clos/No Exit – Jam, a sequel from an earlier telematic performance event, challenged the reception of auditory information through collaborating to create a sound performance using webcams from across the world in which played throughout the exhibition.
In a review written by Maria Chatzichritodulou, she comments on how the minimal use of physical objects gave the performance a sort of 'nakedness' whilst creating a still life piece of artwork from stationery and office equipment. Chatzichristodoulou compares the performance to similar more technologically complex performances such as Hole-In-Space, which used satellite technologies, and the imposing advances of internet telephony protocols such as the application Skype, and concludes that If Not You not Me emphasises how the physical surroundings and the implication of a durational performances can contribute to the power of a performance by simplifying the technology to a simple screen and webcam. It also initiates a technological and physical exchange between participants as well as recognising a disconnection from an intangible corporeal reality shared by fellow active audience members. This performance event also included On Collaboration Graffiti and Graffiti Wall, establishing traces of collaborative work (written, sound and video messages) that imposed on the subsequent live installations.
Huis Clos/No Exit – On Collaboration and Jam (2010)
Abrahams challenges the dramatic orderings in her web performance of Huis Clos/No Exit – On Collaboration situated in CNES La Chartreuse in early 2010 for six performers whom became accustomed to reading material, illustrations that symbolized and depicted computer monitors. The purpose was to make the creation come to life through the performers. With the title pertaining to a theatrical terms as a claustrophobic piece of Satre, Abrahams integrates the virtual world and the performance device at a distance through the visual and audio recordings of a webcam clustered together to create a split screen. The objective of the piece was to test the levels of intimacy that can be gained from webcam sessions through a task based activity. The performers were then asked to create a single human face using the entire video frame of the webcams, made up of skins and bodies and evoking a sense of unity and intimacy despite the singular audio and visual capture of each performer.