The living
Work in progress
Introduction
This page presents the performance-based net artwork The_Living (1997-1998) by artist Debra Solomon. In 2019, The_Living was included in LI-MA’s Digital Canon project as part of twenty works that had lasting influence on digital art and culture in the Netherlands. In 2022, LI-MA carried out the research and conservation of The_Living. The preservation team received the personal archive of Debra Solomon in Fall 2022, followed by an interview with the artist in early 2023. Rather than re-enacting the work in the original set-up, the artist and the preservation team agreed that activating the work with a critical reflection of its conceptual aspects is a better way of preserving the memory and legacy of The_living. The Wiki presentation contributes to this goal of critical research and reflection on the work, with publishing as a preservation strategy. The structure of this web presentation follows the model of another case study researched by LI-MA and by Dušan Barok, Naked on Pluto (2010-2013, Marloes de Valk, Aymeric Mansoux, Dave Griffiths). This web presentation is written by Haitian Ma, with input from Gaby Wijers, Joost Dofferhoff, Claudia Roeck, Olivia Brum, and the artist Debra Solomon.
Work
The_living is a performance-based net artwork carried out by artist Debra Solomon (US/NL) between 1997 and 1998. It centered around the online life of the digi-persona ‘the_living’, with the artist as her flesh holder. The work is highly situationist, with the_living intervening in different chat rooms of an early video conferencing software CU-SeeMe without former notice. There, she would chat with other online users and live streamed moments of her life in unusual places, such as swimming pools, in Amsterdam canals and on the bike. These live performances often last throughout the day. The_living also had a website www.the-living.org, where the artist gave explanations of the work and displayed the various ‘Tamagotchi gifts’--animation and midi files she created—for her audiences.
After the year-long performance, the_living project continued to evolve in the form of installations, broadcasts and in-person tours until a complete shift in the artist’s practice in 2003. The website is no longer online and most of the digital files have been lost. The ephemeral lifespan of the work, however, does not veil its pioneering thrust in staging artistic intervention into the online public space, and critically reflecting on the blurring boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds at the early Internet age.
