LOCKDOWN
ARCHIVE
MIKE MANDEL
CHANTAL ZAKARI
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2018
webaffairs
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2000-2005
artist's publication/photo-book
hardcover, 9.75x13.25"
144 pages
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publication date: 2005
Eighteen Publication
$35
Archive or the original website:
Companion pieces:
webAffairs is an artist’s documentation of an adult video web community. The artist, Show-n-tell, tells her story of being a voyeur and eventually becoming part of this community through a series of images and actual chat text. Initially shy, she asks men to show her their rooms. She finds naked men by their computers in their office spaces, living rooms and bedrooms. She collects images of their naked bodies juxtaposed with their surrounding computer equipment.
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Eventually she becomes a regular within the community and makes friends. People share their personal crises with her. One woman is living with her boyfriend but is having an affair with another man online... A prematurely retired man is feeling lonely at home and tells her, “The wife works from 7am to 5pm, comes home, watches TV and falls asleep, sex once a week on Saturday mornings. Now I play on the computer, a great mind gone to waste! I lost 20 lbs since June when I finally stopped drinking, but now I am addicted to these rooms.”
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The main narrative, however, is told through Show-n-tell’s voice. She participates in the community both as an observer and a performer. After a while she has her own virtual sex show but as a married woman she too negotiates the limits of her explorations within virtual space with her real life partner.
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The electronic images gathered in chatrooms are transformed as photographic stills in the book. Because of the limits of the technology the image disintegrates into pixels which speak to a new sensibility in image making. The text also takes on an electronic accent. The members of virtual communities have transformed the English language by using acronyms that are incomprehensible to the outsider and yet are understood even by non-English speakers.
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This artist’s book is a documentation of Show-n- tell’s navigation through erotic virtual space. But like most documentaries, the material has been electronically edited and graphically redesigned to dramatically communicate her story.
INTRODUCTION
inside cover
conversations with my husband
show me your room, pls
trophy wives
will not ignore privates
collection
SAMPLE PAGES
EXHIBITIONS
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2012
Howard Art Project, Rejected (group show), Boston MA
2007
Trustman Gallery, Simmons College, Transgress, Boston MA
Mills Gallery, at Boston Center for the Arts, Only Connect (group show), Boston MA
Studio Soto, webAffairs window projections, Boston MA
2006
The Erotic Museum, webAffairs, Los Angeles CA
2005
GASP, Bit-logic (group show), Boston MA
HallSpace, webAffairs, Boston MA
2004
Geschielde Gallery, Birds & Bees (group show), Chicago IL
Kellogg University Art Gallery, Cal State Polytechnic U. Pomona, DPI (group show), Pomona CA
Bernard Toale Gallery, The Drawing Project (group show), Boston MA
2001
Cyclorama, SMFA Faculty Show (group show), Boston MA
HALLSPACE
boston, MA | JANUARY 2005
PERFORMANCES & BOOK READINGS​
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Goldsmith College, London UK , Intimacy: Across Visceral and Digital Performance, book reading/
performance by show-n-tell - December 2007
Studio Soto, Boston MA, Boston CyberArts Festival, book reading/performance by show-n-tell,
April 2007
ArtInteractive, Cambridge MA, Upgrade Boston! book reading/performance and artist talk by
show-n-tell - March 2007 (this event was simultaneously broadcast in SecondLife)
Studio Soto, Valentine’s Day Book Reading - February 2007
Dorkbot - InterAccess, Toronto, Making Room Festival, Show-n-tell book reading - December 2006
Centraal Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands, Impakt Festival, NetPorn: Do it yourself - August 2006
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academic presentations
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Simmons College, Boston, MA, Spinning Thread into Gold, panel discussion - October 2007
Society Cinema and Media Studies conference, Soft Arousal Latex Party: Web Affairs and
Pornification in The Twilight Zone, w/Katrien Jacobs, Chicago - March 2007
Institute of Communication, Culture and Information Technology, University of
Toronto, visiting artist lecture - December 2006
The 4th International Conference on the Book, Emerson College, Boston, Self-publishing an
artist’s book: An artist’s journey into the book publishing world - October 2006
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REFERENCES IN BOOKS
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Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance
by Maria Chatzichristodoulou and Rachel Zerihan (page 220)
Springer, 2012
C’lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader
edited by Jacobs, Janssen & Pasquinelli, Soft Arousal: The Lover Who Endlessly Talks
Institute of Network Cultures, 2008
Sexier Sex: Lessons from the Brave New Sexual Frontier
by Regina Lynn, Part III: Self-expression, p 114
Seal Press, 2008
Netporn: DIY Web Culture and Sexual Politics (Critical Media Studies)
by Katrien Jacobs, Porn Arousal and Gender Morphing in the Twilight Zone, p90-94
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers - 2007
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REVIEWS & press
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Art Papers, Transgress: One-Person Exhibition of Photographic Works by Chantal Zakari
by Dina Deitsch - November/December 2007
The Oracle (Canada) A World of webAffairs by Norman Valdez - March 2007
clarin.com (Argentina) El libro prohibido de Internet by Marcela Mazzei - February 2007
f-News, Special Collections’ Dirty Little Secrets: Looking for love in the stacks of the Joan
Flasch Artist’s Book Collection by Britany Salsbury - February 2007
Boston Globe, A flirtation with desire by Cate McQuaid - February 22, 2007
South End News, Only Connect by Chris Orchard - February 1, 2007
Leonardo (UK) webAffairs Book Review by Andrea Dahlberg - September 2006
Sex Drive daily, a WIREDblog, Pose Like The Star You Are, by Regina Lynn - Sep 15, 2006
Institute of Network Cultures Blog, netPorn by Marije Janssen - August 2006
Neural (Italy) webAffairs book by Allessandro Ludovico - July 2006
Afterimage, Can U C Me by Jody Zelen - volume 33, no 6, June 2006
NY Arts Magazine, webAffairs book review by Joanne Cachapero - May/June 2006
Seattle Weekly, Sex and Filth on the Internet? Show us more. by Heather Logue and Rachel
Shimp - March 2006
LA Weekly, The Coffee Table, All Things Bright and Beautiful by Holly Meyers - December 2005
Umbrella: Artists’ Books Review, webAffairs Book Review by Judith Hoffberg - December 2005
XBiz World, Erotic Museum Exhibits Show on Chatrooms by Joanne Cachapero - December 2005
Sex Drive daily, a WIREDblog, Sex Drive, The Director’s Cut, by Regina Lynn - Nov 11, 2005
WIRED.com, Should You Be In Pictures by Regina Lynn - November 11, 2005
El Universal online, Las relaciones entre lo real y lo virtual by Gerardo Correa - November 2005
Art New England, by Lisa Paul Streitfeld - Oct/Nov 2005
Boston Globe, Drawing Connections by Cate McQuaid - September 16, 2005
BigRed&Shiny, Bit logic @ Gasp by Jonathan Fardy - September 2005
BigRed&Shiny, Chantal Zakari’s webAffairs - September 2005
WeeklyDig, got2bReal by Kate Ledogar - February 23, 2005
Boston Herald, Exhibit uncovers adults’ seamy, sexy webAffairs by Mary Jo Palumbo - Feb 8, 2005 Boston Globe, Up Close, Impersonal by Cate McQuaid - February 4, 2005
ORIGINAL WEBSITE
