NATALIE BOOKCHIN

Background Natalie Bookchin currently lives and works in Los Angeles, Ca. serving as c0-Director of Photography and Media at the California Institute of the Arts She is best known for her video installations and digital narratives that comment on the conditions of global connectivity and the impact of everyday uses of new technology on the stories we tell about ourselves and the world. She also is known as the organizer of <net.net.net>, an 8 month series of lectures and workshops on art, activism, and the internet at CalArts, MOCA in LA, and Tijuana.

Major Theme Explored: Global Connectivity as an Expression of Our Times Throughout her work she explores the formal and conceptual consequences of online video viewing and sharing. She appropriates clips from You Tube. The clips are edited and sequenced in streams revealing patterns of self revelation and narrative. The people in the clips add to, echo, contradict, join in and complete solo narratives. Through the installations, Bookchin analyzes the contemporary way we express ourselves and the expression of the social realities and issues of our times. Much of her work reflects on the juxtaposition of simultaneous connectivity & isolation and of intimacy & anonymity that characterizes online social communities.

Testament-My Meds Testament is a series of “vlogs” from online video diaries touching on topics such as identity, illness, politics, etc.

Trip This is a road movie made by streaming images off You Tube shot from cars and transversing 70 countries. Trip reflects on circulation of images, people, and goods around the world.

Mass Ornament This is probably my favorite work. This is made up of hundreds of clips of people dancing alone in their rooms. Here Bookchin uses these synchronized videos to comment on how social networks have embodied some key characteristics of Post-Fordism. Emphasizing the individual, the home, internal production, it shows how this social and economic rationalization has encroached on what used to be our private spaces-our homes, our bodies and our social relations. At the same time the dancers seem to cry out for attention and their moment of fame despite the disembodied, isolated online environment.