What is my work about?
Every time we collaborate on a project, we grow up a little. We learn a little bit about each other and at the same time a little bit about ourselves. Growing up can be an isolating experience and this is exacerbated today by a technology where connectivity rules. Where are the boundaries between networks and users, where are our bodies in the end? Technology has also opened up the potential to grow in new ways and with each new work we hope to keep that act of becoming alive, extending our teenage years into old age.
Artist Statement
1.
Our interest in the internet started while we were at film school. We were frustrated with the peers around us and were looking for a different outlet for our films. The internet seemed like a place where people (especially kids) could go to get really weird. Teens were making things themselves in their bedrooms and posting it publicly, where anyone with an internet connection could access it. We were confronted with a moving image that did not play by any rules, but instead in its amateur quality was creating its own language unconsciously informed by the technology on which it was hosted. With every customized template and aesthetically unsound decision, we could see the hand and glimpse the body behind each upload.
2.
Growing up can be a very isolating experience; technology has the power to connect us in ways thought impossible. What happens when these two things collide? How is it that we can feel even more isolated when connected so intimately with many? Growing up as a teenager with technology gives you a platform and an audience, however limited. Growing up a teenager with technology as a celebrity gives you a platform and an almost unlimited audience. Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez were best friends and also prolific users and Disney stars; they called her Delena. The scandals that plague the Micky Mouse club do not happen anymore in the pages of tabloids released over years, but in real time with every tweet, instagram, and vine video posted.
3. How does our own community appear to us? To experience my friends, I scroll, I l like, I comment. Updates with more likes and more comments are pushed to the top. Attention is sustained for short bursts of intense activity. Promotion always takes a top spot in our priorities. What would it be like to have a book of all ads? It will include ads that range from self-promotion by our friends, to adverts for shows, institutions, and galleries. What kind of portrait of our network does this create and in what ways does this provide a way to network? Where does all this promotion lead? To promotion on the sidebars, a like for a product displayed as a personal choice shown to us on a timeline in between all our friends.
4. What is the community between us? We need to DTR. Define the Relationship. Are we girlfriend/boyfriend? Where do our bodies cross and interact? Where does the interest in your work connect with the interest in my work? Where do we stand? Let us step away from each other, grow up a little bit by ourselves and come back to each other in the future. We can collaborate on a different scale; have the work live with each other like we actually live together. Lets make separate work and show them together, divide the space with a wall, a hallway, a collaboration that draws a separation and figures out our boundaries, while showing us where we touch.
CV
BFFA3AE: Daniel Chew (b. 1988, San Jose, CA) and Micaela Durand (b. 1988, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
EDUCATION
2010
BFA in Film and Television, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, New York, NY
EXHIBITIONS
2014
Tasterʼs Choice, MoMA PS1, New York, NY
REALITY FX, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, New York, NY
*RIGHT ON!*, Duve Berlin, Berlin, Germany
DTR (Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew) curated by Brian Droitcour, 47 Canal, New York, NY
2013
Neoteny, 247365, Brooklyn, NY
AD BOOK: Express Visual Edition, Gloria Maria Gallery, Milan, Italy
TL;DR, LʼAtelier Kunst, Berlin, Germany
2012
Big Reality, 319 Scholes, New York, NY
iSaw Him First, Back Yard Projects, New York, NY
CKTV, 9th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China
AD BOOK Networking Event, Goethe Institut New York, New York, NY
2011
This and that thought., commissioned by Turbulence.org, Internet
Like, Vogt Gallery, New York, NY
Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Back Yard Projects, New York, NY
the time now is, klausgallery.net, New York, NY
2010
Moving Shapes and Colors curated by Brian Droitcour, 179 Canal, New York, NY
postTV LIVE, Cabinet Magazine Space, Brooklyn, NY
Sculpture Storage, La Mama Galleria, New York, NY
Vacation, 179 Canal Online Exhibition Platform (www.179canal.com), Internet
2009
TXTual Healing, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY
IRL, Capricious Space, Brooklyn, NY
PRESS
Critics Pick: DTR, Artforum.com, July 2014
Visual Identity: Meet BFFA3AE, the Duo Exploring the Art of Communication in the YouTube Age, Fader, July 2014
MoMA PS1 Spring Open House, ArtTribune, April 2014
Featured Artists: BFFA3AE, SculptureCenterSculptureNotebook, March 2014
AD BOOK: An Interview with BFFA3AE, Rhizome, March 2013
BFFA3AE: 3 BFFS Are Making Some Rly Rad Meta Net Art, The Creators Project, March 2013
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AD BOOK, Badlands Unlimited, 2013
How to Download a Boyfriend, Badlands Unlimited, 2012
uh duh yeah (2014), Video and performance. 5:39 min. 2014
uh duh yeah (2010), video and performance. 9:26 min. 2010.
AD BOOK by BFFA3AE E, E-book video trailer. 2:50 min. 2013.