21 – 24 January 2010

Plymouth Arts Centre presents The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow, a curatorial collaboration with the Marina Abramović Institute for Preservation of Performance Art. The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow will stage, document and discuss groundbreaking international performance art in order to examine and sustain the future of the medium.

This is the first curatorial project of the Marina Abramović Institute. Marina Abramović has pioneered performance art for over four decades on an international scale. Her major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opens in March 2010.

Ideas for the Institute are mapped in The Reading Room by Transmedia art students Brussels, Sven Goyvaerts & Filip Daniels.



E-flyer link



Performance Portal

- Chloe Nols (Facebook / September 10th / 12:01)



“it’s not his thoughts but his acts…
looks like an arty experiment to catch facebookers attention.
(or rather te see how far we are interested to express ourselves and so uninterested about reading other people thoughts, or even like an anthropological study of his fbfriends reactions on his extreme banal comments, maybe the more unsignificant, the more attention you get…?
but it’s just my humble opinion
Anyway, looks like sven is gonna soon be deleted from his fbfriends welcome page …”

- Marie-laure Imal (Facebook / September 10th / 12:32)



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After months of incessant status updates and hundreds of picture uploads, Sven Goyvaerts – acting out of utter despair – committed seppukoo. From this day forth, may he continue to live on under his virtual identity of ‘Sven G’.

-> last words before committing Seppukoo on December 4th



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Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website’s name stems from the colloquial name of books given at the start of the academic year by university administrations with the intention of helping students get to know each other better.

(from Wikipedia)



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Hacking and parasiting one of the most popular social networking websites, Seppukoo.com deactivates one’s user Facebook account, driving people into one of the most radical chic user-experience: the vir(tu)al suicide. As viral marketing strategies have been exploited by corporate media to make profit connecting people all over the world, Seppukoo playfully attempts to subvert this mechanism disconnecting people from each other and transforming the individual suicide experience into an exciting “social” experience.

(from Seppukoo.com)

Exhibited at Galerij Jan Colle in Ghent, together with documentation of two other pieces – Hotmail and Evernotes.

photo by Jan Colle

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Exhibited at Prospectives.09 – Exhibit/Interact (Reno, NV – USA) November 12th – December 16th.

“Sven Goyvaerts’ piece Self-Portrait might at first appear to be a video loop of the artist presented like traditional portraiture, but, in a twist straight out of a Harry Potter book, the portrait is able to interact with gallery visitors because it’s actually a live webcam feed of the artist. It’s a piece that combines technology with an endurance performance—the artist plans to be remotely present during all gallery hours—to create a contemporary twist on an ancient art form.”

- Brad Bynum / Reno News & Review

link to photo by Rob Duarte

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VRIJSTAAT
A new city, a personal utopia
November 30th until December 12th
Closing event: December 12th, 12:00
Pond Noordkasteel, Roeikom, Antwerp

A construction/performance by Thomas Verstraeten

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Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. In addition to being a popular website for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository.

(from Wikipedia)



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message from Pixelpipe uploader
October 15th 2009

* Flickr failed because Account Full.

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Evernote is a web service and software application that allows users to collect notes and information.

(from Wikipedia)



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Documentation of this work has been exhibited at Galerij Jan Colle in Ghent.

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090616

0828 got wake-up call from maud
0829 get up
0830 put on glasses
0831 toilet n#1
0833 wash face
0838 took dvd-player for maud
0841 toilet n#2
0848 put on clothes
0852 mini-shave, insert lenses, brush teeth, clean ears
0859 open bedroom window
0900 pack rucksack
0914 close bedroom window
0918 drink orange juice, take hankie, take water bottle &
take an apple
0925 riding tram to station
$ 0933 got cash from terminal – 20€
0941 train to bxl nord
0949 applied nivea deo stick
1008 got sms from maud
1017 call maud
1021 walk to pool
1034 take out material from pool & blow nose
1039 walk to tm-building
1055 blow nose
1114 kiss maud
1115 set up presentation in classroom
1236 burning dvd for maud & test dvd-player
1251 kiss maud
1253 kiss maud
1254 browse for roman opalka, read e-mails from workshop
participants
1301 thrown mini-dv wrapper & cd-spindle package in trash
1314 moving belongings out of classroom
1318 toilet n#2
1323 scout location courtyard
1324 kiss maud
1337 preparing to shoot performance maud
1338 blow nose
1341 walking to pool to get monitor from maud
1410 call from peter verwimp
1418 call maud & natasha
1431 helped maud with installation & start up camera
1519 blow nose
$ 1521 bounty bar – 0,6€
1522 eat bounty bar
1524 throw bounty wrapper in trash
1526 kiss maud & help to clear her installation in the
hallway
1531 kiss maud
1532 pack bag
1540 pause with maud
1550 continue to pack
1606 blow nose
1613 kiss maud & return books to school library
$ 1623 load proton – 5€
1632 got book ‘ctrl space’ from school library &
return to tm-building
1642 grab water bottle & join tm class
1644 drinking from bottle
1647 blow nose & leave to read book ctrl space
1708 join tm class again & drink water
1715 going to have a beer at l’ane fou with classmates
1722 drink palm
1752 sent sms to mom
$ 1758 palm beer – 2€
1801 return to tm-building for results
1807 kiss maud
1850 kiss maud
1852 toilet n#1
1857 call mom
1907 kiss maud
1908 back at l’ane fou
1915 sms from dad
1919 drink beer
1934 diner
1940 blow nose
1943 kiss maud
2000 call from activa
2003 sms from activa
2004 blow nose
2005 kiss from maud
$ quiche & beer – 8,10€
2032 kiss from maud
2103 arrived at maud’s place, took off clothes,
check mail
2224 made love to maud
2225 browse internet
2245 kiss maud & rent movie
$ 2304 movie & chips & fanta – 4,95€
2308 eat chips
2319 watch movie ‘the happening’
0057 make love to maud & sleep



sent from his iphone



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Re: 090616



“why do I get your life in my mail

get me out of there ASAP please

thanks”



“cool stuff man.
very entertaining

greetz,

F.”



“leuk, maar aan die lekkage moet je toch iets doen.
groetjes
erwin”



“Who are you and what is this?”



“hahaa))
actaully it was interesting to read (i didnt look through but i READ IT ALL!!!)
and sven – drink coke before going to sleep will make your life calendar much shorter!!!!!!
take care)
nath”



“eum,
wat is hier de bedoeling van sven…
beetje vreemde informatie”



“090621

0814 happy ex-student is in love”



“090622
9:27 : Read sven’s email

”



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A post I made on June 17th 2009 on the Windows Live Help forum:



Hello there,

My name is Sven and I am from Belgium. One hour ago I started experiencing the server problem.

The notification on my iPhone 3G says: ‘The connection to the outgoing server “smtp.live.com” failed.’

Here’s what must have caused it: I am a student following a postgraduate Transmedia degree in arts, media and design in Brussels (www.transmedia.be). This morning I began sending an e-mail to everyone in my contact list (roughly 600 people), as part of my research project. This is NOT meant to be spam. The mail I send will be accompanied by a second mail afterwards (which I can hopefully send later tonight) with a disclaimer explaining how people can be removed from the mailing list, if they please. To be taken off the list, they just have to send me a message back to my address svengoyvaerts@hotmail.com.

Can I please continue sending e-mails? I had no idea that this would happen, I apologize.

Thank you for your assistance.



Greetings,

S

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Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group.

(from Wikipedia)



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(1) Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (eds.). 2008. Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 38.

Can I become a fictional character, in what is commonly perceived as the real world, and create a space to release my desires on the one hand and be concerned with my duties towards the rest of humanity on the other?

Inspired by the work of performance artists such as Tehching Hsieh and NG, I am submitting myself to a strict weekly planning for 1 year and documenting my everyday life as Sven G, a fictional persona alternating between 12 sub-characters, all revolving around my default, perhaps even non-existent, ‘self’ by the name of Sven Goyvaerts.

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Classmate maudlefever had sent me an email she received from a
friend of hers who is working on a project called Time and Memory.
Catherine Oldenhove (that’s her name) is asking people to provide
her with some personal insight on this subject and urges everyone to come up with a unique alternative to our predominant idea of keeping standard time. The testimonies she gathers will serve as the basis for a theatre play revolving around the image of a kind of clock which has empty picture frames on the side instead of numbers. These frames are meant to be filled in by the participants. I accepted her challenge and applied my Sven G characters to her model.

First I put the character icons on the clock in a somewhat random fashion, but then I started opposing those who were in conflict; it’s not customary to eat while playing music, or to go to the toilet while walking (this icon used to be the sleeping one in a prior version). Superman always has to choose between the world and Lois Lane, my education gets in the way of my job and most of the time you can’t really joke when doing business. Finally, my emotions and desires, in the form of the G-icon, are opposed to the I-character, which is the one character questioning the fact whether I am an individual at all.

The minute hand could signify the character I happen to be in at present, while the hour hand would refer to the second most important character which complements the state I am in. The second hand, which is always switching from one character to the next, symbolizes the constant alternation between my core desires, duties, wants and needs.

To keep track of the state of mind I am in, it would be very handy to have the clock as a wristwatch so I could immediately adjust my time, not only for myself, but also for people around me – to show them which character I happen to be in at that time.

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As I append 2.0 to this One Year Life Performance project I attempt
to link the personalities mentioned above to various social networks.
The ‘eating’ self is represented by a constantly updated FLICKR feed,
the ‘musical’ self is hosted on MYSPACE MUSIC, the ‘imaginative’ G-character tweets all of his actions on TWITTER. The distance traveled by the ‘walking’ self is being GPS-tracked and posted on EVERYTRAIL. The ‘Superman’ self posts his good deeds on RAKAWA, as the ‘loving’ self gets to know his girlfriend better through SKYPE. ‘Researching’ self updates his findings on BLOGGER and a showreel
of assignments done as a cameraman under other people’s command will soon be put online on VIMEO. The ‘gaming’ self plays a role in WORLD OF WARCRAFT and money is made and spent by the ‘business’ self on SECOND LIFE. The ‘physical’ self cannot easily be replaced or upgraded by media, but our senses might soon become advanced by AUGMENTED REALITY technologies. The ‘invisible’ I-character questions his very existence by uploading content anonymously to the video vortex that is YOUTUBE. My ‘default’ self, Sven Goyvaerts, is known to his friends via FACEBOOK.

A MacBook Pro allows me to keep track of all these applications. Thanks to an iPhone 3G with mobile internet capabilities I am able
to update many of these apps almost in real-time while on the go.

Gradually more apps and networks are being added to this selection
of social media. The clock model, which has turned into some sort of
vortex by now, is continuously being adjusted on the Research page.