Archive: Issue No. 102, February 2006

Nathaniel Stern is an artist, a teacher, a technologist, a blogger, a social catalyst and constant networker in the art community. As an artist, his works spans performance, poetry, interactive installation and video, net.art and print. Originally from Staten Island, New York (otherwise known as 'Shaolin' to those 'other' Staten-Islanders the Wu Tang Clan) Nathaniel has been a South African for some time now, after falling in love with (and marrying) South African drama academic Nicole Ridgway and moving to Johannesburg in the early 2000s. Nathaniel's artwork often touches on the mutability of personal identity, as in his assumption of multiple personas through his video performance work. His ideas around the body, a centre in much of his art and his focus in recent academic work around The Implicit Body, speak of the body and person 'enfolding' the world around them into themselves, and so constantly transforming.

His 'real life' contains many such echoes, or expressions of, the ideas in his artwork. There is little hierarchy to the number of social and professional roles he plays, as there is an undermining of hierarchy and linearity in the forms of narrative he investigates in his work, especially through his formulation of the Non Aggressive Narrative, or NAN. For his latest art project, Compressionism, Nathaniel rigged up a portable scanning unit which he uses to capture and digitise grass, leaves, objects - the physical environment - which he manipulates on the computer and makes physical again through high-quality prints. Nathaniel the person shifts as fluidly between the physical and the digital worlds as his artwork does; many people must know Nathaniel only through his online presence on his blog, "one of the most popular sites in the South African art world" according to Carine Zaayman.

�A lot of my earlier work treated the body as text and as concept, and I think some interesting provocations came out of that space, but it has inevitably led me now to the inverse: flesh as performed and emergent. Perhaps we are not 'in the between,' as mediated and mediating preformed entities, but rather, 'of the relation' - continuously transfigured through/with inter-action. I�m interested in the aches and beauty that come out when we aren�t looking, when we experience bodiliness in different ways, when vision is something we gesture towards, rather than own.
...
Although I�d never deny my own fascination with gadgetry, appendages and other prostheses, I see them only as any other catalyst - tools to help us question, engage, play, perform - and the complex inter-course that hopefully manifests is always already beginning.
...
What is at stake is the body and art as cooperative sites of potential resistance, counterinvestments in the automation of meaning, begging us to 'look again'.�

Despite his prolific arts production, blogging, writing and collaborative projects, Nathaniel says he must constantly give himself deadlines - both real and artificial - in order to actually "finish" anything in his "gadget- and paper-infested anarchy". He rapaciously grazes websites, books, magazines, bounces ideas off anyone who will listen - nine out of ten of which never go anywhere. He spends a great deal of time experimenting with his media, and seeing what will happen, but even more time critically engaging with what it does and what is at stake. Dedicated to inter-disciplinarity and collaboration, he has worked across choreography and theatre, poetry and academic writing, photography, video and installation. Things like programming and video editing sometimes dictate purpose and structure to his otherwise chaotic process, and so the final works often exude a very serious playfulness. Of his community-building work, through workshops and teaching, and more informally his hobby of usefully connecting people to one another, he describes himself self-deprecatingly as "a bit of a grazer" - other people's ideas excite him and fuel his work.

"Staged via various media, Nathaniel Stern�s work enacts the interstices of body, language and technology. It seeks to force us to look again at the relationships between the three, and invites us to experiment with their relation. His body of work can, perhaps, be described as an exploration of the interstitial itself - revisiting between technology and text the dangerous spaces of enfleshment, incipience, and process."
- Nicole Ridgway's bio / feature on Stern for NY Arts Magazine, March/ April 2006

"More remarkable work from Nathaniel Stern as he reworks, in the most curious of ways, Woody Allen�s Annie Hall. Interesting that although the working method here seems almost diametrically opposed to the hands on, performative approach found in 'the odys series' ([Stern's feature on] dvblog 01/05/06) here too is that same sense of the fragility & vulnerability of human beings and their bodies & psyches & of the unreliability of the language we use to try & make what we want to happen & to relate or lie about what did."
- Michael Szpakowski on "at interval" and "the odys series," video artworks in DVblog, January 2006: http://dvblog.org/woody-allen-nathaniel-stern

"Nathaniel Stern, new media artist, and tireless blogger of the media art scene in Johannesburg, has created a hauntingly poetic digital backdrop - a combination of sombre, abstract textures and live video feed which enacts a disjointed dialogue with the dancers. Reminiscent in its brooding shadowy forms of Kentridge�s parade of coal black despair, Stern�s work is a new media expression of South Africa�s new sorrow."
- Lizzie Muller in "The Future Makers" on a work with PJ Sabbagha, RealTime Magazine #70 (Australia), January 2006

"Their second experiment... makes quite a marked impression, in the way that it utilizes simple technological processes to ask viewers to look anew at art and the artwork at hand... Different from the norm of this type of art - the changing and moving image - Neustetter and Stern capture time itself, and not the movement as such."
- Wilhelm van Rensburg (translated from Afrikaans), on Nathaniel Stern and Marcus Neustetter's "experiment02" in Die Beeld, "Exsperiment wat kyker se kyk na kuns belig," May 2005

"Akin to John Cage�s reading of James Joyce�s Finnegan�s Wake, the results are unique and aesthetically sound. The narrative cores of the works are not easily detectable, giving the audience licence to navigate. Benjamin writes of the danger of interpretation, commenting that the �chaste compactness of a story which precludes psychological analysis� is powerful enough to arouse �astonishment and thoughtfulness�, forever. Further, he comments on the ability of a story to make the reader lose him/herself. This is one of Stern�s central promises."
- Robyn Sassen on "the storytellers," a solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Museum: Art South Africa, February 2005.

"Stern and Neustetter's project is not one for computer geeks or the art world only, but has a broad reach across the production of the urban signwriters, the critical voices against the monopolisation of technology and information as well as the spectrum of people tired of the limited input they have on the web."
- Carine Zaayman on Nathaniel Stern and Marcus Neustetter's "getawayexperiment.net," in "Remixed/Re-signed: The GetAway Experiment." February 2005: http://www.artthrob.co.za/05feb/project.html

Nathaniel's current art project is part of an investigation called Compressionism. Nathaniel rigged up a harness for a flatbed scanner and laptop combo - named 'Action Jackson' - allowing him to scan any surface, anywhere:

"I literally glide, hover, run and swoop over trees, windows or bodies while the scanner head is in motion, and the results are these amazingly rich and textured, paper-size images. I then re-stretch, hand-color and crop the files, in order to accent the dynamism and refractions of my performance, before going to print; I call it my 'digital performance and analog archive.'"

With an overt wink to art-historical 'ism's, compressionism.net promises a manifesto to come, and spells out a totalising approach to making Compressionist work. Beyond the humour, Compressionism does have real formal links to historical art movements - it is Impressionist in it's concern with and reliance on light and colour as primary tools of representation; Cubist in its ability to map all surfaces of objects rather than choosing a single viewpoint; and is an act of sampling from the world, as in the art practice of figures like Marcel Duchamp. Titles such as 'Nude Ascension', or 'Emmarentia Lilies' (a triptych) reinforce the connections to the work of Duchamp and Monet that Nathaniel wishes to establish.

Nathaniel made these formal choices - allusion to art history, the production of a traditional medium - in part to invite more traditional art-viewers into the digital space. He is excited to be working with tangible media whose production was digital and interactive, but that excites non-techies, too - though he notes that the project has in fact been very well received by the digital art community. The work is destined for a solo show at Outlet Gallery in May/ June. MacFormat magazine is doing a back-page spread on the series in an upcoming issue, and a feature in NY Arts magazine comes out next week.

Both 'step inside' (2004) and 'stuttering' (2003), interactive installation works, were exhibited at, and won prizes at the Brett Kebble Art Awards; 'stuttering' a merit prize in 2003, and 'step inside' a major prize in 2004. Nathaniel seemed at least partly responsible for opening space within that national art event for interactive or New Media work generally. His proposal for this year's Kebble Art Awards, a collaboration with Nicole Ridgway, was an even more ambitious work in a similar format.

"The Storytellers (works from the non-aggressive narrative)," was shown at the Johannesburg Art Museum, and featured the 'odys' video series, prints and 'step inside'. After this exhibition, Stern�s work began to branch out of the Non Aggressive Narrative. His serial faces collage work, were featured shortly after in Leonardo (MIT Press), and getawayexperiment.net (with Marcus N) garnered a Turbulence net.art commission (2005). Nathaniel exhibited prints and interactive work at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival. He was included a large panel discussion on the state of new media art, with the likes of Thando Mama, Sean O'Toole, Clive Kelener, Churchill Madikida, Marcus Neustetter and Christo Doherty.

This period also saw the start of the fruitful and ongoing collaboration of Nathaniel Stern and Christo Doherty, head of Wits University's Digital Arts MA program. Aside from co-designing the successful Interactive Media Arts program in WSOA digital arts, now in its fourth year, the Stern/ Doherty team initiated atjoburg.net (http://atjoburg.net), an online forum for creators working in electronic media, curated two well-received digital art exhibitions, held half a dozen workshops on physical computing and interactive video and have thrown several VJ parties around town. Doherty was co-director for the Unyazi Electronic Music Festival, while Stern is known as the tireless net-writer on local work - on his blog, rhizome.org, SAartsEmering and networked_performance. Since its inception, the department has boasted its "Digital Soiree," regular Friday get-togethers that have featured the likes of Hans Ubermogren, Konrad Weltz, Ralph Borland and Aryan Kaganof, and their collaborative efforts brought the first Digital Artist in Residence at Wits, Joshua Goldberg - who performed and lectured throughout Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Nathaniel Stern started his blog in February 2003 and hasn't looked back since.

Nathaniel was moving between New York and South Africa; in South Africa he worked intensively with SA choreographer PJ Sabbagha, writing and performing poetry and animation for stage. "The double room" won 3 Vita Awards. He went on to work on three more pieces with Sabbagha, all of them going to Grahamstown Festival. He worked on Hektor.net, a video poetry site and [odys]elicit, the first interacive installation he built in SA. The former won an International Digital Art award, and traveled around the world with the RRF festival, while the latter went to the MCA in Sydney for the D'Arts02 Festival and to the Chaingmai New Media Festival, Thailand. It was a finalist in the Permian Media Art Festival.

In America, he was awarded an artist residency at Cornell University, where he was a New Media Room featured artist in the Johnsom Museum. Nathaniel and Nicole were married, and he graduated from the Interactive Telecommunication Program (ITP) at New York University and started up nathanielstern.com

At the ITP, Nathaniel made work for his first group exhibition in upstate New York: hektor.net and enter:hektor - video poetry and an interactive installation. He also made it into the "team ithaca" slam poetry team and competed at the Nationals in Minneapolis.

Nathaniel studied fashion and music for his undergraduate degree, and was the saxaphone player and one of two singers in a ska/reggae/jazz band called 'The dominanT Seven'. Their whole album used to be available on mp3.com, says Nathaniel, but alas no more...

Nathaniel will be exhibiting works from his Compressionism series in May/June at Outlet Galley in Pretoria, and he will be looking for international and group exhibitions for the work. He has just launched saartsemerging.org and Upgrade Joburg, which will feature work by such luminaries as MTAA (NYC) and the co-directors of Turbulence.org (who commissioned getawayexperiment.net) in the coming months. This establishes another node on a global network of Upgrades. In other respects Upgrade is similar to, and will extend the work of, the Digital Soirees organised by Christo and Nathaniel, and other similar local events - like the Upload events held by LIquid Fridge in Cape Town, with which Nathaniel also participates.

He will also have video work on the traveling T-Minus06 video art exhibition, which starts in NYC. There is an all-Gauteng artist exhibition of interactive art in the pipeline, to be held at the prestigious Arts Interactive gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nathaniel helped to set this up after giving a talk there late last year. He has been invited to make a work for computerfinearts.com, to be archived by The Cornell University Library, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, a Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

On the academic front, Nathaniel is writing a collaborative chapter for an upcoming book on cyberculture with Nicole Ridgway, called "The Implicit Body" - "it interrogates embodiment as relational and incipient, investigating how interactive art might create sites where flesh and artwork continually co-emerge, enfolding and unfolding, in a complex inter-course".

He did the rounds of lectures and workshops overseas while travelling last year, from New York to Budapest, and he hopes to do more of the university circuit in South Africa this year - more interactive video and physical computing workshops are in the offing. All this and he's looking into possible PhD programs too.

And last but definitely not least, Nathaniel is preparing to be a dad - he and Nicole launch their finest collaboration this May.

(You may also view Nathaniel's CV on his website, where it is continually updated.)

Education
2001. MPS: New York University, Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts
1999. BSc: Cornell University, Textiles and Apparel Design, School of Human Ecology

Solo & Duo Exhibitions
May/June 2006. Time and Seeing (tentative title): solo exhibition at Outlet Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa
Apr-May, 2005. experiment02: duo show with Marcus Neustetter at Franchise, Johannesburg, South Africa
Mar-Apr, 2005. enter:hektor: invitational solo exhibition at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival
Oct 04 - Jan 05. the storytellers: solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Museum, South Africa
May-Jun, 2004. The GetAway Experiment: duo show with Marcus Neustetter at ArtSpace Gallery, Fairlands, South Africa
Apr-May, 2004. eat: solo video-poetry installation / exhibition at Outlet Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa
Oct 2003. Wits School Of Arts launch: solo installation in the substation gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Apr-May, 2002. New Media Room featured artist: solo installation at Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York

Select Group Shows
2006. t-minus 06, traveling video exhibition that begins in NYC, USA
Early 2006. 35th International Film Festival, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
July 2005. Sounds Crazy: with the Studio for Interactive Sound @ the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, South Africa
May-Jun 2005. Mooimarkshow-Vienna-Johannesburg: Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, Austria
Nov 2004. Artinthedark_: Video Art Festival, Johannesburg, South Africa
Oct 2004. Brett Kebble Art Exhibition: Cape Town, South Africa
2004. Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting: international traveling net.art festival
Oct 2003. Brett Kebble Art Exhibition: Cape Town, South Africa
Jun-Sept, 2003. 24.7 artist residency program: live art/studio @ Johannesburg Art Museum, a City+Suburban project
Mar 2003. The Mooimark Show: presented by the Gallery Expo 3000 Berlin, Johannesburg, South Africa
2003. International Digital Art Awards: hektor.net named finalist, with international tour
Mar-Apr, 2003. Chiangmai First New Media Art Festival: Chiang Mai University Museum, Thailand
Jun 2002. d.ART 02, dLux media arts: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia
Apr 2002. Electronic Literature Organization, state of the arts symposium: UCLA
Sept 2001. online|offline: Gencor gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa Nov 00 - Jan 01. 12 artists: Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York

Select Performances
July 2005. Petra: with Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative @ the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, South Africa
Mar 2005 + Aug 2005. Still Here: Forgotten Angle FNB + Arts Alive commission @ The Dance Factory, South Africa
July 2003 - July 2004. There's no Room in This Bed: at The Dance Factory and the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, South Africa
Sept 2001 - Apr 2003. en/traced: at Gencor Gallery, Turbine Hall and The Bassline, Johannesburg
Mar 2003. phenomenomadic: at FNB Vita Awards, Johannesburg
Dec 2001 - Dec 2002. the double room: complete SA tour, including FNB Vita Awards & Grahamstown National Arts Festival
Aug 2002. [US] National Poetry Slam 2002: with Team Ithaca in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Relevant Work
2003 - 2006. Adjunct Lecturer / Supervisor / Curriculum Designer (Masters) @ WSOA, University of the Witwatersrand
2003 & Ongoing. Adjunct Faculty / Lecturer at Minneapolis College of Art & Design, Distance Learning
2003 & Ongoing. Founder / Core Organizer / Writer: atjoburg.net, nathanielstern.com/blog, saartsemerging.org
2003 & Ongoing. Freelance Writer @ Rhizome.org, JHB local papers and other online communities and blogs
2001 & Ongoing. Freelance Workshops & Design in New York, Florida, Pretoria, Rhodes, Cape Town and Johannesburg

Select Recognition
Jan 2005. turbulence net.art commission and the Greenwall Foundation: getawayexperiment.net, with marcus neustetter
Oct 2004. Brett Kebble Art Awards: major award for step inside
Oct 2004. American Consulate grant for 'the storytellers'
Oct 2003. Brett Kebble Art Awards: merit award for stuttering
Jun-Sept, 2003. 24.7 artist residency program: at Johannesburg Art Museum
Feb 2003. machinista permian media art festival: finalist
Nov 2003. National Arts Council grant: phenomenomadic, collaborative performance with Jeanette Ginslov
Jun 2002. Special Opportunity Stipend, New York Foundation for the Arts grant: National Poetry Slam 2002
Mar 2002. FNB Vita Awards, South Africa: the double room wins Most Outstanding Presentation of an Original Contemporary Work, Most Outstanding Male Dancer, Most Promising Female Dancer & Sabbagha is nominated for Choreographer of the Year
Spring '02. Guest Suite Artist: artist residency @ Risley Residential College for the Creative and Performing Arts, Cornell University
1999 - 2001. Graduate Assistant Fellowship: Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Workshops, Lectures & Panel Discussions
Nov 2005. invitational lecture / presentation of my artworks: Art Interactive, Cambridge, MA
Nov 2005. invitational lecture / presentation of my artworks & implicit body: Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Sept 2005. Interactive Video, history lecture & workshop: sponsored by Rhodes University and SIS, Grahamstown, SA
Sept 2005. invitational lecture / presentation of my artworks: Aardklop festival, Potchefstroom, South Africa
Aug 2005. presentation: The Implicit Body. With Nicole Ridgway at Cybercultures: Critical Issues, Prague, Czech Republic
Jul 2005. invitational lecture / presentation of my artworks + teaching: Michaelis School For Fine Art at UCT
May 2005. panel discussion: Blogging the Commons at Commons Sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons, JHB
Feb 2005. lecture: windows & mirrors: the interactive video landscape @ open window, Pretoria, South Africa
Dec 2004. walkabout + panel discussion: the storytellers + art & technology in the RSA, Johannesburg Art Museum, South Africa
July 2004. lecture: performing narratives @ Networks & Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG), Trinity College, Dublin
July 2004. presentation and discussion: step inside and the NAN at Dublin Art and Technology Association (DATA)
July 2004. lecture: narrativity and the body electric: Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
June 2004. colloquium: Learning Art Online: Critique, Interaction and Interface: The Eleventh International Literacy and Education Research Network Conference on Learning. Havana, Cuba
April 2004. lecture: step inside: tipping the gaff: the Friday Digital Soirée, Wits School of the Arts, University of the Witwatersrand April 2002. panel discussion: Electronic Literature Organization
Symposium: LinguaMOO online panel; transcript available online Nov 2000. lecture: the non-aggressive narrative: Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University

Select Publications / Writings
Forthcoming. The Implicit Body, with Nicole Ridgway. Chapter in peer- reviewed book on cyberculture, Rodopi Press.
Sept 2005. Report from Unyazi, commissioned for Rhizome.org
Oct 2004. stutter as story, International Stuttering Awareness Day Online Conference, 2004
Aug 2004. Dense and Urban - the Cybermohalla in Delhi, commissioned for Rhizome.org
Feb 2004. Near-Digital SA: Interventionist Influence (an e-interview with Carine Zaayman), commissioned for Rhizome.org
Feb 2003. Interview with Marcus Neustetter of The Trinity Session, South Africa, commissioned for Rhizome.org
Feb 2003. NEW MEDIA IN THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA, Rhizome.org - re-printed in ISEA Newsletter #91, February - March, 2003

Select Reviews & Features
May 2006. MacFormat back page feature on Compressionism.
April / March 2006. between Text and Flesh, full bio / feature in NY Arts Magazine
March 2006. bio / feature on nathanielstern.com and undertoe in Cimaise Art & Architecture (France)
Dec 2005 / Jan 2006. the future makers, RealTime Magazine #70
Fall 2005. The getAway Experiment featurette: nathaniel stern and Marcus Neustetter. Leonardo Vol 38, No 3
May 2005. Eclectic Electric Art. Drum Magazine, South Africa
May 2005. Exsperiment wat kyker se kyk na kuns belig (Afrikaans scan of newpaper, English translation: An experiment that exposes the viewer's view of art), Die Beeld, South Africa
Mar 2005. Nathaniel Stern: the storytellers: feature on solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Museum, Art South Africa
Feb 2005. You've Got to Getaway!: net.art news feature, rhizome.org
Feb 2005. revised/re-signed - getawayexperiment.net as project of the month: ArtThrob, South Africa
Dec 2004. Looking, Being Seen and Locating South African video art feature, Art South Africa
Oct 2004. Top Billing: SABC TV show features step inside at the Kebbles
Apr 2004. stuttering featured in Extensions: the online journal of Embodied Technology
Mar 2004. Resensie: Spel met visuele verbruik (English translation -- Review: Play with visual consumerism), Die Beeld, RSA
Aug 2003. The shadowland of death: The Star, South Africa
Dec 2001. Dance circles in the sand: The Star, South Africa