A spectator of spectators, Kenyatta Cheese will show how Internet meme and pop culture communities actively defy the traditional narrative of spectator passivity and reveal an experience that is communal, participatory, and emotional.
Kenyatta will argue that the audience has always desired participation and that this desire was only rendered passive in order to fit the needs of large scale, industrialized commerce. He then suggests that we change the discourse around the creative process towards a model of networked participation that embraces varying levels of effort and expertise.
Followed by a complimentary cocktail reception.
sponsored by El Buho Mezcal
Kenyatta Cheese is a professional internet enthusiast best known for co-creating the web series and internet meme database Know Your Meme. He built interesting things at Rocketboom, Unmediated, the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, Screensaversgroup, and Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Nowadays he is Creative Director at Everybody at Once, a consultancy dedicated to audience development for media, entertainment, and sports.
What You Get Is What You See: A Series on Spectatorship
(WYGIWYS gif by Alison S. M. Kobayashi)
What hides behind simple gestures of attending?
In this series, UnionDocs invites artists and writers to show us how to become more active, more engaged–and perhaps better–spectators. The speakers share their experiences and personal observations as viewers, readers, watchers, listeners and audience members of visual, video and performance arts, graphic design, radio, TV and cinema. Through their trained gaze and skilled sensitivity, they disturb and displace our perception of contemporary culture and expose spectatorship as an everyday dynamic act.
A series presented by Mathilde Walker-Billaud.
