SELFWARE. politics of identity

Idea, concept, implementation, and production of artist editions for SELFWARE: politics of identity, a project for Graz 2003, European Capital of Culture

Identities in Media and Consumer Society

SELFWARE presented more than 60 international musicians, video artists, producers, theorists, computer game designers, and journalists at Palais Thienfeld in Graz. Their contributions comprised a wide range of event formats, creating a platform for current art and music, for interdisciplinary crossover projects and discussions. Thematically explored were the areas of fashion, music, visual media, computer games, net cultures, and the manifold overlaps among these realms.

But what does this have to do with identity? SELFWARE was based on the idea that decisions in favor of a certain musical or aesthetic form, that is, certain production strategies, are always also rooted in ideas about lifeworlds and lifestyles. Identity is more than just an idea. Identity is the expressed form of how we describe ourselves. It denotes what we believe to be and represent. SELFWARE presented a broad spectrum of such representational forms at the boundaries between music, art, fashion, and media. Yet such boundaries do not actually exist between music and fashion, between films and computer games. The boundaries are formed by concepts of what is normal, by ideas about how we should describe and present ourselves. It is for this reason that SELFWARE saw itself as embodying a temporal space that fathoms the scopes of our society.