THE REPERFORMING MEMES
Memes are the reproductive means of culture. They spread by imitation, transforming and evolving in order to survive and remain culturally relevant in society. The Internet has become the vehicle that copies and distributes memes online, and has a major impact on how our culture communicates today. These self-perpetuating tropes, now known as Internet memes, establish entire subcultures and social norms setting a standard of Internet-speak with each meme. Reperforming Memes recreates the meme through experimentation while using the same parameters as its predecessor. Artists generate rules for their reperformances to provide aesthetic and conceptual boundaries. The Reperforming Memes artist collective makes work that focuses on physically replicating Internet memes and sharing the documentation of our performances; thus following the nature of the meme by replicating and sharing in the hopes of survival in the ‘meme-pool.’ The meme reperformances are experiments in which actors embody an Internet meme with little aid from props, sets, or digital manipulation. We omit the use of costumes, makeup, and text. Will our efforts to deconstruct the meme and put it back together again prove that our replicated reperformances still communicate the same language of the Internet user? We question whether the meme will be still evident, and whether or not it will continue to replicate in its new format.
Mixed Meow
The Mixed Meow show was held in February 2015 at the AIGA Philadelphia SPACE Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, and was curated by Belinda Haikes. “Mixed Meow is a show that looks at cats as a symbol of the zeitgeist of our meme culture with work that encompasses low and high, digital and analogue. From Owen Mundy’s online work, ‘I Know Where your Cat lives’, to an anonymous French flea market painting, this collection of works looks at the image of the cat in contemporary moment. With an eye to the everyday, the political and the humorous this exhibition highlights the image of the cat in contemporary visual culture and aims to understand the elusive feline.”
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