GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM INAUGURATES ARTISTS' PROJECTS
ON THE WEB WITH SHU LEA CHEANG'S BRANDON, 1998-1999

http://brandon.guggenheim.org

In association with Society for Old and New Media, De Waag, Amsterdam

Join us ON-LINE for an Amsterdam-New York netlink launch on June 30.

13:00-15:00, public and press preview Videowall, Guggenheim Museum SoHo
20:00-22:00, a bloody merry party, Theatrum Anatomicum, Amsterdam

On June 30, 1998, the Guggenheim Museum will launch its first artist's
project commissioned for the World Wide Web. Conceived and directed by
filmmaker and media artist Shu Lea Cheang, BRANDON: A One-Year Narrative
Project in Installments explores issues of gender fusion and techno-body
in both public space and cyberspace.

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BRANDON derives its title from Brandon/Teena Brandon of Nebraska, USA, a
gender-crossing individual who was raped and murdered in 1993 after his
female anatomy was discovered by people who thought he was a man.
Cheang's project deploy's Brandon into cyberspace through multi-layered
narratives and images whose trajectory leads to issues of crime and
punishment in the cross-section between real space and virtual space.
The project, a multi-artist/multi-author/multi-institutional
collaboration, will unfold over the course of the coming year, with
interfaces developed (1996-1997) for artist collaboration and public
intervention: bigdoll interface, roadtrip interface (with Jordy Jones,
Susan Stryker, Cherise Fong); Mooplay interface (with Francesca Da
Rimini, Pat Cadigan, Lawrence Chua, Linda Tauscher) and panopticon
interface (with Beth Stryker and Auriea Harvey). During 1998-1999, we
would invite guest curators to institute multi-author uploads for each
interface.

In development with Society for Old and New Media, De Waag, two netlink
forum/installation are also scheduled for Theatrum Anatomicum interface
(with Mieke Gerritzen, Roos Eisma, Yariv Alterfin, Atelier Van
Lieshout): The first, "Digi Gender Social Body: Under the Knife, Under
the Spell of Anesthesia," to be held in fall 1998, will bring together
noted cultural critics, genderists, surgeons, and bio-technologists to
reconsider binary codes of male-female and the mapping of the digital
body. The second forum, held in May 1999 in conjunction with the
Institute on Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University, is entitled
"Would the Jurors Please Stand Up? Crime and Punishment as Net
Spectacle." The event, which will incorporate avatar performance and the
deployment of a virtual court system, will convene a panel of legal
scholars and provocators to preside a net public trial of sexual
assaults in RL (real life) and cyberspace.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Scott L. Gutterman (sgutterman@guggenheim.org)
Director of Public Affairs
Guggenheim Museum SoHo

Mylene van Noort (mylene@waag.org)
Maatschappij voor Oude en Nieuwe Media / Society for Old and New Media