Patchworkgirl – Linz
The poignant lecture performance Patchwork Girl examined and infiltrated the world of shame sexting and online exposure. Jantine was 16 when the trashy Dutch website GeenStijl published her nudes. When Cyrina was 13, she made a sexy video that was spread at the schools in her village. Both girls were subject to victimblaming and slutshaming.
In this performance, Jantine reconstructed the traumatic events from her past, using the internet through which she was previously victimized. On stage, she was accompanied by five teen girls who re-enacted what happened to Jantine and rewrote her story through Artificial Intelligence. Cyrina shared her story via voice-over, since she couldn’t be present on stage. Based on the nudes of the 16-year-old Jantine, the avatar ‘Patchwork Girl’ was created: a naked girl that initially embodied the male fantasy to attract attention in shame and expose groups and on porn site xHamster. After this, she would speak up for victimized women and reclaim their narrative in an artistic way.
Our intention was to widely spread this Patchwork Girl. However, we encountered many obstacles. Legislation and copy-right issues seemed to protect AI a lot better than real-life women. Expose groups suddenly left Telegram and moved to untraceable, shady corners of the internet. We overall found ourselves lost in an indifferent and closed-off men’s world. As women, our only possible answer was sisterhood. The performance ended with a profound act of solidarity: the girls stood around Jantine to shield her from the view of the audience, while she was taking a new nude. On the screen above them, the avatar – now covered with photographs of the skin of audience members – talked about all that skin could mean: ‘She is all of us. She is carried by all of us’. The avatar saying the poem, was posted in our own Telegram group and sent to xHamster, with whom we are still trying to solve the issue of who owns the avatar’s author rights.
Join us
Do you want to donate a photo of your skin to Patchwork Girl?
[Hoe werkt dit dan?]
Would you like to see a video of the avatar reciting the text about skin?
[Welke video is dit?]
Patchwork girl was first launched in a Telegram group we created and soon attracted followers. We were happy with the male attention, but within a few hours, our efforts started to escalate. The members of our group, from all over the world, saw our platform as an opportunity to trade pictures of their girlfriends and share best practices. One of them immediately wanted to know how we had created our avatar ‘using your girlfriend’s face’. Presumably he wanted to try something similar for himself. So, we had to shut our group down. Nevertheless, we’re not willing to give up on our female trolling machine just yet. The prize money from the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanity gives us the opportunity to realise our second launch of Patchwork Girl. For this, we need:
- A picture of your skin
- Your feminist input on what you would like the avatar to say and do in these groups
- People who are willing to ‘mansplain’ dark corners of the internet, expose groups, porn sites and best practices on avoiding jurisdiction to us
- Followers on our Instagram account IamPatchworkGirl. This is not a very active page just yet, but once Patchwork Girl is launched, again, we will share her journey on there
- Partners who can help us to realize a serious trolling system
For providing us with input and/or mansplaining: mail nina@toneelmakerij.nl
To partner up: mail paulien@toneelmakerij.nl
Follow the Instagram page [heeft best veel haast, wat wordt de titel?]