Choterina Freer (working with 0s+1s) was in residence at The Nordic Art Association, during June 2016. The residency culminated with a workshop and symposium where 0s+1s and invited guests presented on themes relating to the 0s+1s project The Legacy Complex (TLC).
TLC, is an on-going international artists research and production project that thinks through the interconnecting military, filmic, social and personal histories located on Gotland island from a feminist perspective. Now halfway through the project, the symposium is a chance to come together and present particular interests, share research, and discuss the various contexts and histories the artists within 0s+1s (and guests) have responded to.
During June, Choterina has been working on her project (within the TLC framework) called Staging Security: Beneath the White Mountains and hidden in The Cloud. Conducting research into the data bunker (Pionen White Mountains) located one street away from the residency; she has been looking at how data space is marketed through performative actions. Starting from the Cold War where both East and West acted to maintain a stance that assured the “delicate balance of terror”, she has considered how other modes of performance linked to the Cold War have been successful: from the capitalist glamour of 60s and 70s James Bond films, to the contemporary marketing of cloud computing set within old nuclear bunkers. Choterina is interested in a general keenness (by both the public and big business) to be seduced by the aesthetics of these staged gestures, without questioning whether the threat is real; and if so, what the real threat is.
Choterina Freer (born 1980, Leicester, UK – lives and works in Glasgow, UK)
Choterina’s videos and online works are material manipulations of our digital environment; she composites taken and found footage, CGI animations, and hand-drawn graphics to examine and define a new digital social realism. Choterina is one of the founding members of 0s+1scollective and has worked with the group to organise and exhibit in screenings and online exhibitions since 2013. Other recent exhibitions include Digiverb, Cornerstone Gallery Liverpool (2016) Souvenirs from Earth, broadcast on various cable channels, France and Germany (2015); Red Mansion Art Prize, Lethaby Gallery, London, (2013); Drive-In, Hinter Haus des Meeres, Vienna; and Displaced in Global Modernity, Bei Gao Studios, Beijing, (both 2012). She was the winner of the Red Mansion Art Prize (2012), The Attenborough Prize (2007) and was shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2013). She has also co-curated and shown works in the Turku (2011) and Liverpool (2010) Biennials. Choterina holds a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, studied postgraduate Animation at the Royal College of Art, and she completed her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in 2012.
0s+1s is an ongoing research and production project by Jenna Collins (UK), Choterina Freer (UK), Sonia Hedstrand (SE), Anna Kinbom (SE) and Rut Karin Zettergren (SE). Our interests include the politics of technology, hierarchical structures and possible disruptions in the context of art practice, and cyberfeminist practices established in the 80's and how they figure now.
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This project was realised with support from Kulturbryggan