Dina Deitsch

Norman Valdez - Toronto, CANADA

Marcela Mazzei - ARGENTINA

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November-December 2007
Transgress

... Over the course of their enlargement, the images become increasingly abstracted until the final pair of eight-by-twelve foot banners effectively blurs two cropped portraits into something akin to old master paintings. The three quarter portrait of a seated woman, in fact a male user's wife, Thelma is burnt out into a range of ochres and blue-greys reminiscent of a Vermeer. Meanwhile, Tristan features a headless body in a bra and panties, arms akimbo at the hips – a pose straight out of Cezanne's Bather– revealing that, oh yes, this is a man. While these images may expose the secret lives of strangers in the new media du jour, their compositions and form reveal the consistency of image making– persistence of history despite itself.

Spring 2007
A World of webAffairs

... There is a whole different 'e-world' out there, which stands correct to Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message". Virtual representation of one's self over the wires of the Internet seems to have profound effect on people, regardless of what role the participants play in the "real world". They transcend the ties and schemas of society to become their caged ultra egos, taking persona, an avatar, a character who is no longer afraid to express one's self intimately and have multiple 'encounters' multiple webAffairs.

February 14, 2007
El libro prohibido de Internet

En general, ¿se entiende tu trabajo como artístico?

¿ SI CREEN QUE ES PORNOGRAPHIA? Es un trabajo de documentación de pornografía amateur. No produje yo esas imágenes, sino que recopilé lo que otros crearon. Como artista, observé una subcultura de la sociedad que está creando su propio porno, independiente de la imagen del porno corporativo. No hago porno, no es mi intención. Por otro lado, la pregunta revela aspectos importantes de lo que el porno es, y para eso habría que remontarse a la historia de la pornografía y de cómo nació el término. Que no existía antes del siglo XVII, es muy reciente y vinculado a luchas políticas de la Iglesia en Europa en ese período.

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February, 2007
Special Collections' Dirty Little Secrets:
Looking for love in the stacks of the Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection

"Although some of the materials contained within the book straddle the boundary between sexy and a little bit sad, webAffairs is undeniably juicy and revealing of just what everyday people will say about sex when there are–for the most part–no consequences. "

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September, 2006
webAffairs

"... THIS BOOK WILL BE RELEVANT to anyone interested in gender, sexuality and especially the construction of gender and identities through internet technology. But it stands as an art work in its own right. "Show-n-tell" is actually a metaphor for this form of artistic practice."

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July, 2006
.book

"THE BOOK COVER IS EMBLEMATIC. It's not an eye-catching female nude (that would have been appropriate, once in a while), but a man staring at the screen with his face illuminated by the pixel-emitted lights, as the symbol of a substantial part of humanity staring at itself through a mediated screen image, still inconceivably interconnected."

"...la copertina del libro è emblematica. Non si tratta di un nudo femminile (che sarebbe stato appropriato, una volta tanto), ma di un uomo che guarda uno schermo e ne viene illuminato dalla luce emessa dai pixel. é il simbolo di una parte sostanziale dell'umanità che guarda a sè stessa attraverso l'immagine mediata dallo schermo, ancora inconcepibilmente interconnesso."

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May-June, 2006
Can U C Me?

"...THE BOOK BECOMES AN HONEST AND revealing analysis of her journey into this virtual, yet potent, world of the different roles sex plays in one's life."

"...Pixilated images bleed off the oversized pages, interrupted by snippets of conversations between the artist and members of the chat rooms. The conversations meander from desire to the banal. They highlight the kind of spaces her online companions occupy and create a context for their lives. Using each double-page spread as a frame for her compositions, Show-n-tell gracefully positions images of her desktop, cluttered with windows containing images and texts to emphasize that all of this has been recorded through the computer."

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May-June, 2006
WebAffairs

"...Some nudes strike pornographic poses, trading a fig leaf for a laptop to shield their nakedness. These are life studies from the Information Age."

"...THE INTERNET HAS MORPHED INTO AN expanding universe that parallels our reality, mirrors it, and finally, reinvents it, while we struggle to navigate the vastness of cyberspace and the spaces in between. The duality there cannot be denied; pornographic and intimate, exposed and anonymous, isolated and connected, real and virtual.
In WebAffairs, it’s the message and the medium. It’s information as art, which seems especially relevant when technology threatens to overwhelm us with limitless access and availability of information. On many levels, the Web also offers infinite possibilities for exploring what is fundamentally human; sexuality, community and the boundaries of existence."

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March 8, 2006
Screen Shots
Sex and filth on the Internet? Show us more!

Luv2Lurk: so do u think Show-n-tell succeeded? will anyone but us read this, or is it just not juicy enough to be outright porno?
HugBug: people will be interested because they can learn vicariously through Show-n-tell. and it's not all sex. i think a few real friendships can develop in the cyberworld.
Luv2Lurk: yeah, like her friend mr clean—he was my favorite. when he stayed up all night singing songs to her that her dad sang when she was a child . . . it seemed very sweet.
HugBug: but did they talk again after that?
Luv2Lurk: i don't know. i guess people just want that connection sometimes, however brief or intangible.

December 2005
Artists Books Review

"... Electronically edited and graphically redesigned to dramatically communicate her story, this is a powerful documentation, interpretation, emotional play that could go wrong, but she controls the whole thing. Later, she is more interested in the stories, realizing that this project has transformed her, making her conscious of herself and her potential. This book, as all artists books, should be on your lap, not your shelf — and it might change you as well."

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December 23- 29, 2005
The Coffee Table,
All Things Bright and Beautiful

"... FOR THOSE WHO LIKE THEIR sociology a little racier, here are two fascinating volumes devoted to the complicated intersection of sexand technology. webAffairs (Eighteen Publications, 144 pages, $40) is a travelogue of sorts in which an artist who goes by the online name of Show-n-tell shows and tells her own journey into the world of adult-video chat rooms. The book is a dizzying mess of low-res video stills, snippets of online conversation, and passages of the author’s own commentary. Despite the copious genitalia, however — this is definitely not a book for young readers — the journey turns out to be as much about friendship, community and the evolving nature of domestic space as it is about sex."

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December 2005
Erotic Museum Exhibits Show on Chatrooms

"... THE ARTIST, WHO GOES BY HER screen name Show-n-tell, gathered images and text directly from her experiences in the chatrooms, documenting the progression from curiosity to voyeurism, then beyond personal boundaries into the realm of performance. The artwork explores cultural implications of how technology has impacted sexuality and the dichotomy between relationships conducted in the real and virtual worlds.
... The fragmented visuals and complex dialogues speak not only of postmodern sexuality expressed through broadband transmissions but of the humanity and sense of community that Show-n-tell found online."

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this article was also published on x-biz internet edition january 2, 2006

November 11, 2005
Should You Be In Pictures?

"... THE BOOK IS A LARGE HARDBACK, printed on heavy paper, each page a meticulously designed collage of webcam windows, chat excerpts, the author's narrative and snippets of conversation between the author and her husband. It raises questions of privacy in public spaces, of fidelity, of emotional and sexual involvement with lovers onscreen and off. And it truly captures what it means to belong to an adult online community. In fact, it's the best window to cyber relationships — and their effect on offline relationships — I've seen. "One of the interesting aspects of this project is the idea that virtual space is undefined," Show-n-tell says. "It blurs the line between public and private space as we understand it."
... Her own immersion in the community, over a four-year period, is an experience anyone who has ever spent time in an adult chat room can relate to. Through art, she brings to life the spirit of such places and the people you meet in them — people you would probably never meet in any other way."

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21-Noviembre-2005
Las relaciones entre lo real y lo virtual

"... EN ESTE LIBRO PODEMOS apreciar la delgada línea que existe entre las relaciones tradicionales en el mundo físico, y las relaciones que gracias a la red existen en el mundo digital, y que en muchas ocasiones traspasan esa línea del mundo digital y pasan al mundo físico.
La autora argumenta que tomar estas fotos en línea de todos aquellos que interactuaron con ella, es en realidad como tomar fotos en la vía pública y por lo tanto no lo ve como una invasión a la privacidad de tales personas.
Sin duda es un buen tema de discusión, ya que aquellos que no estaban enterados de lo que ella estaba realizando, y cuando descubran que aparecen sus imágenes, sus diálogos y confesiones en el libro, supongo que se llevarán una buena sorpresa."

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" WE TODAY, SEEK TO CEMENT TIME in reproducible images, attempting to be made real by becoming fictionalized. And now we're sitting at home with our fingers up our twats, facing a digicam and typing words into IM with our free hand. Cementing our personal fiction with every stroke. (Show-n-tell's) stolen images capture... these handcrafted attempts at notoriety, filmed against the backdrop of the mundane terrors of everyday life."

"... IN AN ADULT VIDEO CHAT ROOM where the borders of privacy and pornography blur, the artist has culled images investigating voyeurism, exhibitionism and the uncanny ways people use the Web to connect."

reprinted with permission of the Boston Herald

"ONE OF ART'S FUNCTIONS IS to throw light onto the shadowy, repressed areas of society, in order to show us who we really are. webAffairs is powerfully unsettling. The material ... is so provocative, it's nearly impossible to get beyond the shock value to comprehend its larger message. But to get beyond the shock would be to deny how truly disturbing her subject matter is."

"... EVEN IF THE REALITY IS A LITTLE disturbing the book is tastefully done (if you can actually say that about a book with some definitely pornographic pictures in it) and the way she explores the subject matter is extremely interesting."

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