Cultural Matter: Martine Neddam

Fake Identities.

19 February 2020 - 5 April 2020

LI-MA

Since 1996, Martine Neddam, an early net artist, has been anonymously creating online fake personas that engage with public feedback, predating the advent of social media.

The history of fake identities is closely intertwined with the emergence of the internet—a free and open space where one could assume any desired persona. What role do artists play in this realm, and how do they develop and embody characters online?

During Cultural Matter, the public was introduced to the online curator and activist Madja Edelstein-Gomez for the first time, only to later discover that she was a creation of Neddam. Neddam and Edelstein-Gomez's work served as a starting point for contemplating online identity and user feedback. For the exhibition, LIMA's space was transformed into an Edelstein-Gomez curated show, accompanied by a documentary revealing the true identity of Madja Edelstein-Gomez as Neddam's creation.

During the opening night conversation with New York based writer Elvia Wilk, Neddam discussed the various characters she had created since the 1990s. It was surprising to uncover the parallel working methods shared by the artist and the writer. As the conversation delved deeper, the distinctions and similarities between crafting characters in the literary world and on the web became more apparent. A few weeks after the opening, the exhibition had to close due to COVID-19 measures.

Consequently, media activist Diana McCarty's lecture, titled A Techno-Feminist Alphabet: From Cyberfeminism to Xenofeminism, was streamed online via LIMA's YouTube channel. McCarty's lecture shed light on subversive feminist practices and their resonance in the works of Neddam and other female internet pioneers. Following the lecture, Neddam participated in a Q&A session moderated by curator Sanneke Huisman.

Vist the Madja Edelstein-Gomez Archive

About Martine Neddam

Martine Neddam is an artist, researcher and teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. She uses language as raw material for her art, and many of her works center on the phenomena of speech acts, approaches to communication as well as to language and writing in public space. She has been working with virtual characters since 1996, the first and most famous one being Mouchette, a fictive thirteen-year-old that has meanwhile acquired cult status. Neddam’s virtual personae function as communications tools such that they have already facilitated the exchange between human beings via the medium of the artistic figure, and thereby anticipated the functionality of social media. (updated as of February 2020)