Still from Abra by Hiba Ali (2018)
Publication Launch - The Whole Sell
Screening & Discussion with Hiba Ali & Nina Sarnelle
20 March 20:00 CET / 12:00 PDT / 15:00 EDT
This free event features a screening of video works by Hiba Ali and Nina Sarnelle, followed by a discussion and Zoom reception. Via breakout rooms, guests are invited to meet and chat with the publication’s artist contributors.
To book your free ticket, please click here
The Whole Sell is an online publication that features projects by over 25 artists. The website reinvents the late-sixties Whole Earth Catalog as an e-commerce site, experimenting with ideas of “value” in artistic production and distribution.
Current participating artists: alex cruse, Alexandra Neuman, Angelica Falkeling, Betelhem Makonnen, Chester Vincent Toye, Dina Kelberman, Don Edler, Eileen Isagon Skyers, Felix Kalmenson, Harriet Foyster, Hea-Mi Kim, Hiba Ali, Ida Falck Øien, Imin Yeh, Ina-Maria Shikongo, Ji Soo Chung, Job Sánchez, Johanna Zanon & Emmanuelle Polle, Kristin McWharter, Laura Hyunjhee Kim, laura stinger, Maru Garcia, Mia Melvær, Mookyung Sohn, Natalee Decker, Nina Sarnelle, Paul Pescador, Sara Drake, Vika Kirchenbauer, and Yoojin Lee.
The Whole Sell developed from PRAKSIS's 16th residency Live or Buy: an examination of consumer culture’s environmental and social impacts and a re-envisioning of ecologies of consumption. Developed with Nina Sarnelle, Ida Falck Øien and fashion label HAiKw/, the residency began in Oslo in March 2020 before moving online in response to COVID 19.
Design and construction of The Whole Sell was possible thanks to generous voluntary work by programmer Joar Glosvik & artist Nina Sarnelle.
Publication
Reflecting on the political moment of the Whole Earth Catalog--just before the rise of neoliberalism and deregulation, and buoyed by the promise of personal computing and networked technology--The Whole Sell problematizes the awe and optimism contained within Stuart Brand’s iconic publication. Artworks are listed as if they are for sale, but no money exchanges hands on the site. To “buy” an artwork, visitors must trade something according to the “price” determined by each artist. Built into The Whole Sell’s strategies is an awareness of the contradictions that afflicted its predecessor: is it actually possible, the project asks, to subvert capitalism from within, using its own tools, platforms and language?
Screening
A short screening will be held via Zoom, featuring Hiba Ali’s 2018 video Abra and an excerpt from Nina Sarnelle’s 2019 video Big Opening Event. Presenting two very different Amazon counter-narratives, the screening sets up critical frameworks for interpreting the e-commercial interface of The Whole Sell.
Abra, Hiba Ali, 2018, 5 mins
Staged as a conversation with Amazon’s customer-obsessed mascot Peccy, Abra provides discussion of working-class labour, surveillance, and bubbles (economic, social and soap filled) that literally renders the video orange. Ali’s narrative presents the color orange as both racialized and classed: the contemporary color of labour and danger for precariously positioned for poor, working class, Black and brown communities.
Big Opening Event, Nina Sarnelle, 2019, 5 min excerpt of 28 min video
Amazon boxes were collected from all over the US to stage an opening ceremony modeled after the balloon releases of public celebrations and political rallies. Sarnelle’s 30 min music/video essay situates this event within a history of excess and naïveté in mass celebratory spectacle, deflating the misguided fanfare and political posturing of recent commercial development projects or “megadeals.”
Hiba Ali is a digital artist, educator, scholar, DJ, experimental music producer and curator based across Chicago, IL, Austin, TX, and Toronto, ON. Their performances and videos concern surveillance, womxn/ womyn of colour, and labour. She studies geographies of East African, South Asian and Arab communities across the Indian Ocean region through music, cloth and ritual. They conduct reading groups addressing digital media and workshops with open-source technologies. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queens University, Kingston, Canada. They are an Assistant Professor of Art, New Media Artist/Feminist Art Discourse, College of Design, Art & Technology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. She has presented their work in Chicago, Stockholm, Vienna, Berlin, Toronto, New York, Istanbul, São Paulo, Detroit, Windsor, Dubai, Austin, Vancouver, and Portland. They have written for C Magazine, THE SEEN Magazine, Newcity Chicago, Art Dubai, The State, VAM Magazine, ZORA: Medium, RTV Magazine, and Topical Cream Magazine.
Nina Sarnelle is an artist and musician living on stolen Tongva/Kizh/Chumash land that is often referred to as Los Angeles. A founding member of the Institute for New Feeling and dadpranks, her work includes intimate participatory performances, large public events, music composition, video and sculpture. Her work has been shown at the New Museum (NY), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Hammer Museum (LA), Getty Center (LA), Ballroom Marfa (TX), MoMA (NY), Black Cube (Denver), Istanbul Modern (Turkey), N.B.K. (Berlin), NADA (Miami), Museum of Art, Architecture & Technology (Lisbon), Fundacion PROA (Buenos Aires), Southern Exposure (San Francisco), Recess (NY), UNSW Galleries (Sydney), Project 88 (Mumbai), Kevin Space (Vienna), Villa Croce Contemporary Art Museum (Genova), Center for Contemporary Arts (Santa Fe), Mwoods (Beijing), MoCA Cleveland, Human Resources (LA), Borscht Festival (Miami), SPACES (Cleveland) and featured in Frieze, Art in America, Vogue Italy, Huffington Post, SFMoMA, Creators Project, FlashArt, and Hyperallergic.
