THE CHAMBER SERIES

2017-2021


*Certian works from the Chamber Series are also presented on their own page.

** Due to the difficulties around preserving intenet art, some of THE CHAMBER SERIES has been lost. 

“THE CHAMBER SERIES s is a portfolio of scores, inspired by graphic notation for classical music that illustrates a series of BDSM acts. Using an invented symbol-based language, these scores are set up to be read and “played” out as a performance called a "scene" - an intimate moment for a single actor exploring the popular kinks. This scene is one in celebration of puppy play. Built in 10 parts, each score is accompanied by a partner publication, called The Companion, that deepens the viewing of THE CHAMBER SERIES scores. This publication is a .zipfile-based reader that incorporates multimedia files viewers must play, read, or solve. For example, the first issue of The Companion contained an edition of puzzles; a crossword, a word search, and a printable version of a fragmented image. Each puzzle leads to a clue, helping to build a single sentence. That single sentence will be translated into the framework for a film appearing in the next part of the reader. The scores and the reader are seperate works, related only by that which is interior (thoughts and feelings) and that which is exterior (commands and actions) to the main character. Eventually, this intricate web of work builds itself into a two channel afrofuturist narrative centered around a human socialized as a wolf, who realizes she is the mechanical playpet for a very cruel, unknown master.  I draw my inspiration from the intersections of Donna Haraway’s work on the Companion Species Manifesto, Julius Eastman’s scores written in graphic notation, and Grant Morrison’s graphic novel WE3.”


SEE LIST OF SURVING WORKS BELOW

︎PLAYTIME COMPOSITION #001 : TRANSITIONS, PT. I, II, III & IV

The first set, PLAYTIME COMPOSITION I: TRANSITIONS, PT. I, II, III & IV, details the transition into the primal state; the first part shows a descent into submission, the second explores ways to satisfy a physical desire, the third leads us through the experience of engaging with an object of entertainment, and the last is a guide for shifting back safely into a human headspace.

Published January 2018, Unbag Magazine.

︎THE COMPANION #001 : ACCOMPANIMENT-001_A-REALIZATION__THE-CHAMBER-SERIES-COMPANION.ZIP

This issue of THE COMPANION is a supplemental periodical distributed via .zipfile that includes notes, worksheets, puzzles, and other media furthering the narrative voice of the actress appearing in the printed scores.

This represents the third release from Human Trash Dump channel on archive.org.

︎PLAYTIME COMPOSITION I: BASIC FUNCTIONS, PT. (1) DOWN & (2) OUT

PLAYTIME COMPOSITION I: BASIC FUNCTIONS, PT. (1) DOWN & (2) OUT documents a demonstrated understanding of new training rules. Having been given a rope to tug to signal she needs to go outside, and a few pillows where she can go to rest, the performance is centered how the player discovers the orientation of her body in relationship to objects of communication. With her hands bound in vetwrap and a new collar, she falls deeper into subspace than in the previous document.

On display at Predicated. part of  “Julius Eastman: That Which is Fundamental,”curated by Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Dustin Hurt, organized by The Kitchen (NYC) with the Eastman Estate and Bowerbird.

︎_.DEVICEPLAY(trust and touch, care and reflection, [a study of denial])

Click to play.
Click to play further documentation.

Performed March 31, 10a.
Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

We desire intimacy. We think about what camera angles produce it, which systems we use to enhance it, and how interactions can makes us feel the warm things for people on the other side of a screen. In two parts : trust and touch, care and reflection, this composition reflects on how we compare closeness with the bodies of our networked devices and closeness with other humans or alive things. This work is the first work in which Holloway directly addresses intimacy in her practice.

As a part of her project The Chamber Series, this moment is dedicated for the experience of online voyeur. She allows viewers access and share a private moment between Soldier the human puppy, her devices, and her watchers.

We desire intimacy. We think about what camera angles produce it, which systems we use to enhance it, and how interactions can makes us feel the warm things for people on the other side of a screen.

︎._SUITABLE-FOR.EXE[CUTION]

LIVE PERFORMANCE + INSTALLATION
@Performance Space New York
October 22nd + 23rd, 2021
NYC.

Cast + Crew
Set Co-designer : Letitia S. Holloway
Music: Terran Wretch/Anthony A. Dunn
Performers: Ogemdi Ude, Trinity Dawn Bobo,Estado Flotante, Miguel Angel Guzman
Lighting Design: Christina Tang
Logo: @rotting_reign
Graphic Design: Nicole Killian
Video Tech : Matthew Deinhart

HOLLOWAY’s ._SUITABLE_FOR.EXE[CUTION] installation is a highly complex, preprogrammed, push to start system that incorporates sculpture, sound, video, creative coding, text and performance to create a portrait of a machine performing labor. The apparatus is structured around four sculptures, [SIT] STAY FETCH SPEAK.obj, SIT [STAY] FETCH SPEAK.obj, SIT STAY [FETCH] SPEAK.obj, and SIT STAY FETCH [SPEAK].obj that function as a physical score through which an algorithmic performance is run. There are remnants from an accompanying live performance of a sci-fi survival game between four captive animals and their ruthless handler. Human desire and machine desire become indistinguishable. The system seems to be at the brink of collapse, but there is no time for despair. The artist asks us to acknowledge our own role in the game of power and realize that the machine is not the other, it is us.

︎#003ACCOMPANIMENT-003_APPLY-NOW

published by QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK

︎_.Scheduled(VariableRatio):secondary-conditioned-immediateReinforcement(s)-handlerSearch1_DrillAndPractice.exe

Performed @ MCA Chicago.
Tue, Oct 9, 2018, 6–8 pm

+ 205 Hudson Gallery.
Hunter College, NYC.

_.Scheduled(VariableRatio):secondary-conditioned-immediateReinforcement(s)-handlerSearch1_DrillAndPractice.exe is a training session for a human puppy and her handler. Positive and negative reinforcements are enacted in a circle between audience members and the performer as an experiment in operant conditioning. Engaged together in an act of exchange, they mutually agree on how to choreograph the giving and receiving of a reward. It’s treats and punishment in this exchange, offering a precarious, and potentially playful communication. This choreography is an act of power exchange and an act of BDSM. Through this temporary relationship, called “pick-up play,” the rest of the audience witnesses a visceral dance that asks questions about how consent is communicated, what qualifies as violence, and how desire can manifest. The distance between disparate fantasy worlds and realities collapse into one another as everyone in the room, when ask, makes a decision to participate or not.

︎#004ACCOMPANIMENT-004_TRAINING-PLAN-AND-CODE-NOTES

To be exhibited+performed @ Refiguring the Future.
+ https://refreshart.tech/#exhibit.

“1. Focus on behavior you want.
2. Use force-free methods.
4. Set up training for success.
5. Reinforce good behavior.”

︎.Scheduled(VariableRatio):secondary-conditioned- immediateReinforcement(s)- handlerSearch1_DrillAndPractice.exe_Companion4.1

This is one half of the 4th part of The Chamber Series. Presented as part of the Companion, sister publication to the Chamber Series' performance scores, this book is modeled after a set of architectural plans that walk us through the structure of intimacies inherent in the act of creating desired behaviors within others and the experience of following the directive of another who desires a particular behavior from you. Operative conditioning, a method of behavioral training that relies on rewards and punishments, is visualized throughout a series of diagrams, questions, and creative narratives. It asks readers to consider how proximity, deprivation, yearning, generosity, and need guide and manipulate our relationship to others.

Lying on a plinth 12" high, text placed in front of the document asks you to "KNEEL." This initial request highlights consent as the central meditation of the piece. In order to interact with the project, you must follow the behavior desired by the artist. Keeling as a gesture engages the viewer in the behavioral training as described in the book - to read the book is a reward for kneeling. The experience of this document recursively highlights a range power dynamics - dominant vs. submissive, animal vs. human, free vs. captive, yearner vs. the desired, object vs. self - in an effort to mediate the experience to all who encounter it, giving everyone an equal foundation from to relate to the text.

︎REQUEST-->LURE-->RESPONSE-->REWARD(?) OR A COVERING FOR THE CAGE

2017, blanket and cage, 50x 60 in.
@MCA Chicago, The Long Dream (2021)

005.5: 005_POWER.TRANSFORM=ROTATE(180DEG).EXE, The Game THE CHAMBER SERIES v10.5

Click to download and read more via arts.black.

005_POWER.TRANSFORM=ROTATE(180DEG).EXE, the game, is the fifth issue of THE CHAMBER SERIES COMPANION and the tenth installment of THE CHAMBER SERIES, a hybrid publishing and performance project that tells the story of a half-human, half-wolf named X3 who is held captive in a science lab testing facility. Through a series of interactive “scores,” or maps, viewers engage with the narrative via a set of small actions that they must perform in order to access it in its entirety. The demand on an audience to submit to its strict viewing instructions turn THE CHAMBER SERIES into an armature that only offers itself at a price: the work submits to you as soon as you submit to it, often asking viewers to interrogate their own experience of the abuse of power, control, and fantasy in tandem with the unfolding dystopian narrative.

︎ ._SUITABLE-FOR.EXE[CUTION]%20LIVE%20ONLINE.WINDOW

REALTIME ONLINE @ https://suitableforexecution.live
NOV 2021 - FEB 2022.
Email for archived video.


Virtual Production Crew
Code: Nick Briz + SHAWNE MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY
Music: Terran Wretch/Anthony A. Dunn
Performers: Ogemdi Ude, Trinity Dawn Bobo,Estado Flotante, Miguel Angel Guzman
Videographer: Carlton Bright
Lighting Design: Christina Tang
Logo: @rotting_reign
Graphic Design: Nicole Killian
Financial Support: The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant + Performance Space New York + SHAWNE MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY

October 22nd marked the opening of SHAWNE MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY’s 20th work in the THE CHAMBER SERIES saga, ._SUITABLE_FOR.EXE[CUTION], an installation and performance at Performance Space New York. In IRLspace, the work is a highly complex, preprogrammed, push to start system that incorporates sculpture, sound, video, creative coding, text, and movement to create machine that always is performing labor. For this networked reimaging, HOLLOWAY, remediates footage from the multi-media scultpures, documentation of. the performance, and rehersal clips taken from inside the gallery to tell its story in real time. ._SUITABLE-FOR.EXE[CUTION]%20LIVE%20ONLINE.WINDOW is a 10m3s internet art experience built in a software application called prePoP that was developed by Chicago new media artist Nick Briz.