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Possibly Living People
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Possibly Living People
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Possibly Living People 2019
Digital image printed on vinyl
Siebren Versteeg’s banner Possibly Living People, commissioned by the Dodd Galleries and produced by Fastsigns in Athens, GA, is a provisional memorial commemorating approximately 5,661 people who may or may not be alive today. Versteeg culled the information from a Wikipedia Category page that lists the full names of people whom according to the site,“It is not definitively known whether the people in this category are currently living or not.” Mimicking the effects of etched names on stone found on memorials and grave sites, Versteeg interrogates the limits of the internet via a factual database of uncertainty. Or as he describes it, “The more you know, the more you don’t know.” The artist often writes digital algorithms to manipulate and present data to create his works of art. “As someone who works with software and live data feeds, my medium is ultimately in continuous flux and difficult to contain,” Versteeg explains, “I am interested in the voracious appetite for inclusion and affirmation that life online exposes. The need to expose, publish, and bear witness to ourselves can be seen as analogous to the need for object or artifact that we all too often understand as a prerequisite of art.” As such, his concern is mirrored in this presentation; a relatively flimsy vinyl banner printed at a company called Fastsigns; an ephemeral memorializing of an indeterminate and contemporary history.
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