A source book documenting five episodes of Martine Syms's seminal fragmented television series, She Mad. Works by Martine Syms explore how mass media shapes and frames identities and cultures. Drawing from early cinema, television, the internet, social media, and ambient footage produced by phones and surveillance, Syms addresses the ways in which representations of black identity and gender appear in the public imagination.
She Mad gathers materials and documentation on Martine Syms's seminal episodic project of the same name. Each episode of this series takes a different format, using various narrative formats, from sitcoms to TikTok videos, and includes filmed footage as well as research materials. Each episode revolves around a protagonist, also named Martine--an overachieving, stoner graphic designer who lives in Hollywood and wishes she were an important artist.
The first episode Pilot for a
Show about Nowhere (2015) merges a semi-autobiographical account of Syms's own life as a young black woman with a video essay-like narrative on the history of commercial television and its assumed target audiences. The episode
Laughing Gas (2016) draws on early cinema, specifically the 1907 silent film of the same name by Edwin Porter, one of the earliest examples of a black female actress, Bertha Regustus, performing an independent role on-screen. Intro to
Threat Modeling (2017) is told through email exchanges, screengrabs, and an avatar, outlining the effects of surveillance on subjectivity. The episode
Bitch Zone (2020) takes us to an empowerment programme for teenage girls founded by supermodel and business mogul Tyra Banks
The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition of She Mad--Season One at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA.
ContributorsJadine Collingwood, William Pym, Axel Wieder
Copublished with Bergen Kunsthall
這本書是一本源頭資料書，記錄了Martine Syms的開創性電視系列《She Mad》的五個片段。Martine Syms的作品探索大眾媒體如何塑造和框定身份和文化。她從早期電影、電視、互聯網、社交媒體以及手機和監控所產生的環境影像中汲取靈感，探討黑人身份和性別在公眾想像中的呈現方式。《She Mad》收集了Martine Syms同名重要系列作品的材料和文件。該系列的每一集都採用不同的形式，從情景喜劇到TikTok視頻，並包括拍攝的影像和研究材料。每一集都圍繞著一位主角，同樣名為Martine，她是一位在好萊塢生活的高成就、嗑藥的平面設計師，希望自己成為一位重要的藝術家。
第一集《Pilot for a Show about Nowhere》（2015年）將Syms自己作為一位年輕黑人女性的半自傳故事與關於商業電視歷史及其假定的目標觀眾的視頻散文式敘述相結合。第二集《Laughing Gas》（2016年）借鑒了早期電影，特別是1907年Edwin Porter的同名無聲電影，這是黑人女演員Bertha Regustus在銀幕上獨立扮演角色的最早例子之一。第三集《Intro to Threat Modeling》（2017年）通過電子郵件交流、截圖和頭像來描述監控對主體性的影響。第四集《Bitch Zone》（2020年）帶我們去到由超模和商業大亨Tyra Banks創辦的針對青少年女孩的賦權計劃。
這本書是在挪威博根藝術館和美國芝加哥當代藝術博物館舉辦《She Mad--Season One》展覽的場合出版的。貢獻者包括Jadine Collingwood、William Pym和Axel Wieder。與博根藝術館合作出版。
Martine Syms, born 1988 in Los Angeles, has emerged in recent years as one of the defining artists of her generation. Her work combines in-depth research on the history of mass media with humour and social commentary, using film, photography, installation, performance and writing. Syms work has been featured in Signals: How Video Transformed the World (2023) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and in solo exhibitions at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and many others. She has also realized commissioned work for brands such as Prada, Nike and Celine. She recently finished her first feature film, The African Desperate (2022), and received a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.
