separation/séparation fran�ais


body-machine/corps-machine

Annie Abrahams Co production Panoplie.org 2002 2003 Programmation William Pezet.

After flash: Archives:

Annie Abrahams, Separation from Dene Grigar on Vimeo. This video clip captures electronic literature artist Annie Abrahams performing her Flash work, “Separation,” at “A Toast to the Flash Generation,” hosted by Dene Grigar of the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver and the Electronic Literature Organization. Dec. 31 2020.

Original .fla files in a .zip (FR, ENG, 800, 1200px wide)

Screencaptures of the images in the exercises in a .zip

Poem, exercises, alert texts and short description of interactivity in a .pdf.

The .html .swf and .txt files are still on this website in the map bram.org/separation/sepa/

You also have access to an active archive made with Rhizome's Conifer: https://conifer.rhizome.org/_embed/annieabrahams/separationséparation/20201116170019$br:firefox:68/https://www.bram.org/separation/sepa/separa_1200_eng.html



Originally a text written during a stay in the hospital in 2001. The visitor is constrained to follow the implemented exercises. The exercises are based on the exercises in workpace, a breaks and exercise software tool proven to assist the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI).

All computer workers tend to forget their body, and so risk to be a victim of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) one day. The visitors of 'separation' are constraint to click slowly ( as someone recovering from rsi) to see appearing one word at a time of the text. Every now and than a exercise is proposed and all interaction with the computer is postponed. (A recovering rsi patient needs to do this kind of exercises.)
The text seems to be about a separation between human beings, only the last two phrases reveal that it's about a separation between a human being and a computer.

"This is the first time that my body has been directly addressed, indeed disciplined, by a Net Art work. This is made possible by its complex composition. separation/séparation is made of many parts: a web interface, an economical visual aesthetic, texts (the monologue, the instructions, the commands), human-to-machine interaction." Essay for the catalogue of "If not you not me" exhibition of work by Annie Abrahams at HTTP gallery in London, Ruth Catlow, January 2010 http://www.furtherfield.org/if-not-you-not-me-2 .

Articles " separation ", R. Catlow for furtherfield.org 2003, Remedios Zafra (espagnol) for the show 'Habitar en (punto) net' at "Espai F", Mataró (Barcelona) Spain, 24 10- 19 12 2003. (With Auriea Harvey, Tina Laporta, Margot Lovejoy, Mary Flannagan, Laura Floid, Cornelia Solfrank and Natalie Bookchin.), John Zuern in Where Are We Now?: Orienteering in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 for the Electronic Book Review (2011-11-09 ). Miriam Torralba Cortés, EL HIPERTEXTO COMO EL “FUTURO” PRESENTE EN LA COMPOSICIÓN Y LECTURA DE LOS LIBROS DE ARTISTA. DOS CASOS: “SEPARATION/SÉPARATION” DE ANNIE ABRAHAMS Y “ATEMPORAL” DE RICARDO CASTRO Y CÉSAR ROMÁN. thesis, Mexico 2014. Article and translation in Italien by Mauro Carassai and Renata Morresi Verbal Disengagements: Translating Language Games in Annie Abrahams’s Separation/Séparation dans Translating E-Literature (2015). Eds. Regnauld, Arnaud and Abrioux, Yves. Bibliothèque de l’Université Paris 8 (Saint-Denis, France).

"This is also to say that Separation / Séparation shakes me back into myself, makes me itchily aware of my being, instead of allowing me to believe I have dissolved into an immaterial receptacle for receiving entertainment, which is how I most enjoy feeling in front of a screen. ... In Separation / Séparation, Abrahams anticipates our impatient behaviors and both goads us into them, so we become conscious of these automatic operations, and induces us to comport ourselves differently, to adopt a gentler attitude in front of the poor pounded-on computer. ... That escape comes easiest through technology, but not here: Abrahams bars the door to fugitive, algorithmic reprieve." 05/2020, Revisiting the net artist’s Flash poem Separation / Séparation by Ania Szremski for 4Columns, New York.

Presentations and expositions : Betaspace aout 03, 'Perspectives03', Computer Space Festival à Sofia/Bulgaria, 'ENTRAÎNEMENTS # 3 : Primé dans la compétition internet 'travail de la danse/chorégraphies du travail', la Ménagerie de Verre, Paris, EDNA et Siemens Arts Program 2003 puis présenté au Festival Acces(s), Billère/Pau, France, à Das TAT im Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt am Main, Allemagne et au Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains, Lille/Tourcoing, France en 2004, Terminal X-perienZ 12dec -18 dec, centre Noroit, Erres. 2004, "Premio Internazionale Dino Villani", Galleria del Premio Suzzara, Mantova, 19 septembre 2004 – 2 février 2005, III muestra internacional de artes electrónicas, Bogota, Columbia, curateur : Karen Dermineur 2005, Journée d'étude "Esthétiques intermédias: approches historiques" co-organisée par Annie Gentès (ENST) et Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarié (MECSCI, UVSQ) au Théâtre Paris - Villette, petite salle, Samedi 10 juin 2006. Incorporé dans la collection de computerfinearts.com New York en 2005. Présenté à [DAM] Berlin. 10.11 - 5.12.2006. “Tout va bien”, solo exhibition of Annie Abrahams, ESCA Gallery 2007, installed on a computer in a wooden module 500 x 160 x 130 cm. Photos: info/toutvabien/imagesang.htm Inclus dans la Electronic Literature Collection 2 http://www.eliterature.org/ 2010. Ugly Feelings, curation Ania Szremski, Townhouse, Cairo, 2013. Inclus dans MTAA’s Physical Bookmarks for Vintage Net Art Created Before Facebook (BF-2004), 2015, 5 x 6 inch etched vinyl on panel. May 24 – August 2, 2021 Afterflash exhibition, ELO’s The NEXT.

While the central focus of Abrahams' piece is the computer user's fraught relationship with the machine, by providing English and French versions of the work, Abrahams, a Dutch artist working in France, also underscores the powerful but often under-recognized role of a language - "native," "national," "other," "foreign" - in situating us in relation to whatever we read, even when that situation amounts to a separation due to our inability to comprehend. As do many of the texts in Volume 2, "Separation/Séparation" encodes the coordinates of its creation in the form of the different human languages it engages. Embracing the otherness of two languages, Abrahams, whose native language is Dutch, wrote both "Separation" and "Séparation," as she explained in an email message to me on 21 July 2011.” “Where Are We Now?: Orienteering in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2”, John Zuern, Electronic Book Review November 9, 2011.

“ …. our Italian translation of Annie Abrahams?s Separation/Séparation aims at highlighting the importance of „behavioural code? both in human and machinic practices and has become an inquiry into the ways in which Abrahams?s responsive literary device (involved in linguistic and extra-linguistic practices) partakes in reconfiguring our rule-guided intersubjective behaviours at the level of literary negotiation. In Abrahams?s work negotiations of visualized words are purposefully meant to undergo readjustments and modulations whose effects are rarely under complete control of either the author or the work?s reader/“empathizer”/interpellator. As Wittgenstein remarks in Philosophical Investigations, “it is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact.Mauro Carassai and Renata Morresi “Verbal Disengagements: Translating Language Games in Annie Abrahams’s Separation/Séparation”, Translating E-Literature (2015).

These exercises de facto interrupt the reader from any action upon the written surface of Separation/Séparation’s literary text and thus they adequately protect her against RSI. It is interesting to note how Abrahams’s imagination works in the direction of building a specific utterance by means of a code-based literary work. We can see such specific utterance as concerned with a fundamental urge toward change. The work, that is, encourages readers to change their attitude towards the machine and, consequently, their relation to (the) work itself. Abrahams’s literary work ultimately urges readers to change their relation to their own body as they usually perform reading at their computer desks.” “Rule-guided Expression: Gender Dissent across Mediated Literary Works,” Kristin Allukian and Mauro Carassai, Ada Issue #8, 2016.font>

 

being human