Mahou Shoujo Monitor-Head!

Not one culture is fixed nor remains unchanged for eternity, much less nowadays where telepresence is such an important and unavoidable subject. We can (and we will for this instance) take a concept introduced by Byung-Chung Han: the hyperculture. Hyperculture is when cultural expressions are extracted from their place of origin, historical context and corresponding rituals to be juxtaposed with others. It’s culture, but freed from geography. Art in this hyperculture expands in a way that’s constantly adding new forms of expression and style.

 

This is exactly what happens in Mahou Shoujo Monitor-Head! This artwork, done by an argentinian artist, takes its aesthetic, narrative elements and theme from a japanese animation subgenre. The kawaii and magical aesthetic is referenced by an artist that’s literally on the other side of the world. We can say, then, that we’re witnessing an example of hyperculture in modern art.

 

The performer has a monitor in her head to make reference to the connectivity allowed through the use of the computer and internet, expanding cultural horizons to a speed never seen before. Moreover this character's characteristic makes a reference to art viewed in telepresence. The performance is shown through an internet connection, with people all around the country (or world, if you wanted to) viewing it without the necessity to previously make any time-space coordination.

 

But how is the experience produced in the field of digital art, in the age of telepresence? For the author and performer Fisher-Lichte, the subject artist creates the work of art as an artifact independent of itself. Thanks to this, any receiver can make it an object of their perception and interpretation. If the artwork is fixed and can be shown as many times as desired, the receiver can make a new interpretation in each one of those repetitions. However, is it not a fundamental characteristic of performances being irreproducible? 

 

Mahou Shoujo Monitor-Head! plays with the limit in the definition of what’s a performance. It’s a real-time acting in which viewers don’t have any power over the artwork itself, just like in theater. Being streamed through an online platform could mean that it’s still not a “legitimate” way of acting or that it’s not a performance. However, unless someone other than the artist decides to record it and play it in the future, it’s still something that’s being done live and is an unrepeatable experience. As Olivia Abarca writes in Art and Telepresence: the experience of art through a screen: “Every artistic device enables

an aesthetic experience that will vary according to the attributes specific to the object itself and to the conditions of its exposure and by the capabilities of the receiver /.../”[1]. 

 

In conclusion, Mahou Shoujo Monitor-Head! presents an experience to viewers while investigating the changes done to the attributes of performances as an art expression through telepresence. 

 

[1] Olivia Abarca, Art and Telepresence: the experience of art through a screen, page 25.

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