BEHIND THE CLOUD: INTERROGATING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
BEHIND THE CLOUD: INTERROGATING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
Steffi Faircloth
Artworks
Border Patrol ASMR, 2019
Single-Channel Video, 2 minutes 24 seconds
ASMR Elote at the Border, 2019
Single-Channel Video, 9 minutes 7 seconds.
Through a playful sense of humor, Steffi Faircloth’s work destabilizes the authority of the border through the sensorial memetics of ASMR or autonomous sensory meridian response. In Border Patrol ASMR (2019) and ASMR Elote at the Border (2019), Faircloth plays with ASMR’s sensory experience that offers a calming, low-level euphoric experience or tingling sensation from low whispering voices, tapping, or eating. Popularized around 2013 via Youtube, ASMR emerged as a genre of videos and a specific category across numerous social media platforms. Faircloth utilizes ASMR to role-play and embody her “Bordertown experiences” on Youtube and Reddit. Her work brings to the forefront and digital mainstream the bordertown experience while also examining the performative nature of influencer culture heavily prevalent within our current digital age. Faircloth’s digital videos reflect the realities of bordertown living through the performative and digital language of contemporary technology with the adage of highlighting the desire for mainstream representation and, ultimately, basic human need for acknowledgment and connection.
Further Reading
Jonathan Jarry M.Sc., The Emerging Science of Careful Whispers
Artist Bio
Steffi Faircloth (b.1997) is a Mexican-American multimedia artist who received her BFA in photography at Arizona State University in 2019. She was born and raised in Nogales, Arizona, and her experience growing up in a Bordertown is the central theme in her work. Faircloth's work spans from video, photography, to sculptural works. She often finds herself playing with ideas of mundaneness and turning it into humor, while also focusing on popular culture due to how everyday it is; yet how disassociated it is with bordertown communities. Faircloth most recently exhibited work at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and the Tucson Museum of Art, and currently lives and works in Tempe, Arizona.