Interventions in Live Chat is the product of a series of online conversations about art, conducted between the artist and customer service representatives from service and supply companies such as the ICONIC, Deliveroo, Palace Casinos, BYOjet, Vistaprint and Ali Baba.
Helper’s process subtly disrupts the highly scripted, commercially motivated customer-focused online chat environment by engaging operators with conceptual questions about art. Where the customer service operator is attempting to create a friendly, helpful environment to drive an economic transaction, the artist attempts to engage in a conceptual conversation that defers the commercial endgame and creates value of a different kind.
Using live chat as an entry point for communicating ideas, Helper includes people who might not normally participate in artistic dialogue or with art at all. Consequently, she exposes the systems and processes that are often veiled, ignored or covered up for the sake of presenting art as a decontextualised, finite object or idea in the gallery space.
Roslyn Helper is a Sydney-based artist and curator interested in the effects of new technologies on society, culture and politics. She holds an MA in Arts Politics from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Helper has presented work for the Biennale of Sydney, Performance Space, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney Festival, Liquid Architecture, Firstdraft, PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, and the Festival of Live Art (FoLA). Roslyn is the Director of Underbelly Arts Lab and Festival.
Exhibition opening Friday 6pm 4 November 2020