Usually work produced as part of a short workshop tends to be quite a routine testing of process and technique and not a fully fledged work/performance however intensive workshops can provide that opportunity to explore very directed ideas which may not have been possible for the artist due to knowledge or access to materials. Nathalie Fougeras’ wearable object/performance, Breast, What is the Breast to Choose (image above, video below) is without a doubt a fully fledged work with considerable reflection.

Created at Hybrid Scrapyard, part of the iMAL New Brave World series of workshops about the Internet of things, hybrid world and networking & locative media, the work is a technical exploration of Arduino and Xbee but conceptually explores ideas of feminine sexuality, intimacy and gratification in relation to what is most predominantly a domain (as previously media forms have been) seen through masculine eyes, the internet. The wearable device allows the artist, through self gratification, to trigger visual internet searches related to the part of the body she is touching, the breast, mimicking, parodying and subverting the male act of self-gratification and the internets role in the contemporary variant of that.

I’m not suggesting the work is related to it but the work reminds me of Rebecca Horn’s Cornucopia, Seance for Two Breasts.