Garrett Lynch IRL

research interests: networked art, networked performance, post-disciplinary practice, digital arts
en

Garrett Lynch (IRL) is an artist, lecturer, curator and theorist. His work deals with networks (in their most open sense) within an artistic context; the spaces between artist, artworks and audience as a means, site and context for artistic initiation, creation and discourse. Recently most active in live performance Garrett’s networked practice spans online art, installation, performance and writing.

 

Currently Garrett’s research and practice focus is exploring the thesis that networks are a transformative factor in contemporary art practice. How both cultural and technological developments in the latter half of the 20th century e.g. the dematerialisation (Lippard, 1997) of art as object, art as process (Alloway, 1972) and the adoption of a systems approach to a number of fields, have enabled practice to become above all concerned with relationship and behaviour. Art has always suggested connections to the world it is embedded within. Contemporary art continues to do this at a now hyper accelerated pace within a globalised cultural and social context (Castells, 2000) however it can also facilitate actual connections through (new) media as discussed in new media theory. Relationships are produced as a result of connections which enable performative scenarios. As a result of its key concerns this practice should be considered a networked practice and not because of the media forms which may or may not be its technical enabler or carrier.

 

Post-graduate of interactive research at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD), Paris, France and PhD of networked art at South Bank University, London, England Garrett has taught on several new media courses throughout England, Wales and India.

research

research expositions

  • Pandemic performance: A Haunting of Haunts (2022) author(s): Garrett Lynch IRL published in: Journal for Artistic Research
    During the COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020, galleries, theatres, and performance venues closed in accordance with social distancing, lockdown, and confinement policies. Art practice, and in particular performance art, faced an existential crisis: adapt its form or cease to exist for audiences. To adapt, performance art adopted video on the internet as a means through which to perform posing immense challenges to its understanding of performance, liveness, and what is considered physical or ‘real’. As a response, I started to create a body of work employing the methodology of practice as research (PaR) during periods of confinement of the pandemic. Titled A Haunting of Haunts (2020–ongoing), the practice is designed to be situated within networks and is therefore classified as networked performance. The practice aims to enable artists to create performance under conditions of social distancing, lockdown, and confinement, to explore the idea of transposing performance from ‘real’ spaces to ‘virtual’ spaces, and to critique video as the dominant and largely accepted visual form employed in networked performance. This exposition proposes that while A Haunting of Haunts facilitates practice and assists in the development of a visual language specific to networks that consists of what are termed as networked images, thereby contributing to networked performance as a field of practice, it also highlights the hauntological condition of such a practice.
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