Tyler Coburn

2012

Artist Novel, 23 x 15 cm, 96 p., language: English, self-published.
Materials:

Collection: Collectie M HKA, Antwerpen.

Literary synopsis 

I’m that angel explores the ways we work on and against the computer, as told by a “content farmer”: an online journalist contracted to generate articles based on words peaking in Google Trends.

The project addresses the master narratives of technological and socioeconomic progress that have naturalized Web 2.0’s platforms, as well as the constituents of the digital public who figure into ongoing debates about sincerity and authenticity, realism and reality, and the diaristic and the literary.

Nodding to the defamiliarization strategies of Russian formalists like Viktor Shklovskii, I’m that angel takes shape as a stony stone, a cut in the stream—a book. Its format shores up the paraliterary, confessional, and epistolary precedents for our virtual vernaculars. Designed by Eric Nylund, the text concretizes found quotes, trending language, anecdotes, notes, and rants. Call it inattentionality as method.

 

Relation to art practice

I’m that angel is both a novel and performance prop. In activating this text, I periodically stage readings and tours in data centers, collaborating with data center personnel to facilitate access to the server rooms that hold parts of our virtual subjectivities.

Rather than concede to the seeming intractability of cognitive capitalism, these events potentiate critical operations through shared access and discussion. Across its parts, I’m that angel inclines towards new horizons of subjectivity, sociability, and creativity.

 

Novel's website