NSFW

Video (2018, HD, 1:1:, 2min) and 12 sculptures (2022, 20×20 cm)

NSFW is the acronym for Not Safe For Work, used primarily for online content that it is not advisable to open in a public environment such as work. Pornographic images are part of the content not suitable for work.

This GAN has been trained with a pornographic image dataset. The training dataset is a corpus of highly coded images and representations, where positions and motifs are constantly repeated with different bodies. The kind of image produced by the trained network undoes this normative pornographic image and imagines an amalgam of meat and holes, destroying any representation of individual bodies. The latent space is conceived as an analysis or a distorted portrait of the dataset, producing here a counter-image of pornography. Given that pornography is one of the main content of the Internet (or so are we told), this latent space could also be a portrait of the Internet in 2018.

If a person is incapable of distinguishing pornographic content in the images generated by this network (they are images of abstract tendency without realistic representative content), the anti-pornographic filters of social networks like Twitter does identify these images as sensitive content.

Text from the exhibition Biennal 2064 (2022-2023, Bòlit –Girona–, La Virreina –Barcelona– and Centre el Carme –Valencia) that fictionalises future artists:

During her first stage, Kriska Li appropriated the tools and aesthetics of oracular capitalism to experiment with representations of the body. NSFW is an archetypal piece of this period: it is a trained network with thousands of pornographic images. A highly codified corpus of images and representations, where postures and motifs are constantly repeated with different bodies. The type of image that the trained network produces undoes this normative pornographic image and imagines an amalgamation of flesh and holes; destroying any representation of individual bodies. Subsequently, the artist created a series of resin sculptures based on the forms of the video. The intervention was interpreted as an expression of the problematic relationship between digital abstractions and bodily discomfort.