Roles in Archive: Artist
Antoine Catala, a French artist based in New York, has made sculptures using television as readymade, a treatment of the medium that applies to the material of the monitor as much as it does to the images of whatever channel it happens to be tuned to. For Catala, lifecasting—the practice of nonstop transmission of oneself via webcam—represents both the movement of broadcast technology from the professional studio to the home as well as a concentrated instance of the constant self-design and performance that the social internet requires—a demand that he, like most artists who make their work available online for market and exhibition systems, feels particularly acutely.