Freya Björg olafson
intermedia artist / artiste intermedia

Marrying the physicality and immediacy of contemporary dance with the virtual ambiguities of online social networking, Avatar is a cross-disciplinary hub for experimentation and inquiry. As director and subject of her hybridized performance endeavours, Olafson engages what she calls a “duet with technology” – navigating digitally altered notions of exhibitionism, orientation, and identity.

This performance is part of an ongoing series that explores methods of creating, validating and disseminating one’s identity through the use of technology and the Internet. The work is inspired by the mantra 'I post therefore I am' whereby Internet users legitimize their existence by documenting their lives and uploading this media to personal webpages and blogs. Fragmented images from Olafson's personal life are woven together with the distorted and satirical views of various real video blogger audio and video sampling.

Since it’s premiere in 2009 as a co-presentation with Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers and the núna (now) Festival AVATAR has since been performed in Chicago, North Carolina, Toronto, Montreal, North Dakota, Minnesota as well as Quito, Manta and Guayaquil in Ecuador. In 2010 AVATAR received the “Buddies in Bad Times Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation” at the Summerworks Theatre Festival in Toronto. In 2013 the project toured to Germany, Alberta, British Colombia and the Atlantic region of Canada. Most recently AVATAR was performance in Chicago as part of the Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival 2014.

The development of this series is generously supported by:

The Canada Council for The Arts,

Manitoba Arts Council,

The Winnipeg Arts Council

& Video Pool Media Arts Center

Organizations that facilitated working process:

Tedd Robinson of 10 Gates Dancing Inc, one-week consultation at the Barn (Ontario)

Studio 303   through a workshop with www.2boys.tv (Montreal)

SĺM - Icelandic Association for Visual Artists (Reykjavik, Iceland)

PAF - Performing Arts Forum (France)

Plug In ICA 'Summer Institute (Winnipeg, Manitoba)