The Quarantine Connections project team is Scott Kildall, Nathaniel Stern, and Chris Butzen.
Stern and Kildall are artists who, as a collaborative duo, have a history of producing participatory performance via the internet. In Wikipedia Art (2009), they used Wikipedia as a platform where “anyone could edit” the work of art – either directly on the editable encyclopedia, or indirectly through citable dialog. For Tweets in Space (2012), they sent messages with the hashtag #tweetsinspace to a potential life-supporting exo-planet 22 light years away. In each networked performance, individuals learned something about themselves and their media. Wikipedia Art revealed the invisible power structures behind what was the world’s most powerful information resource at the time, and had people poke fun at and play with that structure as a mode of intervention. Tweets in Space amplified the shallowness of 140 characters at a time, and the depth of all those voices, all at once – pleading for love, or just saying hello.
Chris Butzen also has a history with the artist duo. He was hired to code the original back end for Tweets in Space, but volunteers his time as a core collaborator on Quarantine Connections – starting just two days after the project began as a conversation between Stern and Kildall.
Quarantine Connections continues Kildall and Stern’s practice of using existing technologies and platforms in different ways, to connect and tell us something about ourselves. Like their prior collaborations, it is a Networked Performance which asks strangers to contribute and share using an Internet-based system. But the crux of this work is physical contact. Like Correspondence Art (often called Mail Art), uniquely crafted objects – our letters – are sent, received, and appreciated via the postal service, all without judgment. Overall, Quarantine Connections asks what personal contact might look and feel like in this difficult moment, and invites us to collectively and individually respond.