Twitter Torture/MGandhi in Jail, 2009-2010
online duration performance
On May 5th, 2009, I began a 9 month duration performance in Second Life. My avatar, MGandhi Chakrabarti was placed in a reproduction of his jail cell at the Yerwada prison where in 1930 he was imprisoned by the British soon after the completion of the Salt Satyagraha. MGandhi, who had freely wandered with me throughout Second Life in 2008 as we engaged in the treadmill powered reenactment of the Salt March, was now to sit and meditate, 24/7 in his virtual environment. On July 4th, 2010, I expanded the performance to include daily readings from the just released Bush era "Torture Memos". These "readings" were typed into the text chat of Second Life then fed automatically via a SL plugin, "Twitterbox", to my Twitter account which then fed directly to my Facebook updates. Thus, the work became a duration daily reading that flowed from the online community to my social media pages. Read further about the work here. I completed this work on January 26th, 2010, the anniversary date for Gandhi's actual release from jail in 1930. I commemorated this event by holding a day long series of concerts - the gg hootenanny.
MGandhi in Prison, 2009-2010 durational online performance
Twitter Torture, 2009-2010 MGandhi typing in the memos
Visitors
MGandhi Chakrabarti
Twitter Torture, 2009-2010 the twitter feed
Twitter Torture 2009-2010 the facebook feed