I Rez Therefore I Am

CYBERSPACE, 10 May – When this blog first launched it was a place to document VBCO (Vaneeesa Blaylock / Company) performance artworks. Over time I have come to write on more diverse topics, and over time I’ve been joined on this I Rez, Therefore I Am blog by the wonderful co-contributors Aero Elizabeth Bowman, Agnes [...]

NEW YORK CITY, 2010 – After my marriage to Mark had ended, my mother was ridiculously excited to have me date this rich, conservative, business tycoon Charles Rosenthal. She was positively giddy at the thought of having him as a son-in-law. THE HAGUE, 2012 – It’s funny how unimpressed my parents were with some of [...]

PALO ALTO, 2003 – Floating in Mark’s pool. He was making so much money back then. He was a star in the valley and I was his young wife. Everything seemed so easy and wonderful and exciting. THE HAGUE, 2012 – Everything did seem so easy and wonderful and exciting then. Everything is better now. [...]

EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE, 5 May – Meandra has asked VR residents to answer 20 questions, about life in virtual worlds, so here goes mine… MEANDRA: 1. Since when and how did you become a SL member? VANEEESA: I was invited by Esparanza Freese to create a performance work for a VR art exhibition her graduate [...]

ROBERT F PECKHAM FEDERAL COURTHOUSE, SAN JOSE, 2 May – Today Google Inc. made permanent their ban of Vaneeesa Blaylock from their unpopular social network site Google+, declaring Blaylock an illegitimate human being, her identity false, and determining that she had no civil rights and no human rights. In a written statement Justice Gundotra denied [...]

RYBNIK, POLAND, 1920 – My great-grandfather Eran Wasser circa 1920. My father’s mother’s father. His daughter went to America, but he never did. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other picture of him. THE HAGUE, 2012 – I never met my great-grandfather Eran Wasser, he passed away before I was born. He never left [...]

PALO ALTO, 1999 – Sleeping with Mark in his Palo Alto apartment. This is my proof. He did love me once. THE HAGUE, 2012 – Seeing this photo with my ex husband does not make me angry. Strangely, it doesn’t make me sad. It sort of makes me happy. That even if it is in [...]

LINCOLN CENTER, 2 April – At the nexus of TED’s elitism, Thomas Kinkade’s populism, Sigfreid & Roy’s beauty, and Ashton Kucher’s charisma, composer Eric Whitacre premiered here tonight Virtual Choir 3 – Water Night. A virtual choir aggregated from 3,746 parts sung by vocalists across the globe and posted as online videos, Water Night is [...]

NEW YORK CITY, 1985 – For my sixteenth birthday Wendy and I got to go to New York! OMG it was so much crazy fun. I wrote this on the hotel stationary. Honestly, I have no idea what I meant back then, but there it is. I think it was an all-giggling weekend. We barely [...]

BERLIN, 28 April – Silent since the demise of Blue Mars, the VBCO Travel & Safari Co. launched a field trip to the temporary virtual world of Gallery Weekend Berlin 2012 today. 10 started out on the journey and 4 were delivered to the promised land. 4 died quickly at the hands of MacOS 10.5.8 [...]

RIDGEFIELD PARK, NJ, 27 April – Launched 10 April, and sued yesterday by 18 Olympic athletes claiming implied endorsement without consent, the Samsung Electronics America Inc., Olympic Genome Project on Facebook is a social network visualized poorly. Essentially “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” for the Olympics via Facebook, SGP takes the dubious “degrees of separation” [...]

BERLIN, 26 April – Opening here tomorrow is Gallery Weekend Berlin 2012: 51 Galleries and 51 Openings in 3 Days and 3 Nights, from 27-29 April. And with GWB2012 comes Virtual Gallery Weekend, also opening on 27 April and running thru 2 May. • Gallery Weekend Berlin 2012 • Virtual Gallery Weekend Berlin • VB/CO [...]

NEW YORK – CHICAGO – SAN FRANCISCO – ACROSS ANY TABLE, 25 April – If art and life are tapestries, richly woven matrices of people and experiences, then from what far-flung sources come the fibers of these weavings? Is a monochrome better than a cacophony? Is the richness of our art, our lives, our culture, [...]

NEW YORK CITY, 17 March – In the roller coaster of life, soaring ascents are often followed by plunging descents, and so it was today for Vaneeesa Blaylock whose bombastic performance last week of Net / Work was today counterpointed by a simple act of contrition, a day of silent meditation in hopes of making [...]

INDIO, CA, 15 April – Tonight the late Tupac Shakur appeared at the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in a performance with Snoop Dogg. In the spring of 1988 I was a freshman at the University of California, San Diego, studying performance art with Allan Kaprow, and I also took a social psychology [...]