Dissertation, 2022, keine Creative Commons-Lizenzierung Supervised by: Christa Sommerer, Christiane Paul Abstract This dissertation traces the trajectory of self-representation from the beginning of the Renaissance until the digital age to examine whether its historical themes and functions persist today, and how they are transformed and expanded under digital conditions. This thesis creates narratives throughout the past decades and centuries to highlight the underlying continuity of self-representation and to integrate computer art and contemporary digital art into the art-historical canon. It aims to provide a holistic understanding of the history of self-representation in the modern period until today and therefore specifically focuses on positions that have often been omitted from historiography, such as female, race, and gender perspectives. Based on selected artistic positions, the thesis outlines the definitions of the terms self-portraiture, performance and performance art and its applicability to artists working in the digital realm. With a comprehensive survey, it examines different artistic practices of self-representation and compares how contemporary digital artists relate to the characteristics of their historical precedents. The qualitative survey consists of two rounds of questionnaires and extensive interviews with 19 contemporary artists who use their appearance in a constant or profound way, engage with a wide variety of digital tools, and convey different topics, approaches, age groups, genders, and cultural backgrounds. This dissertation is accompanied by an online exhibition (performingidentities.net) that places the artists’ works in context to one another and provides additional resources from the interviews conducted. The participating artists are: LaTurbo Avedon, Maya Ben David, Jonas Blume, Arvida Byström, Echo Can Luo, Kate Durbin, Rah Eleh, Carla Gannis, Mohsen Hazrati, Georges Jacotey, Andy Kassier, Erica Lapadat-Janzen, Rollin Leonard, Olia Lialina, Martina Menegon, Doug Rosman, Leah Schrager, Molly Soda, Joan Truckenbrod. Many historical functions and themes of self-representation have retained their relevance until today, although their manifestation, context, and understanding have changed over time, especially with the crucial shift brought about by the technological innovations of the digital age. Rather than a reproduction of the own face or self, digital conditions facilitate new possibilities for creating ambiguous or fictionalized identities mediated through the appearance of the artist, that does not solely intend to provide information about the artist’s self but draws upon it as a testimony to validate performed fictional identities situated in a larger sociocultural context. The fluidity of identities, image creation and editing possibilities, the state of social platforms and the post-media condition entail that established terms are insufficient to define and describe today’s multidisciplinary practices of artistic self-representation. I propose the term performed identities to grasp the underlying characteristics of artistic self-representation in the digital realm. Its definition foregoes medium specificity and refers to the performative and transformational process involved in creating the work. The term accounts for the shift from self-portraiture towards identity construction and amends the introspective view of identity to encompass outside perspectives as well. Performed identities underlines the fluidity and simultaneous multiplicity of identities and points to our increasingly mediated existence in virtual worlds.

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