I was delighted to connect with Luke, an artist with a busy, blossoming and expansive media practice.

This conversation took place slowly and purposefully, we hope you enjoy reading this marking of an important time in Luke’s career.

- Ellen O’Connor

Could you share an overview of your practice and some of the ideas currently embedded in it?

Through video, installation, image making, new media, and performance, my practice to date has focused on how contemporary identities are performed for and mediated by technology. This has led me to explore how the self is formed within networked technologies, and how these environments drive compulsive self-obsession and consumption.

My current work resonates at the intersection between celebrity culture, alienation, masculinity, and violence. Using appropriated imagery, the work is informed by my lived experience of a brain stuck on repeat with intrusive images and thoughts that are inflamed by engaging with social media. My aim is to point to the increasing difficulty in separating one’s self-perception and memories from the lives of those we are algorithmically optimized to consume. 

Specifically, I am interested in the pressure of performing personas and how vulnerability becomes a marker for authenticity online. This has led me to examine how contemporary masculine identities are generated and commodified into archetypes of the alpha male, the cuck, and various celebrity personas. These macho expressions are often contrasted by a desire for submission to both the feed and the individual. I am concerned with how masculine self-alignment within the competitive confines of platforms breeds loneliness and insecurity.

As you evaluate these intricacies of masculinity and the self within the digital, how does performance play a role in your process?

A few years ago I made a work entitled chatroullete (2018 - 19) which was a series of live-streamed durational performances on the video chat website, where I would passively sit with a sign with different questions; ‘how do I make you feel?’ etc. I would not engage with the other person, allowing them to decide whether to skip. Being passive often resulted in users being faced with themselves, highlighting the loneliness of the situation, most notably; an older man masturbating to my image for 20 minutes and multiple people telling me that they felt ‘nothing’. What interested me was that by not giving other people the validation or acknowledgment or connection that they sought, it showed how the internet is a place where you feel deeply connected and alone at the same time. 

This has led me in more recent works to look at how in generating content for platforms we are forced to perform almost all aspects of ourselves, which is then capitalised and commodified. I’m drawn to this desire to post videos of ourselves crying or in desperate situations as a way to appear authentic within an extremely online attention economy. I often come back to this quote from DIS for the 9th edition of the Berlin Biennale: “It is the present that is unknowable, unpredictable, and incomprehensible—forged by a persistent commitment to a set of fictions. There is nothing particularly realistic about the world today. A world in which investing in fiction is more profitable than betting on reality.”(1)

That quote is really good. Evokes that idea of the internet as a weird theatrical stage of reality. You are searching for pieces of its script, as it unfolds! There is so much thinking on future technologies in art, I like how you are rooting your work in the bizarreness of the now, and to the social and emotional. Very journalistic and exciting! Can you cite any artwork/film/book/place that has recently re-fuelled your practice?

Recently I’ve discovered Cory Arcangel’s Flatware series, where he scans various fast fashion garments on cheap office scanners, pairs the resulting scans, embosses his signature in Photoshop, and then UV prints the composition directly onto IKEA LINNMON tabletops. The resulting abstraction transforms the clothing and branding into a ‘scanner painting’. One of my favorites 8- 115_6/115_03 (blk) (2022) depicts the iconic three-stripe Adidas logo from a pair of sweatpants compiled together as black void across four of the tabletops. When speaking about these works Arcangel talks about how ubiquitous the stripes have become in mass culture and how you can go anywhere anywhere in the world and see them. I am inspired by the simplicity of these works, yet how they speak about ideas of the connections between, supply chains, globalism, oil (polyester is made out of petroleum), celebrity, Instagram feeds, and IRL space.These works reminded me of when Kim Kardashian famously wore a Balenciaga ensemble that covered her face and every inch of her body to the 2021 Met Gala. There was no branding, no logo, just her black silhouette, yet everyone knew it was her.

Both of those references make a lot of sense in relation to your practice. Encoding new identities within the mass-produced, and considering the resulting knowledge and outcomes we encounter when things (and people) become ubiquitous. Interesting layers to unpack of personal, celebrity, digital and IRL!!

I would love to ask you about your day-day practice. Tell me about your studio setup!

Currently, I’m fortunate enough to have a project studio in TBG+S where I spend a few hours 5-6 days a week (depending on what I’m working on). I work with a wide variety of materials, but everything I make tends to originate from a computer. This results in most of my studio time being spent on a desktop, scrolling through various feeds, downloading footage, images and sound, which I later edit and manipulate in a multitude of different video/sound/photo/3D editing software. I also have been slowly collecting different found materials from scrap yards and online marketplaces, such as glass, metal, and car parts, with the aim of making sculptural assemblages that reference/include some of the digital work. In the past few months, I’ve realised I work better in an organised studio, so I tend to leave the rest of the room pretty empty; like a gallery where I can hang and document work for exhibition.

Of course like everyone, I spend a huge chunk of my time applying for things and doing admin work. I also tend to use my studio as a central base to have studio visits/ production meetings with future collaborators. I like to leave reading for when I’m at home, so I’m usually just listening to podcasts, or mixes while I work.

Thank you for sharing that glimpse. I am really interested to see where you take this object collecting. Sculptural and digital fusion. Sourcing the objects online feels relevant to your digital process!

You mentioned collaborators, is collaboration something you want to incorporate more into your practice?

In 2020 I co-founded crux.project with Lana May Fleming and Frances Hennigan, which is a curatorial platform/ collective that was formed in response to the pandemic and lack of ability to exhibit for individuals who’ve recently graduated from college. From this, we held a pop-up exhibition with 8 graduating artists from IADT in a Ring Fort in Rathmichael, Co. Dublin, which included ritualistic performances, video installations, sculptures, and a proposed housing development for the local fairy population. We then made a website that acts as both documentation from the event and an artwork in itself. The 8 of us worked collaboratively for a period of a few months, and we all bounced off each other, which created a buzz, that things might be possible if you just put it out there and see what happens.

I hope/long to work like that again, even though it’s difficult, there’s a lot more fun to be had making your own opportunities, rather than waiting until you might be offered one.

Lastly, what are you looking forward to?

I have a group exhibition in Ranelagh Arts in October curated by Shaista Sosrowardoyo, and I’m also trying to work out a way to expand on some of the work I’ve made in the past year for a possible solo exhibition soon. Most notably, (and this relates to the last question) we are bringing crux.project to Witten, DE in July (2024) in collaboration with the Kulturforum Witten, in the form of a group show in an old factory. We still have a lot to work out, but I am currently working on an expanded video work that I hope to show, alongside some new sculptures. This project is very ambitious, so we aim to try to create a big buzz around it, with the possibility of an opening party, performances, music, etc. I’m looking forward to working as a collective again, after a period of all of us working independently in our studios. I’m excited by the prospect of returning to a more DIY approach, with some knowledge I’ve gained since working professionally as an artist, post-college.

Sending my best wishes for those shows. Really exciting to re-envision the web-based collaborative project into physicality! I look forward to seeing what the group generates for this.

Thank you so much for sharing your practice with us Luke!

Thank you so much Ellen, looking forward to see what you and screen service do in the near future :)

Find some more information about Luke here.

This interview was written for Additional, the screen service e-newsletter, June 2023.

(1): https://bb9.berlinbiennale.de/the-present-in-drag-2/

Images:

Luke van Gelderen, HARDCORE FENCING (2023), Single Channel Digital video, 15”08”, appropriated footage, work in progress, gif. Courtesy of the artist.

Luke van Gelderen, https://chatroulette.com, 2018 - 19, Online duration performance, still, HD video, 10:24. Courtesy of the Artist.

Cory Arcangel, 8- 115_6/115_03 (blk), 2023, UV ink on IKEA LINNMOM table tops 200 x 120 x 4cm Courtesy of Lisson Gallery.