Wren Gardiner with HereIn
Installation view of By the Sweat of My Browser, 2023, University of California San Diego
[Image description: Three video monitors installed on pedestals in a gallery. The center monitor features an image of Wren, a white person with longish blonde hair. The monitors on either side show white screens. A curved bench sits in the foreground of the photo.]
Simultaneously hilarious and unsettling, Wren Gardiner’s practice probes the relationship between the analog and virtual worlds. Their recent MFA thesis exhibition, By the Sweat of My Browser, featured three television monitors, each playing videos of Gardiner talking a mile a minute about health insurance, boobs, and their affection for the television show The Big Bang Theory. The work could not feel more of-the-moment, anchored as it is in the reality-television and internet culture that has come to dominate so much of our popular visual, and verbal, landscape. Gardiner spoke— in the delightfully chaotic style of their performative monologues— with HereIn Editor Elizabeth Rooklidge about their artistic process, being in a body in the age of the internet, and what it means to be cringe.
HereIn: Wren, when people ask you what kind of work you make, what’s your answer?
Wren Gardiner: That’s a funny question, because I very specifically say performance first, then I say video, then I say writing, even though the writing is kind of where everything starts. And then lately I’ve been saying that I’ve started doing installation. Everything revolves around the performance for me though, like I never make work where there’s not some performative element, but the basis of the whole thing is usually the writing.
Health Browser (3 min. clip), 2023, single channel video with sound, 14 min. 11 sec.
[Video description: Wren, a white person with longish blonde hair, wears a black tank top and glasses. They pace around in front of a white backdrop as they talk.]
HereIn: The videos do truly feel off the cuff, but I would imagine they’re not. What does your process look like?
Gardiner: Okay, so first I write it, the monologue. I call them monologues. Or monos. I have these Google Docs, they’re called “Writing 2023” or whatever the year is. I’ve done it since like 2016. It’s kind of like a journal, but it’s not cute, like I feel like people envision journals as cute. And I definitely don’t do it every day. Nobody actually writes every day.
HereIn: I certainly don’t!
Gardiner: It’s like WHO has the time and money to be writing all day and not getting paid for it? But anyways, I’ll write everything very stream-of-consciousness. I realized the other day that the only reason I can do that is because I have a computer and a keyboard. At first, when I thought of stream of consciousness writing, I was envisioning teens writing in their diaries, but if I was writing in a diary in like, the eighties I would never be able to do that, because I would have to write by hand, but with a computer I can type as fast as I think.
Anyways, but then after I write the monologues, I do a lot of workshopping on them, then I memorize them, which takes a few weeks/months, depending on how long they are, and then I rehearse them for a few months. It’s good for me to know the text inside and out, because then I can always get back on track if I decide to adlib in a mono performance, but also I’ve noticed that sometimes if I over rehearse, then it makes the performance less good, or at least to me. I don’t know if other people can tell though.
HereIn: On your website you reference the reality TV show, like, the confessional video as a touchstone. They give me a little bit of a sense of an Instagram Live video. Can you describe your videos to me?
Gardiner: Yes, okay. I think of them as kind of like word vomit. Like they're half vlog, half reality TV show, with a sprinkle of standup comedy. They kindof remind me of a vlog that’s like, maybe not that popular. You know what I mean? Like a vlog that’s in one of the weird little niches of the internet. It’s crazy that there are so many videos that don’t get watched. And then the way they're actually framed is like reality TV. And also the fact that I’m talking directly to a camera about some personal narrative is very reality TV. I was talking about this with someone the other day, and she was like, “in reality TV what they’re talking about in the confessionals is so empty, but when you talk everything is so carefully considered, that it’s kindof the opposite of that” or something like that, which I feel like is true, because I’m kind of spiraling about what I’m talking about. Spiraling has been my word of the year.
Big Bang Theory Browser (3 min. clip), 2023, single channel video with sound, 10 min. 16 sec.
[Video description: Wren paces around in front of a white backdrop as they talk.]
HereIn: What would you say are the questions that drive your practice, in terms of content? What are you trying to dive into or chase after?
Gardiner: This past year, one of the things I’ve thought about is like, the inaccessibility of certain institutions, specifically in terms of language. People trying to sound smart for someone else, that performance, is something that really annoys me. I mean, I get it kind of, because sometimes that’s the language you have to speak to get somewhere or to be heard, but sometimes people get wrapped up in it, and they forget that that’s not the only way to communicate something or to say something intelligent or interesting. Honestly, I think I have like, an inferiority complex or something, idk. Like, I know I have so much more access to things already cause I’m white and I have two degrees and I grew up middle class and all of these things. But like, the mental blocks, like the way that people are sort of not taken seriously if they don’t or can’t speak a certain way or if they can’t read dense theory and actually like, comprehend it, really presents a problem imo. Like when there are six big words strung together in a sentence, I’m like, “you’ve lost me and I don’t know how to get back.” I used to pretend that I wasn't lost, but now I'm just like, “okay, I am fucking lost, actually.” It's just a barrier. I feel like it’s kindof the opposite of the language of the internet – which I love – because that language hasn’t been encoded into these institutionalized spaces yet. And because it’s always changing, it’s hard to grasp and solidify into something “official” if that makes sense?
Boobs Browser (3 min. clip), 2023, single channel video with sound, 16 min. 8 sec.
[Video description: Wren paces around in front of a white backdrop as they talk.]
I also think about camp a lot. Well, lately. I had this realization that most of the things I made were like, kindof unintentionally campy, and I was like what is that about? And then at the same time I was also thinking about how I used to be a competitive gymnast and how I'm very physical. I mean, I don’t work out or anything, but I move a lot in daily life. I felt like something to do with gymnastics had seeped into my practice, because I’m always romping around and running around and doing weird, sharp movements with my body in the performances. I thought at first, my movement thing came from gymnastics. Like I thought, “oh I have a lot of energy, which is why I’m always moving around and is probably why I liked gymnastics.” But then I was like, well why gymnastics and not some other sport? And then I was like, well actually, maybe gymnastics and camp are connected and the reason I liked gymnastics and the reason my work was kindof campy came from the same place. There’s lots of definitions of camp, but one thing about it is that it takes something ugly and makes it pretty or palatable or exciting to watch. Gymnastics is always about presenting something to someone, usually judges, in a way that is “beautiful” or “neat” even though the actual training process of gymnastics isn’t cute like that. And neither is the culture. And it’s kindof the same with my work. There are pretty/fun/delightful parts of it and then there are gross/embarrassing/ugly parts of it. It’ll be a weird, dark, kind of tmi story that I’m telling, but I’m making it funny or irreverent or silly.
And then obviously I think a lot about mediation, like how we constantly socialize when we’re separated physically. The phenomenology of the internet is something I’m really interested in, and how that separation affects our physicality. I think about mediated social cues and how those are all now translations of irl social cues. Like how sending a bunch of short text messages in a row is different than sending one long chunk of text. Or how a “?” is different than a “??”, which is much different than a “?!”. And then how do those constant translations, which are basically ingrained in my brain at this point, affect our bodies? Like sometimes, when I’m going to bed and I have to get off my phone, I’ll hyperfocus on my heartbeat or my breathing, and I’ll be like, “omg am I okay?? Is this normal?” But then my body understands other stuff having to do with mediation, like my pinkies going numb from holding my phone or knowing the difference between a text, a WhatsApp, or a news alert based on the slight variation in phone vibration, and it’s just like whatever. It’s like I’m so used to having the out of body experience of communicating and learning and watching things online, that I’ve actually forgotten what it feels like to have a body, so normal things like breathing and my heart beating – things that need to happen for me to literally be alive in my body – are unfamiliar and kinda freak me out sometimes. I mean I think it has to do with other stuff too, but that’s one of my current explanations and something I thought about a lot while working on the project I just made.
Installation view of By the Sweat of My Browser, 2023, University of California San Diego
[Image description: A video monitor on top of a pedestal collaged with blue paper, which has black text printed on it. The video screen shows an image of Wren, wearing a black wig, pink feather boa, and fluffy pink eye mask. They hold a cigarette and look at the camera.]
HereIn: In your artist statement on your website, you ask a question that I think you mean rhetorically, but I’d like to pose to you now— what makes something cringe and why?
Gardiner: Okay, I actually think about this all the time. I feel like something is cringe when a social boundary is overstepped and the person doing it doesn’t realize it, like they’re kinda clueless to it. I mean, not all the time, but sometimes. Like how crying on the internet is cringey. We all know that we cry, but it’s weird when it’s on Instagram or something. Even though it’s like, okay, it’s not a big deal, but it feels like a rule. It’s like wait, you were crying, and you thought, “lemme just pause in the middle of this crying and post it on the internet”? There are also different kinds of cringe, like sometimes it’s more sad and it’s kinda like “oh honey” but then sometimes it’s like “yikez.” I actually have notes on cringe in front of me in my studio, about the dichotomy between cringiness and silliness. Silliness was the best opposite of cringe that I could think of, and that’s what I’m always trying to balance in my work. It says, “cringiness - self-consciousness, openly vulnerable, and unsure - there’s a level of ‘I planned this for an audience.’” There’s effort put into it, like the crying on the internet thing, for example. It’s like, “I’m showing myself crying so they know I’m really sad.” And then I feel like with silliness, you just kindof don’t give a fuck. Even if you’re kind of annoying.
HereIn: So do you think silliness is, like, empowerment?
Gardiner: I think so, yah. I think with cringiness you care and with silliness you don’t maybe? Like cringiness is uncomfortable, and silliness makes something comfortable again but without really trying. Like, silliness is cool. You know people who are cool, like *effortlessly* cool? Silliness is like that.
This conversation has been edited for length, clarity, and style by HereIn and the artist.