Scandalishious
Ann Hirsch
2008 - 2009
Ann Hirsch’s Scandalishious was an eighteen-month YouTube-based performance that revolved around Caroline, a persona devised by Hirsch, a self-described “hipster college freshman” who danced for the camera, vlogged, and interacted with her followers, who then posted comments and shared their own response videos. Comprising not only Caroline’s videos but the relations engendered by them as well, Scandalishious is an early example of a truly social media-based artwork.
Hirsch’s performance as Caroline explored self-representation as feminist practice, and its limits. She adopted the genre conventions of the camgirl with a self-awareness that at times bordered on parody, while taking evident pleasure in the power and freedom and micro-celebrity it afforded her, and the complexity of Caroline and her online interactions. Ultimately, Scandalishious situates itself at a fluctuating critical distance from Hirsch’s subject: girls online.
“The Scandalishious Project not only looks like all the other videos of girls dancing in their pants that you might find on YouTube, it IS that.”
- Ann Hirsch
Screenshot of reconstructed YouTube Channel page for Scandalishious
VISIT WORK
Reconstruction of YouTube channel page circa mid-2008 / archive of video pages with comments as of 2018.
The Scandalishious project began in 2008 when Ann Hirsch was a graduate student at Syracuse University. Interested in the representation of women in the media, Hirsch was excited by the possibility that YouTube offered for constructing an image and narrative of oneself.
Listen to a podcast about Scandalishious from The Guardian
Hirsch created an alter-ego, Caroline, a self-described “hipster” college freshman, and set up a YouTube account for her. Caroline regularly uploaded clips of herself dancing provocatively in her bedroom as well as video diary entries.
Hirsch’s initial aims for the project were both personal and artistic. She wanted to harness YouTube as a platform in order to present a multifaceted female character who could be both sexual and humanized in the eyes of her audience.
Scandalishious resembles earlier landmark moments in internet culture such as Jennicam and early viral YouTube sensation LonelyGirl13. Precursors like these established a vocabularly of language and gesture that Hirsch drew on, treating camgirl videos as a pre-existing genre to inhabit and critique.
Ann Hirsch, still from 51 THINGS I FOUND IN MY POON, part of Scandalishious, 2009
Camgirls, who earned micro-celebrity and perhaps wages through their online performance, were the prototypes for the social media users of today, who engage in ongoing labor of self-representation, a now-obligatory aspect of life with the internet. By focusing on camgirl performance, Hirsch was able to explore issues of gender, labor, and power in a social media context long before these topics had entered mainstream discourse.
Hirsch observed that women on the video-sharing platform seemed to represent themselves as one of two stereotypes, embodying either the “sexy girl” or the “smart girl.” She was also motivated by her personal experiences navigating this binary, and a desire to practice “sexy” in order to gain confidence.
Ann Hirsch, still from caroline + kate bush, part of Scandalishious, 2008
At its completion, the performance included over one hundred videos, and the YouTube channel had over one million views. Caroline had garnered a wide following. Many of them were other young women, but a large number of them were men and teenage boys.
Screenshot of YouTube message. Courtesy of the artist. Click for full size.
Many viewers commented on the videos and even sent Caroline videos in response to her own. Some responses were admiring; some were silly; some were cruel. A lot of the responses were highly personal; her followers would open up about their own inner lives, or share dick pics.
VIEW RESPONSE VIDEOS
(Warning: these videos contain nudity as well as sexual themes some viewers may find upsetting.)
Screenshot of YouTube message. Courtesy of the artist. Click for full size.
Forty of the response videos submitted by Hirsch’s fans are presented publicly as part of Net Art Anthology for the first time. (Some were posted publicly, others gave Hirsch permission to share them.)
Still from Scandalishious response video.
Still from Scandalishious response video.
These videos, and the in-depth correspondence that often accompanied them, squarely situate Hirsch’s performances as one aspect of a larger, years-long exchange with her followers—a relational dimension of the work that isn’t immediately apparent from the videos alone.
Read an interview about the restoration of Scandalishious
Screenshot of YouTube message. Courtesy of the artist. Click for full size.
“It made me realize that I was part of a community of people trying to figure out their identities in an age where your image, body, and story can be disseminated more widely than ever, and what that meant for who you are in terms of your sexuality, gender, and looks.”
- Ann Hirsch
Screenshot of YouTube message. Courtesy of the artist. Click for full size.
Screenshot of YouTube message. Courtesy of the artist. Click for full size.
Screenshot of YouTube message. Courtesy of the artist. Click for full size.
Screenshot of YouTube message. Courtesy of the artist. Click for full size.
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