Roopa Vasudevan
FRIENDS ONLY is a Net art piece created from the archives of my LiveJournal, which existed openly on the Internet between mid-2002 and early 2009. I reimagine the text from my journal as 14-line poetic texts, loosely drawing inspiration from the sonnet and its traditional role as a vehicle for passionate romantic expression. Viewers can reshape and remix the text to create new juxtapositions and phrasings, often placing snippets from different eras of my life together.
The work asks us to reflect on the staged authenticity of online spaces, and the ways that accepted norms surrounding what to disclose about ourselves have shifted and changed over time.