PLEASE BE . ME
Media Art / Performance
Live performance, temporary digital network, human avatar (costume)
Real-time video and audio streaming, participatory action
About the Work
In collaboration with galleries, museums, and art associations, Michaela Hanemann develops a temporary digital network that connects physically separated art spaces for a limited time. At the heart of the project is the question of how digital actions, such as the seemingly immaterial click of a button, can be translated back into bodily, social, and spatial experience. The project makes digital communication visible again as a human action and deliberately anchors it in the physical body.
This translation is realized through a living avatar: a real person whose individual identity is neutralized by a costume. The avatar acts as a human interface between two locations. It is controlled in real time through verbal instructions from the participants. Every decision, every digital action finds its immediate counterpart in a physical movement, a gesture, or a change of location.
Within defined time windows, participants can thus be present simultaneously in two locations: physically at their starting point and via the avatar at a distant exhibition space. They move freely through the space, observe artworks, engage in conversations, and interact with objects as if they were actually on site. The distance of the digital realm is not overcome but consciously made tangible as a relational, temporal, and bodily displacement.
The avatar's costume functions as a white projection surface. The face of the participating person is transmitted live, making processes of representation, substitution, and identification visible. Questions of authorship, presence, and responsibility, which often appear decoupled in digital space, are thus reconnected to the human body.
Against the backdrop of increasing digitalization in cultural institutions, the project makes a significant contribution to current museological and societal debates: it investigates hybrid exhibition formats, performative mediation models, and new forms of participation, without obscuring the human behind the technology. Historically, the project builds on practices of performance, media, and telepresence art and transfers them into a contemporary institutional context.
The project was funded in 2022 by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Culture and has since been continuously developed in collaboration with selected institutions.
Funding
The project was funded in 2022 by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Culture and has since been continuously developed in collaboration with selected institutions.
Exhibtitions
2025 OLIVA GALLERY, Ocean Between VIII, Chicago, USA
2025 CURRENTS NEW MEDIA, El Museo Cultural, Santa Fe, NM, USA
2025 Kunsthalle Hannover, Hanover, GER
2024 Ghost golf gallery - art studios, Albuerque, New Mexico, USA
2024 4h-art, Der/Die/Das FREMDE, Hanover, GER
2023, Weisse Halle - Eisfabrik, Bad im Teilzeitwald, Hanover, GER
2023 10th Mediation Biennale, Feshane, Istanbul, TUR
2022 Pavillon 0/1, Beyond Code and Time, Venice, IT
2022 Kunsthalle Hannover, Light Time Lab, Hanover, GER
2022 Kunstverein, Workshop - Backwards over the North Pole, Hanover, DEU
2022 Kunstmuseum, Power Light!, Wolfsburg, GER
2022 Landesmuseum, Hanover, Outdoors, DEU
2022 xpon-art gallery, Aus_Bruch Hamburg, GER
2022 Kunstverein Langenhagen, Hanover, GER
2022 Städtische Galerie Kubus, The Cube, Hanover, GER
2022 Städtische Galerie Bremen, Intertwinings, Hanover, GER
2022 Kunstverein Langenhagen, Things We Do Not Understand, Hanover, GER
2022 Galerie BOHAI, WAHALA, Hanover, GER
2022 Kunsthalle Faust, Non Plus Ultra Hanover, GER
2022 Galerie im Stammelbach Speicher, Non Plus Ultra, Hildesheim, DEU
2022 Kunstverein Neustadt am Rübenberge, Artothek, DEU
2022 Kunstraum J3FM, Über_Leben, Hanover, GER
2022 A Fragment of Eden, Kestnergesellschaft, artist talk, Hanover, GER
2022 MUSA, Rabenprojekt, Göttingen, GER
2022 Frauenmuseum Bonn, Return in Dignity, Bonn, GER
2022 Art Studio, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Interpretations and Texts
Art historian Michael Stoeber wrote a catalogue text about the project in 2022.
Documentation
A dedicated website with extensive documentation is available for the project.
www.PLEASEBE.ME
Catalogue: PLEASE BE . ME
available as an E-Book (PDF) and in bookstores
ISBN: 978-3-7575-3183-6
Catalogue: PLEASE BE . ME
available as an E-Book (PDF) and in bookstores
ISBN: 978-3-7575-3183-6
Katalog: PLEASE BE . ME
erhältlich als E-Book (PDF) und im Buchhandel
ISBN: 978-3-7575-3183-6
Text: Michael Stoeber, 2022