The White Flag website/app has been created as part of Garrett Lynch's 'virtual' residency on Facebook hosted and curated by Peripheral Forms. Its purpose is to crowdsource flag designs for networks - flags that symbolise the ideals, principles, essence, realism or failure of 'virtual' and networked spaces. The residency takes place in February 2018 and the website/app will be live throughout the month. Visitors are encouraged to submit their flag designs using the website/app. These will be exhibited in the gallery, employed during the residency, voted on at the end of the month and used in the creation of an artwork after the residency.
The residency explores ideas of place and identity as they relate to 'real' and 'virtual' space. This includes for example: (mis)conceptions of what are termed 'real' and 'virtual' space; how identity is formed as a result of shared ideals, beliefs, language and customs and how identity changes or become mutable when there is no literal geography of place. Flags are employed throughout the residency as a symbolic visual through which to explore these ideas. A white flag, while understood internationally as a symbol of capitulation, also symbolises peace, a willingness to discuss, reach an understanding and in a creative context is effectively a blank space to be filled.
Facebook is employed opportunistically within the residency to communicate with a dispersed international audience. Each post is a performative action by the artist within the ‘virtual’ space of Facebook tailored to prompt and motivate users to respond, contribute and participate. As such, the residency is dialogical or behavioural between artist and audience. As a performative work, the residency is an outcome in its own right however it is also research, resource material and testing towards an artwork to be produced after the residency and outside of the ‘virtual’ space of Facebook.