ENERI || IRENE

On The New Masters of Flash CD-ROM, Irene Chan speaks to the camera, her English a subtle mix of sophistication and occasional misconjugation. A blue filter overlays the QuickTime film interview; Chan appears through it in a medium shot, frame left. At frame right, the word "Unloading" undulates in a vertical strip. Chan's teeth are white, straight, bright — a focal point amidst a spectrum of blue and gray. The youthful and self-effacing woman facing the camera belies the introspective lyricism and sharp irony of her eneriwomaninterface.

"If you ask me what is unique about my site," says Chan, "it would be the feminine quality." But what does Chan mean by "feminine" in the context of such artistic inspiration as Frida Kahlo and Barbara Kruger? Chan's admiration for Kahlo comes, in part, from Kahlo's ability to make "agony" recognizable in her self-portraits, even to the viewer who knows nothing about Kahlo herself. Kruger, whose work Chan admires for its typography and "strong message," is obviously referenced by Chan in the eneriwomaninterface's segment "I am afraid of being afraid," as well as in the segment, "Do I have to give up myself?" a version of Kruger's "Do I have to give up myself to be loved by you?"

Chan's self-conscious relationship to both these artists suggests that when she talks about the presence of emotion in her work, she references more than the light, hearts-and-flowers sentimentality of her ironic "You don't give me flowers anymore." Chan shakes her head and laughs as she describes misinterpretations of the eneriwomaninterface: "A lot of people liked it, but, then, some people get it and some people don't. Some people actually think that I'm, like, trying to look for a boyfriend or something. But, it's not true."

Irene Chan is eneri. Or is she? The logic of the mirror implicit in the anagram suggests that we are being given a portrait of some sort, inverted or otherwise. But, the anagram, foregrounded in conjunction with the interface quite clearly reminds us that Chan's site is not a transparent representation of identity, but a mediation of it. >>>