# Antoinette LaFarge [Website](http://www.antoinettelafarge.com/bio.html) ( active ) ## Description American artist and writer working across new media performance, computer-programmed installation, public intervention, digital drawing and print, and artist's books, with a recurring interest in expanded narrative, feminist techne, fictive art, and ephemeral/virtual media. Founder and longtime artistic director of the Plaintext Players (founded 1993), a pioneering internet performance troupe that appeared at the 1997 Venice Biennale, documenta X, and the UpStage festivals. Emerita Professor of Art at UC Irvine's Claire Trevor School of the Arts (1999–2023). Author of [[Sting in the Tale]] (2021), the first comprehensive survey of fictive art. ## Key Tags #hoaxes #fictive-art #performance #academic ## Essential Works - [[Sting in the Tale]] (2021) - first comprehensive survey of fictive art, coining "parafact" for fiction "too strange not to be real" - *Louise Brigham and the Early History of Sustainable Furniture Design* (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) - study of an early pioneer of sustainable furniture design - Plaintext Players works, including *The Roman Forum Project* (2003), *Demotic* (2006), *Playing the Rapture* (2008), *Hangmen Also Die* (2010), *Galileo in America* (2012), *Far-Flung follows function* (2013) - internet-based new media performance ## Details Holds an M.F.A. in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts, New York. Co-curated two early exhibitions on computer games and art at UC Irvine's Beall Center for Art and Technology: *SHIFT-CTRL: Computers, Games, and Art* (2000) and *ALT+CTRL: A Festival of Independent and Alternative Games* (2003, NEA-supported). A longtime Wikipedia editor, having contributed roughly 400 new entries, mostly biographies of women in art, literature, and science. Served as guest editor for several issues of *Leonardo*. Longtime Associate and current Acting Director of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICI), a Los Angeles nonprofit exploring the visual methods used to document, categorize, expose, and conceal the events that define contemporary culture; designed several ICI Press books, including *Speculative Pentimenti* (2013) and *Searching for Sebald* (2007). ### Concepts and Theories - [[Fictive Art and Hoaxes]] - author of [[Sting in the Tale]], the concept page's central secondary source; coined "parafact" for art-hoax fiction "too strange not to be real" ### Creative and Technical Practices %% add relevant creative and technical practices %% ### Collaborators %% none yet %% ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements - UC Irvine - Professor of Digital Media, Art Department, 1999–2023 (now Emerita); Associate Director, UCI Game Culture and Technology Lab, 1999–2014 - Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICI) - longtime Associate and current Acting Director ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography LaFarge, Antoinette. *Sting in the Tale: Art, Hoax, and Provocation*. DoppelHouse Press, 2021. LaFarge, Antoinette. *Louise Brigham and the Early History of Sustainable Furniture Design*. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography Jessup, Heather. "Sting in the Tale: Art, Hoax, and Provocation by Antoinette LaFarge (Review)." *ESC: English Studies in Canada* 47, no. 4 (2021): 138–42.