In the Event That Art Occurs

The compelling collaboration between American artist Wendy Osher and Egyptian artist Nouran Sherif entitled Swarm (2011) will be discussed in terms of its performative correspondences with revolutionary movements and body politics in the Middle East; in relation to the affect of the spectacle, the sublime ideology of the mass media, on those movements; and the networking spectacle of social media that aggregated the insurgencies. These events in art, politics, and mass mediation will be further discussed according to Deleuze and Guattari's swarm, which the philosophers characterize as a plane of consistency, Body without Organs, and rhizomatic assemblage. The objective in doing so will be to conceptualize the creative research and practice, the incipient event of art as a politics and pedagogy of imperceptibility.