chunkymark is the YouTube channel of London based artist Mark McGowan. Since 2010 Mark McGowan has been uploading videos as the online persona The Artist Taxi Driver. Originally covering more general issues such as art fairs and the price of beans, the video series, shot from his car, has become an outlet for McGowan’s daily views on the British government and mainstream media. Through his passionate, and often comedic rants featuring slogans such as “This is the BBC sucks the cock news” and “The City of Corruption, the City of London”, McGowan has developed an alternative news source, now featuring interviews and on-site reports of demonstrations and protests.

Alongside his charismatic on-camera presence and engaging content, McGowan is arguably the first artist to use an online video host as an artistic medium. Through McGowan’s subject matter, and the proposed freedom of speech facilitated by the online video host, the visible record of social response to the work is equally as intrinsic to the video as its content, which relies on its ability to be seen. As the videos themselves are imminently uploaded, their existence offline as data files are unfinished works, stagnantly separated from their online presence. The videos shown here, without their views, likes and comments, are again reduced versions of their YouTube page originals. The actual work is the channel itself, as an ongoing series of publicly viewable videos where the works purpose is the dissemination of a message.