Ever since I started playing around with publicly available security feeds at the start of last year I have been wanting to turn the lens on myself. To survey myself. I feel constantly watched, and as such I feel I am constantly performing a version of myself. I believe this to be a very similar experience for many of my friends, particularly due to the value placed on online social presence. Having a ‘cool’ Instagram page for many people my age is paramount (though we don’t like to admit it). There is an aim to perfectly curate one’s personal style, sensibility, life, and to broadcast this to the world. Whether subconsciously or not, I get the sense that the many people I follow are walking a tightrope of self display; For me, this manifests in building personal ‘brand’ that finds the right balance between vanity, self deprecation, creativity, and a cool mystique.
On top of this, the immediacy and accessibility of social media tends to imply a kind of authenticity to whatever is uploaded. I believe instagram not only knew this but aimed to align their brand with authenticity intentionally. This manufactured authenticity is evident in Instagram’s initial identification with the Polaroid photo as a signifier of documenting the immediate. Instagram’s logo was a polaroid camera; the images, at first, were strictly square cropped and captions appear in a space beneath the image as is intended with instant film, and the app even came loaded with filters that mimicked instant film and older.
The app itself then, is a maelstrom of self reference, pastiche, nostalgia, and manufactured authenticity. In this world, we, as Rob Horning says, are in reality broadcasting to only ourselves. Our followers bare witness to this self broadcast.
My idea is to make a work that reflects these ideas of manufactured authenticity, projection and construction of a brand image, ‘living in public’ (a la Josh Harris), pastiche, vanity, etc. The simultaneously masochistic and euphoric process of self display. I also aim to situate these ideas in a world where these things are prioritized by a capitalist consumerist western world.
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