Curatorial Statement
Humans are innately designed to depend on one another. We thrive as a species mainly because we are social beings, existing in community. Our survival and success can be due to our sociality alone. For hundreds of thousands of years we have evolved; how profound that in this moment, our own society is evolving before our eyes. New interactions among individuals, more dimensionality within groups, new practices and ideals – these changes will always occur. However the core of human nature stays true; we don’t exist as individuals if we don’t exist together.
The beginning of communication and language derives from the same notion of sociality. Each person has a vast collection of thoughts, concepts, attitudes and emotions all of which continually change and develop. Although each life-experience is completely unique from one another, I believe the more important measure is actually how similar we truly are. The title of my exhibit is “human nature is a good cat video” which was inspired by one of the pieces in this collection. The exhibit contains work by five new media artists that use crowdsourced material from online to create their work. Social media is arguably the most powerful tool in today’s society. We live in a time where all the knowledge in the world can fit snugly in our pocket. The Internet and its structure have redefined human communication entirely. Social media is not only used to connect with others – it is used to create personal identities, expressing one’s individuality in a widely public domain. Social media urges us to continually invent new solutions to our identity and in turn, leads to habits of voluntary collaboration in evolving cultural meanings. Our collaborative nature sees this as a weakness unless we somehow make it personally advantageous (Horning, 2011). Because humans instinctively exist among communities, with that comes the personal desire to be seen, heard and validated discretely from others. In a public space as large as the World Wide Web, just imagine the abundance of social identities out there. The chatter is constant, but is anything coherent? The works I’ve selected for my exhibit all have a common thread. The five artists differ in their pieces, however the similar conception is what’s significant. By gathering similar occurrence found online using crowdsource methods, they construct a new way of consuming the “junkposts” that flood our newsfeed we aimlessly scroll through. This work functions differently by creating new narratives and forming connections within the disjointed dialogue. It configures a totally new perception of today’s mass culture, it de-isolates individuals alone behind the computer screen.
This exhibit features works that may contain hard-to-digest imagery. Many of the pieces use materials that are taken straight from the original source, with little to no editing – clips are unscripted, awkward, and uncomfortable at times. Overall, the collection reveals different untold narratives about human nature and the deep-seated trends that are fundamentally found in all. These widely ordinary gestures provoke a familiarity and closeness not only to the people or images exhibited, but to all humanity. It forces the viewer to see how undeniably recognizable each displays is. The continual repetition of behaviors, conversations and interactions prompt a more social context. New patterns can always be found.
I named this exhibit “human nature is a good cat video” because I believe at the core, we all just really love a good cat video. Throughout my curatorial statement I discuss how these artists work to reveal underlying themes and narratives found within a society. I believe that social media will continue to be a vital instrument used for anthropological discoveries about culture during these moments in time.
Why are cat videos so prevalent in today’s culture? Why is there so many out there? Why do we bond over them?
Regrettably, I have no clue.
However, I do know that some of the most ordinary things can hold the greatest significance. As one of seven billion, we all have entirely unique experiences in life. We each have distinct personalities and ways of understanding of the world around us. How incredible that somehow, an intrinsic power deep within connects each soul to all other souls on earth. The human race will continue and the descriptors of today may not be the same for tomorrow’s society, but I believe the artworks displayed in this exhibit unveil meaningful stories about a specific moment in history. And these stories will forever be characteristics of today.












