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Guess who finally got a tumble? problematiqueer

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oc! Lol nobody knows me here

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original content

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Me gambling my life away

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RepostBy @scariest_bug_ever: “oops i cropped it wrong before @problematiqueer” (via #InstaRepost @AppsKottage)

[nofomoartworld]

This LA Gallery Is Showing an Exhibit Full of Self-Aware Memes

  A photo posted by KA5SH (@ka5sh) on

Jan 16, 2017 at 7:52pm PST

The idea of art—to the delight of its creators and frustration of some audience members—is constantly shifting, switching and changing. But if the purpose of art is to beautifully express some human truth, there could be a brand-new medium boldly making its entrance: the meme.

What was once just a quick, visual way to tell a joke on the internet now wants to be counted as an art form, worthy of public display and analysis, according to ka5sh, an Instagram meme-maker with over 19,000 followers, and the curator of an upcoming meme-focused LA art show, By Any Memes Necessary.

  A photo posted by shannon

  A photo posted by grace (@tequilafunrise) on

Jan 16, 2017 at 12:01pm PST

What started as a half-joking Facebook post (something to the line of “memes are so good, they should be displayed in a gallery”) quickly became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ka5sh has curated a show featuring the work of seven different meme-makers whose work straddles the digital, political, and social climates within contemporary culture.

“I like to think that if you could make irony into a medium and use it like paint, that’s what meme-making is,” ka5sh tells The Creators Project. “There’s artistry.”

And like any art movement, ka5sh argues, there are artists who excel at different niches—many of whom he has tried to feature in the show. Gothshakira, for example, was a pioneer of the longform, wordy, socially-analytical meme. Scariest_bug_ever delves into mental health issues with a rarely-seen candor. Sensualmemes approaches the medium with a wry self-awareness, a charactersitc embraced by the art world.

  A photo posted by grace (@tequilafunrise) on

Dec 31, 2016 at 1:52pm PST

  A photo posted by BINNY DEBBIE (@scariest_bug_ever) on

Dec 28, 2016 at 11:49am PST

  A photo posted by bun (@bunnymemes) on

Jan 26, 2017 at 1:29pm PST

  A photo posted by Jack Wagner (@versace_tamagotchi) on

Jan 3, 2017 at 12:49pm PST

Some memes—specifically the popular “self drag” starter-packs—are, arguably, a 21st-century digital self-portrait. Everything is there, even the signature.

The works will be presented as a physical, Instagram-esque representation, an homage to the social network that gave birth to the form. Each wall will feature a unique artist’s featured work, displayed like a profile page.

The work displayed will be a series of memes already premiered online alongside brand-new content. Everything displayed will fall into the overall theme of “using memes to cope with reality,” ka5sh explains.Ultimately, if the goal of the meme is to find some catharsis, connection, or escape from the everyday world, the only thing keeping it from lining gallery walls is where they’re most often viewed—the phone screen.

  A photo posted by bun (@bunnymemes) on

Jan 4, 2017 at 5:26pm PST

By Any Memes Necessary opens at Junior High Gallery in Los Angeles on February 10. Find more information about the show and artists, here. 

Related:

Embroidery Artist Weaves Memes with Modern Feminism

Memes Mediate an Artist’s Trip to the Dentist

DTLA Warehouse Venue Evolves into Art Gallery

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[betterthanwords-essay]

This subtle change in the way people react online is a result of ‘fragmentation of consensus’ (Berthon, 2000) and it is with this that societal alterations of one’s character is more likely to happen in the virtual realm. Opinions are far more easily expressed, mis-information is often more easily shared and the overall ‘lack of self-awareness’ that may accompany an online persona reflects the fragmentation of one’s self and the adoption of differing social guises dependent on the website in question. Of course, fragmentation has a high bleed into Web Hyperreality, one feeling more at ease on the web due to the fast-paced environment with its boundless energy and every action taking no time at all in its completion (Berthon, 2000). This in itself explains the sociological reasoning behind fragmentation on the web, highlighting how easily one can shed their everyday persona and adopt a new one through the environment in which they are frequenting feeling almost as though it is not so much a space to be within but an ‘eternal time, an endless present’, a consumerist dream of a reality. Social media harbours the utopian ideal of a better self, one that most people strive for as it can distract from the reality of one’s every day. The memes people share can also play into this shift of oneself. The growth in ‘dark humour’ as a coping mechanism among young internet users has risen within the last few years and its connection to younger generations is thought to be due to the net’s effect on social health (Albal, 2017).

The memes shared in the name of ‘savage humour’ tends to circulate around melancholy aspects of mental health, usually pertaining to anxiety and other mental health issues. Again, the use of memetic media to both communicate these personal issues as well as poke fun at them reflects a more frequent way of the young using visuals in place of serious discussion and using humour in place of seriousness of the issue at hand. Millennial’s fragmented personas online tend to share these memes, nihilistic in their approach but for the purpose of comedic effect that wouldn’t necessarily come to fruition in everyday conversing. This solidifies the claim of the generational divide and that the younger generations as digital natives are more impervious to fragmentated personas due to the vast amount of time spent on several different platforms of social media and are thus more likely to fall into the trend of sharing dark humour if it becomes the norm to do so.

“There’s an honest factor to the self-deprecating memes, it could be a coping mechanism due to all the pressures that society puts on younger people. It’s very retrospective and self-reflective” (Albal, 2017).

More frequently, millennial artists using dark humour in a self-aware nature are rising on social media platforms. Making their presence known on sites such as Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter. This immediately allows for a wide reach of an audience due to the sheer number of monthly users for these types of website, typically reaching to 2.3 billion for Facebook and 1 billion for Instagram respectively (Statista, 2019) . Artists are beginning to utilise not only the visibility on these sites, but also the dialogue created between the art they make and the platform they choose to represent themselves on. Meme culture has heavily influenced artists such as @scariest_bug_ever, @gothshakira and @bunnymemes. Their Instagram handles being the helm of their artistic distinction and providing the viewer immediately with the information that social media platforms are the preferred viewing dynamic for the artworks as well as reflecting the importance of the internet as a means of outlet, consumption and shareability for young people and in this case, young artists .

These artists in essence, appear to be the epitome of what the post-internet art movement set out to achieve. By definition, post-internet art is ‘a current trend in art and criticism with the impact of the internet on art and culture’ (Artsy, 2019). The artists can now use social-networking almost more like a gallery space than an archive for a body of work. Because where better is there to display memetic media than online? It could be argued that transitioning this form of Post-internet art into the gallery space could detach too much meaning from what initially makes the art art in the first place.

‘The Post-Internet art object looks good in a browser just as laundry detergent looks good in a commercial. Detergent isn’t as stunning at a laundromat, and neither does Post-Internet art shine in the gallery.’ (Droitcour, 2014.)

This analogy summarises a popular critique with Post-Internet art and how the art world may sometimes struggle with where to truly place it. The significance of the internet in Post-Internet art is irremovable else the whole concept of the piece would be redundant. Therefore, removing art that has been made for the internet from that very same platform more often than not can regretfully diminish the value of the sociological meaning surrounding the piece.

Similarly, this is how Memetic media works. The humour of the meme feels despondent in ordinary conversation, the gif simply cannot display its infinite loop without the internet thus cementing its relevance belonging in the threads of the online realm. Memetic media in of itself was born from post-modernist thought, that was embraced and continued widely by Millennial and Generation-Z net users. The ‘intellectual underpinnings of post-modernity’ is recognizable within the ‘scepticism, relativism, anonymity and the absurdity’ of the modern meme. The dark subject matter combined with the self-deprecation or the mind-boggling elements that make up the imagery play into the ‘dominant ethos of the internet’ (Balsuto, 2011).

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