Digital life and self documentation has been part of my life since I was 13 years old. For 15 years I have been meticulously documenting my life day by day on the internet. Whether that be through detailed livejournal accounts of my rather boring days, my terrible poetry, or fangirl obsessions throughout the years, I am online. Are these parts that I allow others to look in, do they make up me?
Can identity and self understanding be limited by the digital world? Or is the digital a playground of sorts?
I am so interested in social media, not just professionally, as I help my clients tackle their social media goals, but also socially, personally, spiritually. What does it mean to be on social media? Not only as an active participant to connect with others, but as someone who is interested in the ways that these sites make money off our digital bodies? I am a digital brand, I am my brand, and what does it mean to be engaged in that transaction when trying to *connect* with others? Can we have genuine connections online and be authentic in our digital bodies? As someone who participates in this weird self help online culture, where do the differences lie between what I project online and how my corporeal body experiences the world around itself?
These are the questions I went into when I did “I Have 12.6k Followers.” It was inspired by a brief comment someone made to me when they saw how many followers I had on my social media,
“Oh Wow, you have 13,000 followers?” They were sincerely impressed (and a little jealous and confused). I didn’t quite understand why anyone would actually care?
It was the Spark.
The Process
I have felt, for sometime, a complete seperation of identities. I spent so much of my early to mid twenties consumed in academia and having *those* kinds of conversations I forgot how to speak normally to people who haven’t read the same texts I had. So, in order to make friends, I pushed this vast amount of knowledge down. I secretly read philosophy and never talk about it to anyone in my community because I hadn’t found anyone who was slightly interested or knew what I was talking about.
I segmented my reality to fit into a new community.
After all how does one market themselves when we must limit our multiplicitous identity down to just a single 30 second soundbit?
How silly I was.
My MA work was largely on digital identity and the intersections of gaming culture, feminism and the military industrial complex. I’m fascinated by performance studies and the playground that is the internet for identity. I love the idea of the interface theorized as an actual face & how perhaps Levinas was wrong, we do not understand ourselves once we see the other, perhaps now, we only understand ourselves through the eyes of others. I am because you like me. I share what you like.
Like all good things in late capitalism we are consumers whose digital bodies have been consumed for advertisers. Social Media begs us for authenticity when it is absolutely impossible to be vulnerable and authentic when your emotional core and vibrational being is counter to the algorithm. The machine does not know how to process the reality of flesh and blood experience. Instead of teaching the machines how to be more like us, we learn to be more like the machines & codes we create.
I train and teach people how to use instagram to reach their ideal client. Running my own business, I spend a lot of time in the #ladyboss community, talking with other creative digital entrepreneurs. When you spend so much time engaged in this business minded, money hustlers, boss bitch, community you start to become that community.
I found myself posting a lot of stupid motivational quotes that I didn’t really agree with, but they seemed to resonate w/ my community. In other words, I was becoming what the machine wanted me to become.
Fascinating! Now, I could have qued a nervous existential breakdown, but that is so 2016. Instead, I thought, there is art in this experience. A tongue and cheek exploration of my own experience. Thus, the idea of the show was born.
I, being the nerd that I am, went back to my books first. I reread A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Harraway, looked back on my notes on Judith Butler, spent a night with The Ways of Seeing, reconnected with my girl Laura Mulvey , explored the concepts of anxiety, amongst of myriad of other works that informed my decisions.
As a photographer who was undergoing a self imposed self portrait challenge, I knew I had to explore selfie culture & play homage to Cindy Sherman, set in the digital age.
I decided to explore digital identity and the limits of online motivational feminism through an art experience and party.
I took screenshots of motivational quotes that I found on pinterest and engaged in a photodialogue with them.
The Location
I knew the show had to be placed in my house. If I was going to dialogue with this call to be authentic and vulnerable online, I couldn’t think of a place that was more honestly myself than my house. I wanted to open up my entire home for the show to embody that level of vulnerability. I’ve had parties before but rarely allowed people into my room or office or…those limitations would be broken down. Be free, explore! The photographic pieces were placed strategically throughout the house to encourage individuals to explore the nooks and corners of my home. If they wanted to see every piece that I produced they had to explore in hidden areas in order to see everything.
I wanted the physical space to highlight that disconnect between digital identity and corporeal reality.
Before guests could enter the show, they had to strip themselves of their corporeal identity and enter into whatever digital identity that they wanted to explore that evening. I provided followers with UV face paint, temporary tattoos, glitter and costumes that they could wear for the evening. I asked people to use different names for the evening.
I was Atra Ilta for the night (a call back to my teenage fangirl days), and it was great to meet everyone who walked through the doors.
I couldn’t help but place my show in the midsts of a party, after all, when do people snapchat, Instagram and Facebook their experiences the most if not while drinking amongst friends? “Look,” we say to the void, “Look how much fun I AM having while you’re watching from your screen.” As we disconnect from the moment to upload to the internet. I am not totally cynical, I engage in these behaviors because at the end of the day they Are Fun. And we document our lives more so than ever. I’ve been documenting my life for the majority of the time I’ve been on this planet.
Placing the show within a party was to make it approachable for everyone who came, sometimes it can be so fucking awkward for non art weirdos to go to a show and not get it. There is a sense of elitism that I wanted to dismantle from the experience. I wanted to say, “You don’t have to get the references I’m making, you can just enjoy it and enjoy the party, enjoy the people.” I wanted to make the embodied reality of social media at the party, a place where people can connect and share an experience with people actually around them.
My living room was dedicated to fellow artists and creators to sell their goods. It was the bazaar, an etsy in real life. My kitchen was the center of the party (as usual) we had gin and tonics (which is the perferred drinks of sociopaths), beer, wine, cider and food. People really contributed to that part of the experience, bringing their own food and drinks to share. That was awesome of everyone.
Back down a hallway away from everyone, was the selfie corner. I wanted people to really understand how distancing selfie culture is. It was a really cute corner though.
My bedroom was an exploration of how I portray my relationship online. Most of my most engaging social media posts are about my husband and I’s relationship. The year I got married was also the year I started my own business, graduated from my MA program and started co-teaching at UCSB. No one cared about those posts they only cared that I was getting married. Isn’t that interesting? Heteronormativity is still prioritized by the algorithm.
My bedroom was turned into a UV paradise, as people enterted into a deliciously blacklight room I hung glowing lanterns from the ceilings highlighting only the “good” moments we show people, but also, this is where most of my most explicit self portraits were shown. Nudes and more sexual images that I would never show to anyone.
Amongst all my overt vulnerability was the introvert chill out corner, people could glow under the black light and lay on pillows and beds and blankets and people had amazing conversations down there. Really profound conversations & often times hilarious ones.
On the third story I converted the guest bedroom into a room filled from head to toe with string lights. They were meant to represent the digital distractions in a relationship and how often we lay next to our partner in our bed on our phones. The goal was to get to the bed. Often times followers would get to the bed and just lay there on their phones. It delighted me to no end.
My office was left sterile, after all, that is the place in my house where I create my digital identity and the digital identities of others. It had to look commercial.
The projector room played a video that looked at my entire online history and showcased some of the work I’ve never showed anyone before, me playing drums, my music and these strange videos I used to post online when I was a teenager lip syncing along to other songs. It was dark and projected on my entire wall. It was meant to be the same kind of experience we have when we just get lost in front of our computer screen.
The Reception
At the end when the party was dying down I went around and asked people about their experience and it became very clear that the experience turned into a whole new experience for those who came. It became an experience where people could just be themselves. One of my friends came up to me and said, “Tori what I love about this is, I didn’t have to come in and be John the Truck driver I could just be John.” Isn’t that incredible? It was a space where people felt that they could truly and totally be themselves.
The show became a space where people could be their authentic selves without fear of judgement, where everyone got along, share ideas, take pictures together and experience something together. Everything that social media is suppose to offer us, but due to it’s limitations can not and will never offer us.
Our corporeal selves were able to be our digital bodies in a flesh and bone reality.
It became clear to me the need for more art community spaces in my rural area. The need for more art experiences where people could experiment, create events and explore whatever their inner creative guide needed to express.
The pictures in this post were not taken by me, but where taken by others. After all, the show is what others see it to be.
I am currently working on a group art experiences set for the Autumn Equinox within the woods at the base of Mt. Pinos. Look for information on this coming in the next couple weeks. Or contact me.
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