On using Instagram as an artist
Can art be truly revolutionary on capitalist platforms?
12/18/2024
I just started reading Shoshana Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which talks about the inner workings of data extraction by “free” internet services, such as social media. Quite popular—it grabs your attention since the introductory remarks, and just with them I felt really sick about how despicable companies such as Google and Meta really are.
Regarding art, in this age where, supposedly, many (digital) artists try to critique capitalism, I find it absolutely hilarious that they share their “anarchist” visions through the most formidable capitalist platform ever made: Social Media, particularly Meta’s products—it is like shitting through the intestines of another: You shit out, well, shit, but by sending it through Mark Zuckerberg’s intestines, he gets the nutrients instead of you, basically making you his data slut. What do you get? Likes, flies, probably nothing of your genuine interst other than the shit itself.
For nascent artists, particularly those in the lower class, the need for Likes, Followers, etc. is not something they really care about, but rather because there’s no other way to flow through social media veins and “make it.” Inevitably, following algorithmically generated trends becomes the norm, rendering useless any effort of genuine ludic passion. If one is incapable of keeping up with the machine, one will sink into the abyss of virtual nonexistence. This kills motivation, kills the artist.
Of course I understand the need to get paid, but I feel that using propietary social media is actually against us, acting as a feedback-machine that perpetuates the same social relations to keep us in consumerist control—thing so, so obvious through the marxist lens.
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” Death of the author.
For me, art should recreate. Recreate all notions of “truth” and “reality”, the viewer’s preconceived notions of whatever art is made of, by any medium, either digital or analog—art (should be) a revolutionary act.