After making the music video for STR8 MAN I felt really inspired to continue creating work as a new age performance artist. I’ve been seeing myself turn more and more towards comedy performance during my time here — it feels like the same work I’ve been doing but cutting out the middle art object and making myself the art object. “Art object” feels like a great word to describe what I’m doing, because I’m turning myself and my personality into an object for the looking pleasure of the Internet in the same way that any social media content creator does.
I’ve started a TikTok account and I’ve been considering it my main form of artistry over the past few days. It’s radical but I wager that the white cube has been almost entirely replaced by social media as the artist’s platform. 99% of my viewership as an artist was already happening over Instagram when I wanted it to be in a gallery setting. So why not create work that’s designed for the online realm? The idea of it being low craft is obviously not a deterrent for me. I want to make work that’s for the people — something the world can see without the pretentious overtones of traditional art spaces.
I wish it weren’t, but TikTok is the culture of today. My work has always been concerned with identifying what’s young and cool and commenting on that. I want to work within the system to awaken people to their own lives. It’s the kind of observational humour I’ve been channeling in my gallery work tailored for a different medium.
This is a super fresh project for me, and I’m still wrestling with the idea of performing for an online audience and how my desire for celebrity might be hindering the work.
So far I’ve found myself watching viral TikToks and categorizing them into particular genres. I then use this insight to parody these viral genres. In a world of user-produced content one might assume there’s an absolute freedom in what users can deliver to the masses; in a sense there is, but there’s this narrow pattern of repetition that get democratically selected as “funny”, “useful”, or “worthwhile” in some way or another.
Maybe the work is about awakening people to the silliness of their TikTok consumption, suggesting that they’re watching the same things over and over. Maybe it’s about uncovering the secret recipe that makes a viral video. Maybe it’s just about having fun and shouting weird jokes into the void. I’m still figuring it out.
If you want to figure it out with me follow me on the Tok 🙂