Keywords: #hybrid_reality #multimedium #god #idol #acceleration #2k21 #everywhere #social_networks #new_media
#live and acceleration
We are a live show, everything around us is a live show: art, entertainment, business, politics — everything is continuously on the live-stream. We are cotton candy and machines for cotton candy with a new idol — Kendall Jenner’s bust at its peak. The broadcast of everyday life on social networks is not a matter of choice anymore, but the reason for survival in a global open online ecosystem. In 2k21, there is no longer any conversation about publicity being available to everyone. Rather, there is no non-publicity anymore. Everything is published online and the Great Browser Cache does not forget anything. Recently Ross Ulbricht, founder of The Silk Road — the biggest platform in Darknet — was caught by police because he used the same nickname which he had used many years ago on some forum.
Social networks put us in a position: create content and you will be visible or stay silent and die on the periphery. I didn’t run my Facebook account for six months and everyone forgot about me.
Everything tends to accelerate.
Our understanding and our ways of consuming the information are changing in parallel to social media. It is difficult to read the text and it is nice to watch 10 second TikTok videos. The information in the global flow becomes concentrated and saturated. Subtitles, sound, graphics, video — everything is compressed into a thin and sharp ray, marked with a hashtag. Not a new medium, but transmedium, hybrid medium. Multimedium is one carrior/mediator/medium with everything and for everything — packed in a display.
Content addiction and abuse
The media space is transforming as a market economy in the post-soviet countries at the end of the 80s. Back then people have received a right to have private property and the open market. Now we have open access to the audience.
To some extent, the script of the film Strange days has been implemented and we already can live someone’s life. Observing stories on Instagram, we stay in a hybrid reality. An idol has never been so close. Drugs are trivial, in 2k21 everyone is addicted to a content.
The viewer and the content maker are two subjects of power and two codependent symbols of 2k21. In pursuit of higher posts reach, the content-maker burns, dies, and kills on a live stream. The spectator nowadays has a Caesar’s power with THUMB UP gesture and he become more and more corrupted. All communities are open, all fantasies are satisfied. Appropriate, test, sublimate anything you want. Designer substances and ten-second visual stories rotate in a single global flow.
In the performance Rhythm 0 Marina Abramovich shows the speed of personality decay. In a few hours of no control, a human individuals from the so-called intelligent class started to cut Abramovich’s body. The Internet is industrializing decay, turning it into an entertainment and live show element. Death can be watched live.
DIY and elitism
While pessimists like Andrew Kean fear the cult of amateurs and damage to “professional artists” and “professional art,” teenagers shoot clips on smartphones and become pop stars. DIY culture + direct access to the audience is reversing the social ladder. The elitism of art is being erased. The power of DIY is felt by Lars von Trier when he decides to oppose cinema trends and shoots Kingdom (1994) with a handycam. The basis of Dogma is today continued by 20-year-old artists.
The author is connected with an audience. Today there is no need of courting curators/gallery owners/critics. No need to spam gallery emails. Don’t need to tail Warhol in the cafe to show him pictures. The main thing for being recognised is not the presence of connections in cultural institutions, but taste, the ability to build a self-brand, to feel trends and the audience. It is not the entanglement with the institutional system of values that comes to the fore, but the individuality of the author. This is not nihilism, but transformation and simplification.
In the reality of a global live show, the viewer is interested in individuality and openness, rather than involvement in an institution. And if 20 years ago the presence of connections, origin, education was necessary to enter the industry of design, fashion, publishing, art — the field is open for friends and closed for outsiders. Now everyone is connected with everyone, the global archive is constantly updated, and your favorite creator can be tagged on Instagram.
Illia Romanenko (Kyiv).