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Authenticity on Instagram: Conceptual Artists That Explore Identity Online

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Authenticity on Instagram: Conceptual Artists That Explore Identity Online Authenticity on Instagram: Conceptual Artists That Explore Identity Online Master in New Media and Digital Culture University of Amsterdam Master Thesis Date of completion: 4 September 2017 Lina Marija Kucinskaite 11313412 Supervisor: mw. Amanda Wasielewski Second reader: dhr. prof. dr. Robin Boast Lina Marija Kucinskaite ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ 3 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...................................................................................................................... 9 METHOD .................................................................................................................................................... 14 1. FORMS OF AUTHENTICITY IN ART AND THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT ........................ 16 1.1. CONCEPTUAL ART AND THE PLATFORM OF ITS RECEPTION ........................................ 16 1.1.1. THE ROLE OF THE SPECTATOR IN THE CREATIVE ACT ............................................................................... 19 1.1.2. DOCUMENTING DIGITAL AND MEDIA ART .................................................................................................... 22 1.2. AUTHENTICITY AS IDENTITY ................................................................................................... 26 1.2.1. AUTHENTICITY IN ART .................................................................................................................................... 26 1.2.2. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A VISUAL FORM OF COMMUNICATION ......................................................................... 30 1.2.3. AUTHENTICITY IN NEW MEDIA ...................................................................................................................... 33 1.3. INSTAGRAM AS THE REPRESENTATOR OF SOCIAL MEDIA CULTURE ......................... 38 1.3.1. SOCIAL LIFE ON INSTAGRAM: THE MAIN ASPECTS ..................................................................................... 38 1.3.2. AN ANALYSIS OF THE INSTAGRAM INTERFACE ........................................................................................... 40 2. AUTHENTICITY OF CONCEPTUAL ART IN SOCIAL MEDIA: CASE STUDIES ................... 47 AMALIA ULMAN: CHALLENGING CLASS, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA ............... 49 ANDY KASSIER: CRITICISM OF THE NARCISSIST MALE ON INSTAGRAM ................................................. 56 AUDREY WOLLEN: SADNESS AS A FORM OF RESISTANCE ONLINE .......................................................... 66 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 83 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................... 87 LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................. 95 APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................................ 114 2 Lina Marija Kucinskaite ABSTRACT In the contemporary art world, a new form of performance closely resembles the actions of a typical Instagram user. Conceptual artists use this social media platform to critique the digital society and perform online internet art series. This study examined three artists using their Instagram accounts for performance purposes. By the means of Instagram interface features, these artists manipulate the audience by presenting false self-representations or montages. This creative act addresses questions of authenticity, as it explores what that concept means in the context of new and interactive media technologies. However, the roots of the debate over authentic content date back to the beginning of the twentieth century. To investigate the construction of identity while present online, this paper reviews and examines authenticity in art history, photography, and the new media. This thesis discusses what authenticity means in digital spaces and how users can easily manipulate it via the Instagram interface. 3 Lina Marija Kucinskaite INTRODUCTION The online interactions within social media platforms have been changing in the last decade and shifted towards new forms of visual communication. The photo sharing social network Instagram puts a stronger emphasis on the image and helps to create a visual self-representation for users online by providing them features to document their activities. To a certain extent, social media platforms introduced a norm of sharing personal information online. Additionally, social media platforms have transformed how people function and interact by influencing each other's actions via visual content (Miller et al. 91; van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity 4; Gatson 224). This shift constitutes a new and constantly growing importance of the publicly available self-representation on personal or professional levels. As the new media author Jose van Dijck argues, media plays an important role forming and changing our personal and general 'cultural memory' (Mediated Memories in the Digital Age 15–21). The notion of 'cultural memory' could be explained as a collection of private, history-based memories as well as a wider cultural domain of existing societal norms and structures. For this reason, people's posts' habits on Instagram led researchers to study human behaviour online. In this context, this study aims to investigate the questions concerning authenticity in user self-representation on Instagram. The research area of this study requires an exclusively wide glance over the problem of online self-representation. A specific method of research should therefore be undertaken. In the first part of this study the key theoretical concepts of conceptual art and authenticity need to be described, taking on board previous theoretical deliberations of different twentieth century scholars and thinkers. The specifics of the topic and object in this study also led to its structure. The first part focuses on preceding theoretical insights in order to build a general sight of the conceptual art topics in relation of various authenticity 4 Lina Marija Kucinskaite concepts and online communication on Instagram. Therefore, this first part is divided in three main subheadings. The first subheading: ‘Conceptual art and the platform of its reception’ analyses the role of the spectator as well as the technological and social changes of documenting digital and media art. Finding the specifics of these concepts in cultural and social contexts is of prior importance to determine their relation with online communication within social media platforms. The second subheading is considering an overview of the literature concerning authenticity in arts what leads to the part dealing with photography as a visual form of communication and the inclusion of authenticity in new media. As this study will focus particularly on Instagram, it is beneficial to analyse the platform's online culture and its' features in the third and last subheading of the first part. Thus, an analysis of the interface might provide an insight to user behaviour helping to understand how Instagram guides the self-representation process. As the purpose of this study is to investigate and discuss authentic self-representation in contemporary digital culture, the second part of this paper focuses on conceptual artists performing on Instagram. To this extent, interviewing one of the conceptual artist was the most important research task adding a qualitative approach to this study. Finally, the investigation of their artistic approaches, their social communication and comparative analysis of visual content online closes the second part of the study. While looking at the main concepts and artistic approaches, it is relevant to this study to define the differences between activities online and offline. The online or virtual environment consists of non-physical actions and objects that come into digital existence via software (van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity 4). This form of communication is quite simple, and as it is extremely visual, it functions as both a supplement and an alternative to face-to-face conversations. For instance, the selfie, is a picture that is presented online of someone's face, illustrates how a user can 5 Lina Marija Kucinskaite prove his/her presence somewhere or during a particular a moment in one image. Given this example it becomes faster to consume and get information online in this form of visual online language. The popularity of selfies proves the significance of visual communication in terms of sharing online aspects and emphasizes its role 'to maintain social relationships' (Miller et al. 183). These images not only connect people but also help to shape the mindsets, forms of behaviour, and actions of social groups. According to Bernard E. Harcourt this could be explained as 'the impulse to quantify ourselves, to monitor all our bodily vitals and variations and changes' (47). Given this idea, consuming this type of visual content presented by another user creates a strong link of associations between that person in real life and his online identity. This helps to portray an online self-representation
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