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The Theatre of the Selfie: Fictive Practices of the Instagram Artist’ (2019) 18(1) Body, Space & Technology

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The Theatre of the Selfie: Fictive Practices of the Instagram Artist’ (2019) 18(1) Body, Space & Technology Research How to Cite: Sylvester, S 2019 The Theatre of the Selfie: Fictive Practices of the Instagram Artist. Body, Space & Technology, 18(1), pp. 61–107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/bst.315 Published: 12 March 2019 Peer Review: This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of Body, Space & Technology, which is a journal published by the Open Library of Humanities. Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: Body, Space & Technology is a peer-reviewed open access journal. Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. Sara Sylvester, ‘The Theatre of the Selfie: Fictive Practices of the Instagram Artist’ (2019) 18(1) Body, Space & Technology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/bst.315 RESEARCH The Theatre of the Selfie: Fictive Practices of the Instagram Artist Sara Sylvester Cardiff University, GB [email protected] In a world where presentation of the self (Goffman) performed through ‘selfies’ have become everyday expressions, portrayal of the Self is being redefined by contemporary feminist artists. Building upon the legacy of artists such as Hannah Wilke, Lyn Hershman Leeson and Cindy Sherman a new generation of feminist artists through technology and particularly social media continue to explore gendered representations of the body by using their own bodies in their creative process. Using concepts of identity work, dramaturgy and impression management this paper considers the ways in which artists are using self-portraiture/selfies as art to exemplify the ways in which social media sites can be perceived as spaces to explore and document the construction of an ongoing series of narratives about the self. Taking an ethnography and visual studies approach this investigation considers the ways in which fictive personas constructed and performed by artists Leah Schrager as Ona Artist and Amalia Ulman’s Excellences & Perfections series respectively are brought to life. Both artists demonstrate how Instagram as a platform provides a stage for identity work that offers an opportunity to explore visual self-branding; the potential of narrative construction of identity via selfies and the effect of social media on identity construction. By exploring the art selfie phenomenon as well as observing the extent of selfie taking in contemporary culture this analysis identifies specifically how digifem artists are both claiming control over their own bodies and questioning issues of gender, technology and identity through a fictive lens. Keywords: Goffman; online identity; performance; fictive art; exhibition 62 Sylvester: The Theatre of the Selfie “Fictive artworks have clearly fictional elements but extend outside the realm of the textual in various ways, principally through the creation of realia. A working definition of the term might be: plausible fictions created through production of real-world objects, events, and entities.” (Lafarge, 2004). Visual images can now be easily reproduced, manipulated and anchored to create new meanings; their impact and society’s insatiable desire to consume; it is not surprising that Walter Benjamin’s use of the term phantasmagorias (Cohen, 1989: 87) in relation to commodity culture so aptly reflects the phantasmagorical powers of contemporary digital media. Selfies, fake news and social media self-branding all call into question what is authentic at this time of rapid information exchange and society’s desire to present their individual identity to the world in a post truth age. In a world where it has become easy to obscure the boundaries between reality and the imaginary a growing number of artists are exploring the multimodal nature of contemporary identity construction in order to unravel questions of self, authenticity and subjectivity. Drawing from Goffman’s (1959) work on face-work, the goal of this article is to clarify the ways in which, what I term Digi fictive heteronyms, such identities are negotiated and validated; where encounters demonstrate the how artists are utilising social media sites to illustrate “staged” virtual performances. In making this assertion, I contend that it is possible to extend current theories of identity performance online. Consequently, the main research question focus: what is the role of self-portraiture in relation to ‘the body’ for contemporary feminist artists; how has such performance shifted through the use of digital technology? How is presentation of self realised through the creation of a digifictive persona via social media in establishing and constructing narratives? Therefore a key concern for this paper is to understand specifically how digifictive personas through Instagram craft their identities. Addressing such questions entails considering concepts of identity work, dramaturgy and impression management in light of feminist art theory, the rise of the Selfie and the importance of social media in the virtual presentation of the self. Such distinctions should be useful to scholars who are concerned with presentation of self specifically via social media as well as those interested in the Sylvester: The Theatre of the Selfie 63 growing phenomenon of digi artists; and those, like this this author, consider an impression management approach as a valuable theoretical means to understand social media behaviour (Krämer & Winter, 2008; boyd & Ellison, 2007; DiMicco & Millen, 2007; Triberti et al., 2017; Hogan, 2010). I begin this article with a review of Goffman’s dramaturgical approach providing an overview of its extensive use within the field of social media research. I then introduce feminist art approach, paying particular attention to the themes of self, the body and autobiography. This is followed by a section examining two case studies specifically exploring the Instagram digifictive performances of Leah Schrager’s Ona Artist (2016–Present) and Alison Ulman’s Excellences & Perfections (2014), where shifting the focus towards online performance of fictive personas may reveal new insights and offer future research. Goffman’s Dramaturgical Self For artists a fictional persona, by definition, allows for the creation of a separate identity and the opportunity to explore the story of the fictional artist’s intellectual and emotional growth as well as question key issues about the contemporary art world, women’s roles as artists and society itself. The fictional subject, is not a new phenomenon, to the contrary it has been widely employed throughout modern art history. This rich tradition of fictional personas in art making allows artists to experiment with identity in and through their work in order to present an alternate, idealised or transformed self or as a tactic to investigate a different approach to their practice. These alternative constructed selves can function in diverse ways, often as a strategy for transgression, dispensing with accountability and/or for maintaining the freedoms and possibilities of a mutable identity. Thus establishing self-identity is an important process for the artist and even more so for the fictional artist. In a modern world of digital media where society have become adept at reinventing or masking identities this research focuses on a largely ignored phenomenon why artists have decided to create fictional personas. A critical examination of many such fictional artists, considered chronologically, tells the larger story of the importance of branding, the desire to play with identity and exposes the complex and gender biased 64 Sylvester: The Theatre of the Selfie world of professional art. Although much has been written about portraits of artists in novels, there has been very little work exploring artists’ creation of fictive artists as art practice. This research will restrict its focus to works about contemporary fictional women artists, to allow for a sharper focus on the many and varied transactions between the fictional artists and the artists who create them. In order to portray a fictional artist, the artist is obliged to conjure out of words and images, through a range of texts, the identity of the fictional artist and her history as well as create her imaginative vision. When the fictional persona is created the artist or artist collective begin with an implicit or explicit dialogue between themselves as a creator and the fictional artist. The fictional artists examined in this study explore the ways artists are portrayed as well as the way their art is presented and how it compares to real artists. Each of the fictional artists should be considered a complex work which exists across a wide range of media platforms: installation, exhibitions, catalogues, interviews, live performance, social media and other internet sites particularly the artist website all of which support the development of the persona’s authenticity as an artist. For a fictional artist to be successful the persona needs to reinforce their identity through their relationship with their audiences through storytelling which is authentic and credible. Therefore it is clear that building a narrative universe for an artist’s identity is crucial and a narrative arc for each exhibition is essential. Thus the
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