ellejayess

Formerly a shrine: the preservation of an e-ghost town could only ever count as an exercise in nostalgia. More than that, did not myspace's continued existence come from the unknown-known that in order for us to ethically blaze paths into the future, we'd need to maintain a connection to our roots? It remained there, all those years, as a tip of the hat to those lost roots. 

With the deletion of myspace comments, photos and blogs, the feeling is somewhat different from nostalgia: indeed, myspace has handed down the very apotheosis of anti-nostalgia and will likely to be punished for it, by a fanbase who understand its importance. 

I'd previously conceived of the place as having become a time capsule, with everyone's angsty teenage past enshrined. It had been said that if you didn't have one, you didn't have a life. Now it's the case that all those lives have moved on; it's also been said that life is a series of little deaths, such that when the final one occurs, everything you once were is always already gone. The way people where 5-10 years ago: that is irretrievably lost. It is a loss irrespective of myspace's fragrant disappearance, but myspace at one time had assumed the form of a crypt or vault. And what's truly terrifying is the disappearance of the vault, that not even it could withstand the march of time: "progress". 

If something precious is continually being lost under the aegis of late-global-capitalism, how will we maintain that all-necessary nostalgia? Who will provide us with sites for reflection? As others have noted, the rigidity of facebook, the function of the timeline, and its not-dead status, leaves it unavailable to the task of functioning as a crypt or harboring melancholy. 

What crypts remain in the modern age...? 

What, in the future, will remain of the noughties, as lived by Gen-Y?

I happened upon a gallery today that provoked an instantaneous source of (personal?) intrigue¹. To be honest, any commentary I can provide on it will probably say far more about this reviewer than the artist of which I speak.

The gallery is roughly divided into two parts – images of women the artist has designated as 'beautiful' juxtaposed against images (of the artist?) designated as 'ugly'. The titles of the works filed under these categories struck me as enigmatic and as harbouring an elusive social commentary. How could I not read the titles as deeply ironic, as anything other than the parergon laughing at its ergon? Even better, the works were supplemented by the earnest commentary of visitors to the gallery. Those who (presumably) only viewed the 'beautiful' gallery² where prone to comment (as you would expect) with phrases like "very beautiful!" without knowingness of the parallel commentary in the 'ugly' gallery, which was populated (as you would expect) with phrases like "truly beautiful!" alongside lengthy discussion on appearances. What I was seeing: a situational artwork springing up spontaneously, where the commentators (little do they know, and little would they like to know) are incorporated into the piece. The work said to me: this is a project centered on the critique of aesthetic judgement. This is a project so deliberate, self-conscious and fraught with layers of social complexity that it demands my rumination.

Absent from the Deviant's profile, however, was any long-wined exposition about the works, i.e. there was an absence of an artist's statement, or basically anything that an art school instructor will order you to give to alleviate your audience's confusion³. Instead, the artist's comments oscillate between short negations of the visitor's commentary (a 'no' for every 'yes'), and solitary emoticons.

 So, here's our problem. While all of this could be possible, probably none of it is true. We're probably not dealing with a grand Artist making brave statements who refuses to drop the act for even a second lest it impact upon the glorious Work being collectively produced⁴. All we have, probably, is illness; the malaise of the Artist and the ailment of the spectator's gaze. The again, maybe I can be right and wrong simultaneously: if the artist is ill, a self-conscious project provides a way to exorcise those 'demons'. And society, which (apropos to the gallery) we can suppose is ill, needs an artist to exonerate its illness. And so the artist offers themselves up as a scapegoat – conceiving themselves as (and in a pertinacious way, becoming) a sacrificial body.

¹If only by virtue of the decided lack of commentary provided by other frequenters of the gallery pages on the artist's overall project itself. It struck me as incongruous that only I would be compelled to grapple with its meta-narrative (if you will), even in full-knowingness that the standard way to engage with the (DA) medium is to scroll, favourite, and comment at a frenetic pace. In this way the site flourishes unhindered (a medium of contemporary enjoyment).

² The source of the 'beauty' photographs is a point of curiosity: many appear as Instagrams or stock photos. Where did the artist find these (often bizarre) women? Are they in knowledge of the project their photographs are incorporated in?

³And/or pretend that your work was always guided by some over-arching, rational goal. Something an art student must learn: to answer the obvious question of why you do what you do ('from which corner of your soul did it spring forth?', 'describe the meaning of your art!', 'what where you exploring?' etc.) which in my case was seemingly always an ad hoc explanation composed solely to satisfy the examiner's query.

⁴Which isn't to say that the artist isn't playing. The artist could be playing AND deluded (fooling herself and her audience).