Quick blitz just to say: if you’re in New York this week and were on Tumblr at any point and are interested in art - there is this event at the New Museum on Thursday on Tumblr Art and Rhizome’s new ‘Some Tumblr’ accession (of which a work of mine is included). There are some great panelists, including Molly Soda and Larissa Pham, who’s work and writing I really enjoy and admire and I’m excited to hear what they have to say to contextualize this work.
As part of the programing around this accession, Larissa wrote this really thorough and gorgeous excavation looking at what types of happenings were possible on Tumblr.
It is really scratching something so satisfying for me to have my work contextualized with this group. When I was making this piece , Tumblr was both a social space, and a play space for me. I was on there to lurk and learn and sense out the social pulse, and this social experience revealed the creative potential to me of the space. I was spewing up little projects that mostly no one saw - but giffaces was one that made it to my grad school critique class rooms. Grad school was not the context for this work - as a medium, it was not understood, and it was challenging to make the argument for. Suggestions to make the gifs more carefully and more beautifully, comments that I “read a lot of other people’s blogs,” and a lot of stigma about relating work to the burgeoning culture around selfies (I know this seems so normal and passé, but this was 2013/2014) - I felt like my point was missed.
Can you tell I’ve been carrying these comments for nearly a decade…? Seriously being seen and being seen in stride with what lots of other artists were doing simultaneously - it is healing something (art school trauma). Time! Time and new context heals all.
Hope you’ll come tomorrow!