{"id":36936,"date":"2020-11-11T20:36:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T20:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artzealous.com\/?p=36936"},"modified":"2020-11-11T20:44:41","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T20:44:41","slug":"performance-art-duo-princess-uses-instagram-to-critique-digital-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/performance-art-duo-princess-uses-instagram-to-critique-digital-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Performance Art Duo “Princess” Uses Instagram To Critique Digital Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On October 9, 2020 performance art duo Princess launched an experimental video cycle \u200b@1minworld<\/em><\/strong>\u200b on Instagram. \u200bComprised of Alexis Gideon<\/strong>\u200b and Michael O\u2019Neill<\/strong>, Princess<\/a> draws on Gideon and O\u2019Neill\u2019s background in the Chicago queer DIY art scene to create video and performance art that self-reflexively critiques the media platforms it lives on.

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@<\/a>1minworld<\/a><\/em>\u2019\u200b s Instagram account functions simultaneously as an online art gallery and video music album. The project includes a series of 15 distinct one-minute videos that take the platform\u2019s constraints as a challenge to be reckoned with.

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The video cycle\u2019s primary-colored bubblegum visuals are deployed as a calculated offering to the Instagram algorithm, while the songs\u2019 content highlights the discontents of our social media age: filter bubbles, surveillance capitalism, and shortened attention spans, to name a few. This combination of accessible aesthetics and critical, self-aware messaging has long been a feature of Princess\u2019 practice.

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We caught up with Gideon and O’Neill to discuss the creation of @1minworld, the role of music in digital media and their project, and more. Read on for the full interview!

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Photo by Sammy Tunis
Courtesy of Princess

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Art Zealous: What challenges were you anticipating regarding the distinction between live performance and pre-recorded video during the creation of\u00a0@1minworld<\/em>?<\/strong>

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Alexis Gideon:<\/strong>\u00a0It was really important for us to create an experience that didn’t feel like another Zoom meeting, or live stream from a studio. People are experiencing such a fatigue with those formats. And so many streamed events right now feel like a pale shadow of what live experiences used to be. We wanted to make the performance feel as immersive and as compelling as a live event, by doing something different and using the fact that it was pre-recorded in order to do so.

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Michael O\u2019Neill:<\/strong>\u00a0Ben Harrison (Curator of Performing Arts at the Andy Warhol Museum), invited us to collaborate with him on a version of the Warhol: SoundSeries that was built specifically for this moment. We all agreed that we could leverage the fact that it would be pre-recorded and therefore gain a more cinematic production value, rather than just adapt a live performance to a quarantined world.

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AG:<\/strong>\u00a0During our creative process, we thought (spoiler alert) what if our \u201clive” selves, on the stage of the Warhol Theater, become animated and walk into the\u00a0@1minworld<\/em>\u00a0video — the digital world of the phone. It plays on the meta nature of the piece itself, which is all about being trapped in this digital universe, in our phones and in social media. It also disrupts the audience\u2019s expectation of a quarantine performance.

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AZ: Other than your own personal experience on the platform, what resources, readings, philosophies did you turn to when formulating this project?<\/strong>

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AG:<\/strong>\u00a0Michael and I were in constant discussion, looking inward to see how we were falling into the traps of social media ourselves \u2014 closing our eyes at night and seeing the scrolling light and the constant buzz of social media. How it was making us feel, and how we were being constantly advertised to, and how our information is being constantly bought and sold. How we as a society have decided to allow ourselves to be commodified.

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Michael and I also discussed the polarizing effects of social media. The line in the song \u201cTROUBLING:\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re in trouble\/Communities all in bubbles\/Gotten so bad can\u2019t speak to my own dad\u201d came out of a conversation Michael and I had about his relationship with his father. Social media and internet news are creating feedback loops that persistently reinforce your own viewpoint. We are losing the ability to see any other point-of-view than our own.

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In addition to the conversations we were having, it seemed like all the things we were coming in contact with related in one way or another to the piece. I was reading the Javier Mar\u00edas trilogy\u00a0Your Face Tomorrow<\/em>, which talks about the idea of narrative fear. In a world that is not obviously structured around \u201cGod\u201d anymore, people still have a need to feel like their lives should be recorded and accounted for to prove they exist. I felt like that related to the compulsive need for validation within social media and the cataloging of every mundane thing a person does.

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MO:<\/strong>\u00a0I remember reading articles about how the effects of social media are leading to increased anxiety and depression – feelings that would later be enhanced by the pandemic. And I remember reading multiple stories about people falling off cliffs to their death while trying to get the best selfie, which directly informed the video for \u201cLIKING.\u201d

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It’s interesting that\u00a0The Social Dilemma<\/em>\u00a0film was released almost at the same time as the premiere of\u00a0@1minworld<\/em>. Although it wasn’t something we used as a resource while in the creation phase, hearing from original programmers of social media platforms and getting their views on the inherent dangers in the platforms validated our work and has informed the conversations we\u2019re having now.

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AZ: I\u2019m curious about your use of music\/soundtrack for this project, especially considering that statistically most Instagram users do not listen to videos with the music on. If people were to unmute their Instagram feeds for a minute, what would they expect to encounter from your content?<\/strong>

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MO:<\/strong>@1minworld<\/em>\u00a0exists on Instagram to be visited as if you’re visiting a gallery. Instagram is the host gallery, if you will, and it’s intended to be sought out by the viewer. There was only one moment, when we initially posted the videos and made them live, that the video content would have appeared in people’s feeds. But it’s not an active profile that is intended to be a personality, it\u2019s intended to be an exhibit. In that sense, the piece in and of itself is challenging what the platform could be used for. It ignores the reward mechanism of the algorithm, which is also part of the piece.

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AG:<\/strong>\u00a0As for what someone would hear, they could expect to encounter a one minute song (Instagram\u2019s video time limit) that utilizes the classic \u201cverse – chorus – verse\u201d pop structure. We really wanted each video to have a clear beginning, middle and end and to be accessible in that way. There’s a lot of hip hop, electronic production and beats that are the foundation underneath a diverse musicality that remains cohesive. The use of music as a soundtrack also enhances the Lichtenstein-esque pop art references, pushing the content further into parody and satire.

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