APRIL 2022
https://www.instagram.com/closefriends_stories/
Our project, close friends stories, is concerned with the way people inhabit a digital space such as Instagram and how it can be used as a sort of personal diary. Here, the relationship between the public and the private become interesting. One uploads content onto social media for an audience, but often this content can be quite personal and private. This project is also interested in the notion of cyber pollution; users inhabit the Instagram space daily and one can become overwhelmed by the abundance of content that washes across one’s feed without cease. Content from people’s personal lives appear in-between infographics regarding social causes, humorous content etc.. We, the artists, explore our own relationships with Instagram as a space for sharing thoughts, feelings and experiences, as well as how the content we consume influences how we behave in the digital space.
Our approach consists of reflecting upon the content we post on our personal Instagram profiles (posts and stories), and attempting to question the ways in which we present ourselves online, or how else we behave online. This project takes the form of a performative ‘finsta’. A finsta is an Instagram account a viewer creates separate to their main account, they use as a play space. Here; memes and other details from one’s life are posted that the user does not necessarily want all of their regular followers to see (accounts are thus, usually private). Unlike the typical finsta however, our project is not kept hidden away but rather becomes a public spectacle in which we reflect upon our personal experiences and how we express these online, and how this expression is influenced by the digital content we consume.
