The Ubiquitous Misleading Selfie Self

The Selfie & Social Activism: a Digital Methods SymposiumWorkshop AbstractThe ubiquitous misleading selfie selfDr. Grant Stevens, Lecturer, UNSW Art & DesignThe acts of taking and disseminating photographic images seem to pervade almost every aspect of contemporary daily life. In this context of “ubiquitous photography” (Hand, 2012), digital photography has become a key tool in constructing experiences and representations of the self. Along with linguistic handles, comments, and hashtags, the photographic image is central to our individual and collective articulations of selfhood in the context of late capitalism. Some of today’s most compelling artists are responding directly to this culture and the associated rise of the ‘selfie’ by creating and distributing their works specifically at the sites of aesthetic ‘prosumption’. Artists like Mayan Toledano, Amalia Ulman, Giselle Stanborough, David Horvitz, and Leah Schrager, actively use online platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Wikipedia, and personal websites to invent and reinvent their personas. In the process, their works demonstrate the extent to which the overt aestheticisation of the self has become normalised through the rise of social media. By calling attention to the dissolution of public and private spheres, their works also illuminate the ways that the manipulation of one’s personal-public archive of texts and images has become analogous to a new kind of self-portraiture; one that has the potential to embrace fictionalised and misleading representations of selfhood.In this workshop, participants will develop digital self-portraits that draw on their own archives of correspondence and social media activity. The workshop will take advantage of social media platforms and smartphone apps to enable participants to create new expressions of the self that welcome deception, deferral, and misdirection. By doing so, the workshop seeks new considerations of the artistic strategies that enable critical responses to today’s demands for self-aestheticisation