Instagram as a pop-up gallery.

I don’t like the notion of social profiles as an on-going record of life lived. To me, that brings up the problems inherent in trying to build a narrative out of a non-linear experience. It makes you think about how to. express who you are, instead of being who you are. It makes your life revolve around a story, instead of drawing a story out of your life.

Instagram for me, is the perfect example of this. Cataloguing snapshots of your existence in a chronological order that people can scroll through endlessly. I can’t do it. I am uncomfortable with it. I’ll not have it.

Instead, I’ve started treating Instagram as basically a pop-up gallery. I pick a theme, an idea, a creative impulse, and I follow it until I’ve reached an end. It’s sometimes comic books, graphic novels, music. It’s sometimes pieces of writing. It’s sometimes fashion, or streetwear to be more specific. Of late, it’s been black and white photography of my Sydney.

And when I’ve reached an end, I delete every single post, and wipe the slate clean, and prepare my Instagram for the next pop-up exhibit. I like the ephemeral nature of it. I like that you can’t glean too much of a life unintentionally overexposed. I like that I’m not confined by one approach or one aesthetic. There’s a sense of creative freedom. There’s no limit to what I can do.

I wonder what the internet would look like if we treated more of it as a pop-up gallery and less as a public record.

xox Joany 🍕

PS…you can follow my Instagram here:
https://www.instagram.com/joanwestenberg/