We live in a time when young artists look at each other’s Facebook pages more than each other’s art. The affect of Facebook may be why so few artists online actually make much art–because they aren’t being rewarded for anything so much as the performance of their own personal brand online. Thus, the strongest ties artworks in today’s group shows often share are the Mutual Friends the artists have rather than the work itself.

But what is it that we call “work?” Alternatively one could argue that in this situation, if the ultimate goal of an artwork is to in some way transform the consciousness of the individual receiving it (to follow a traditional model), what is happening as we speak between artists who connect with each other via Facebook and other social networks could be seen as cutting out the aesthetic middle man.

The traditional method of interaction between Artist and Other is through exhibition, i.e., generating a scenario in which a predetermined Artist exists and individuals who happen upon the work in space or through images are transformed into Viewers. When the primary audience for the work becomes a core network of selected peers, the traditional boundaries of Artist and Viewer can no longer be solidified in the same way. Rather than creating discrete moments of exhibition and reception, the artist-viewer and other artist-viewers are caught in a sphere of perpetual reception and distribution.

This liberates the practice of aesthetic consciousness transformation from the confines of the art-object-as-delivery-method. In its place, people are understood from within their peer group as Artists, every public or private act taken within social relations acts as an influence on consciousness at a minute level. Rather than sharing or enforcing a certain aesthetic value structure through a set of objects, this same information is transmitted through a direct, consumable lifestyle projected by said peer through a sequence of posts. This could account for the condition of Artists Without Art: rather than artists producing identifiable aesthetic works, their disruptive and compositional energy is used towards relational exchange. Why go to such great lengths to make and photograph a painting that will net 5 Likes when a photo of you and your friends eating 50 McChickens could net hundreds?

Is this to say that interactions on Facebook are now artists’ work? If so, how may we qualify a ‘good’ work of art on Facebook? Is it a meaningful conversation? Is it commentary that draws attention to the apparatus being communicated through? Is it merely a personality capable of drawing attention by whatever means necessary? My perception of artists’ social media personas is that they are a vehicle for creating an authorial context that viewers may use to better understand the vantage point an artist’s ‘actual’ work is coming from (i.e. what they’d exhibit in a gallery or show on their portfolio website). Be it ‘politicized’, ‘sexy’, ‘ironic’, or anything else, the artist’s online brand tends to function as a kind of live-action role playing artist statement. Though these brands tend to eclipse an artist’s work due to the amount of attention (perhaps wrongly) heaped upon them, I doubt many artists would categorize what they do on Facebook as their art unto itself, however socially performative they may be. To call these online exchanges ‘relational’ would shift authorship to the creator of the context the social exchanges take place through, meaning the makers of Facebook are the artists and we are merely participants in their system.

It’s really necessary to click the link and see the text the way it should be formatted.