tweeting the self

Tumbling chaotically head first into the world of social media is one thing. But exposing an artwork publicly whilst it is in a state of continuing and possibly infinite development is a whole lot worse. What madness takes over when starting such a thing?

Exhibitions are usually clearly contextualised, and however the art is judged or assessed, a well-articulated artist’s statement is usually a help. In twitterworld, however, contextualisation is bound by the 140 characters, and the little daily drawing has to make its own way out there. It stands and falls all by itself.

I want to be able to shriek out loud that’s it’s all just an experiment/a process/an intuitive something-or-other, and please not to judge before I’m ready to understand and give some sort of coherent statement. And of course, that can’t be done in 140 characters either, so I’m left in some anguish with my very public work-in-progress.

I’m also squirming at the narcissistic implications of the whole idea. I began with the aim of doing an iPhone drawing a day, and needed a subject, and the subject became me, although it could at the start have just as easily been an apple, I suppose. The intent was and remains to examine how my perceptions shift on a daily basis and how this is influenced or influences the app employed. But figures are important in my work, so why not me as a subject? But now I have a whole trail of ‘me’ images already posted, I am slightly shocked at the nature of the Pandora’s box I’ve opened. My comfort zone ideally involves my head in a broom cupboard. Maybe this is more important than I think; hiding in broom cupboards is not the way to develop an exciting art practice, and maybe this challenge to my introversion is the best thing I could be doing right now.

I think I could have thought a little bit more in advance of this project. It’s all very well feeling adventurous and cavalier, and nurturing the risk-taking mentality that too many years of legal practice drove out of me, but it’s only now, over a fortnight in, that I notice a number of little tricks I may have missed in my eagerness to get going.

Take the world of hashtags. A brilliant concept in the hands of a seasoned social networker, but not for one who struggles to remember that ‘networker’ is the bit that really counts. Tagging my own stuff without any linked-in tags indicates either a degree of sad ignorance or excessive cyber-shyness both of which are slightly painful to acknowledge.

For the sad fact is that tweeting makes me all too aware that whether in the real or virtual world, my introverted personality combined with over-self-aware procrastination makes it really hard for me to do this. Setting my stall out in the public domain in this way ignites my continually lurking desire to run and hide. in a virtual sense, of course.

So at the same time as moving my art forward, I struggle with exposure, with the possibility of quite literally anyone anywhere on earth wondering what on earth this is all about. Most of all, in these early stages I struggle with the fear of encountering complete indifference from tweetworld. Which seems so much larger than the world of real-life exhibitions, and this of course is quite laughable, because in fact the number of my current followers would cram comfortably into the tiniest realworld exhibition space.

Better get off and search out some good hashtag links.