A current trend is that artist strive\u00a0to control their presence in the media by declining interviews, presentations and talks which might fail to\u00a0represent their art according to their taste. Instead surrendering to the gaze of the media, they strive to produce\u00a0illustrations of their work which remain\u00a0as clean, risky, rugged, cool etc. as they choose.\u00a0It appears that having your professional\u00a0activities\u00a0analysed by someone else\u00a0is seen as a failure.\u00a0Back in the day\u00a0having random people\u00a0talk about your work\u00a0was a goal for many artist and there was “no bad press”. Things have changed. Cultural life\u00a0is\u00a0heading\u00a0to an\u00a0independent\u00a0direction\u00a0but there are some problems in the current phase. I think\u00a0artists should not be so afraid to appear foolish and to make mistakes. Mistakes are all we have left of humanity.<\/p>\n
In 2014 I was criticised about giving an interview for the HS magazine<\/a>. The text\u00a0portrayed performance and ecologically orientated art in an childish\/stereotypical light. It still reads as a boring text, aiming to stir public critique on the HS mag. comment section. But it also encapsulates how the nationwide\u00a0media outlet approached performance and ecologically orientated art in the beginning of the new century. Every contemporary reader can analyse what\u00a0the HS mag. article is trying to achieve. HS mag. is\u00a0ridiculous with\u00a0their patronising and provocative tone (Just listen to journalist\u00a0Anna Perhos efforts<\/a>\u00a0in Finnish. Even her anger about the entire affair is\u00a0fake. She’s a institutionally funded\u00a0but a tad tried professional\u00a0provocor). I think it’s clever\u00a0to\u00a0allow them\u00a0to portray artists as they do,\u00a0just to show how fucked up their values are and unskilled they are in\u00a0dealing with topics that are new to them.<\/p>\n Artist who are striving\u00a0to control their brand might\u00a0inadvertently portray the early 21th century as a smart and well thought of era.\u00a0This is the\u00a0professional side of current\u00a0autobiography-and-emancipation-via-selfie trend and I do feel that there is sense in authoring\u00a0how art is talked about by our selfs. We should however acknowledge\u00a0that declining\u00a0interviews and controlling brands is not an option for everybody. Only well-off creators, who have their backs covered have the option of controlling their public image. The subject is loosely touched in the\u00a0“Closing the Loop<\/a>” article by Aria Dean in the\u00a0The New Inquiry.<\/p>\n “The Internet already flattens subjectivities into networks of branded associations and metadata. Mental and social operations are concretized and subjects are made objects in a platform-based social world. In this schema, it is perhaps inadvisable for those of us whose subjectivities have not yet been recognized on a large scale to objectify ourselves further using the tools vetted by those who perpetuate our oppression to begin with \u2014 even in efforts toward documenting one\u2019s life with the hope of subverting external expectations.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The text points out how past narratives of\u00a0gender, race and class still strive in\u00a0contemporary public media’s (Interestingly\u00a0battling racism etc. might be even harder in the future as\u00a0the public cannot be reached through the classic mass media). I read the text as a call for new public broadcasting missions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A current trend is that artist strive\u00a0to control their presence in the media by declining interviews, presentations and talks which might fail to\u00a0represent their art according to their taste. Instead surrendering to the gaze of the media, they strive to produce\u00a0illustrations of their work which remain\u00a0as clean, risky, rugged, cool etc. as they choose.\u00a0It appears … <\/p>\n