#8 The Grand Finale

For my final elit project I want to explore self-representation on Instagram. Not only the visuals, but also how cultural capital is valuable, but sometimes very hard to obtain.

My initial plan was to create an Instagram-persona, who “read” a lot of elit, but every time she wrote anything about it, what she wrote didn’t quite fit the piece. I wanted it to seem pretentious, but it turns out, I don’t really now what to write. The new plan is still “reviewing” elit, but I am trying a more fun approach now, where she barely read the cover sheet, but just scrolled through each piece. She might for example describe Soliloquy as “very minimalistic, and not having a lot of text” or Queerskins as “good that someone focuses on the issues with AIDS in Africa”.

The pictures will be a distraction from what is written in the caption. This is something I often see on Instagram. The more nudity, the less thoughtful content. My character could be anyone who wants a few extra virtual pats on the back, therefore she doesn’t have a face, or her face is never showed.

My elit piece might not get very text heavy, but I think of it more as a comic strip. I want people to think about those people they see, that read a new book every other day, while going to the theater several times a week, where they will have a glass of rosé, and all at the same time they have a full-time job. It seems too good to be true, right?

I think my difficulties throughout this project will be that I have to post something at least once a day for the next three weeks, and I’m not usually one that post a lot. I still need to figure out how or if there will be a story line. I think she might become aware that she seems very stupid, but then become more and more desperate to seem clever, but she doesn’t have the skill to do so, which just makes her seem more and more pretentious. But I am not really sure how to do this. I think I just need to jump into it head first and then I will make it up as go.

 

#7 I am what your treatment makes of me

In my busy student life I had given up on Galatea. I just didn’t have the mindset to downloading and figure out a program on my computer. But after this weeks class I was so intrigued, that I just had to check out the piece by myself.

The narrator of the piece is “you” who is an art critic visiting the museum where the statue of Galatea is. If you don’t know the myth (I didn’t), Galatea was a statue made by the artist Pygmalion. He fell in love with her, and prayed that she would come alive, this the goddess Aphrodite heard and she answered his prayers (Wiki).

The elit piece takes a lot from the mythology. The description of Galatea fits very well with ancient greek statues, and she talks about the ancient greek gods.

In my version of this piece the critic wasn’t very happy about the “bad programming” of the statue or art piece. This caught me completely off guard as I had the idea that this was completely built around the old mythology. By adding programming it got a very sci-fi-y feel to it, as if people in the (near) future would wake up statues this way (the first robot just became a citizen of Saudi Arabia, so it’s really only a matter of time).

The language of the piece seems very worked through. It is very beautiful yet simple (in a way where there isn’t an unnecessary use of fancy words). Galatea’s language seems so thoughtfull, while the critic is sometime unnecesarily harsh, as I believe a lot of critics are. Even when I got frustrated with the piece it self I was still enjoying the language.

Moving through the piece I got a bit frustrated. The commands I tried writing didn’t work and I when I did get something right she wasn’t giving me very long answers.

At some point I was running out of logic ideas and I decided to ask Galatea about Galatea. This turned out to be interesting. The critic demanded to know what she was made of, and again brought up if it was some new material, sci-fi vibe is back. But this unraveled a whole new sequence of things. Galatea did not tell exactly what she was made of, but that the critic seemed mentally strong enough to deal with her. I liked that it almost made it seem like the critic wasn’t completely mentally well. After this comment Galatea turned first to wood, then to sand before she: “fled[s] entirely, and she is only a shadow, passing you in a cool whisper. “I am what you think I am; I am what your treatment makes of me.””

In a way a person is made up of what people think of them. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it is so easy for the balance to flip, and that being the only thing that matters to a person. But it is not only the thought that counts here, the way we treat each other also controls the people around us understanding of themself. If a person is always treated badly, for example if they are told they are not good enough, that will eventually be that persons truth.

I think this ending was very poetic and it really is a comment on how we should be better at treating other people nice, because the way we think of people might eventually rub of on our actions and then it will affect them.

#5 Pretending to be someone, pretending to be themself

In this weeks elit class we talked about pretending to be someone who is pretending to be themself by looking at Being Spencer Pratt, a netprov where reality star Spencer Pratt let Mark C. Marino and Rob Wittig take over his phone as a young, british poet while he was locked in The Celebrity Big Brother house.

My first thought when hearing about this piece, was that someone was making fun of Spencer Pratt. I would have never in my wildest dream imagined he was in on it. To me Spencer Pratt is the ultimate bad boy (and not in the good sort of sexy way, just as a horrible person), I remember watching The Hills when I was younger, and he was always the cause for the worst drama.

But oh how young and innocent I was. Obviously reality tv is not real, and Spencer Pratt was acting himself on the show. If he wants to stay in the spotlight, he has to still be the character, but now he has to keep it up on his social media (or at least a more mature version of it). I think that it is really interesting, that there is a thought behind his life on SoMe, that all of it is almost acted, and that the public never gets to actually peak in to his life.

This pretending to be yourself business has inspired a bit of my own elit piece for my final project. I’ve always sort of admired, but also pitied all the girls who overshare on Instagram (like Karen, we don’t care what you had for dinner #vegan #dinnertime). I think there must be a huge need for attention, that maybe comes from a huge insecurity behind the need to share everything, all the time. I therefore want to do that, through a fictive character, whose face is never shown. At the same time I want to use twitter to represent what she is actually thinking, and expose her insecurities. I think the story needs a climax or an ending in some way, but I’m still working on that bit.

The big question with these kind of pieces is if they are actually literature. I don’t know if there is an actual answer to that question. In a way everything with text is literature, if there is a story in it. But on the other hand using Twitter and Instagram won’t make a coherent story, unless people actually go through it all the way. Either way I think there is a narrative on all social media accounts. It’s a way to get a glimpse into someone’s life or at least the story they want to tell about themself.

I think the main thing I learned this week is that I should get better at not judging a book by its cover, which is ironic in a class where the books are not on paper.