Katya Kan
It’s mid-March 2020, the beginning of Bojo’s first attempt at lockdown in Londontown. You log on as normal into your Instagram account to check who viewed your new story and BAM: “log in error”, “account deactivated”, “and violation of our policies” scream in your face. How did I come to this?
I first found out about Instagram when I was studying art and film at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2012. Looking at my cousin’s friend selfies with clichéd vintage filters, I thought to myself, “I am too good for this trendy app. I refuse to downgrade myself to that plebeian level.” After graduating art school in 2014, various individuals including my model friend in Los Angeles talked about the incredible benefits of Instagram for the visual career types, such as myself.
One of these models recommended Social Worx, a London-based company with the purpose of accruing real followers on Instagram. After posting some salon-looking, decorative sketches on my channel and getting only 10 likes, I hired this company in 2016. My followers grew steadily from 150 to 18.3k within 3 years. My initial, marketing approach was to focus on my art and not to post images of myself. Despite my increasing following, my likes per image remained scarce – on average 50 per painting posted, up to 800 for sexualized photo of myself and 1,500 per sponsored ad image of myself. I felt that my so-called followers were neither engaging with my art products, nor buying them on Instagram. What was the point of paying for this service, if I wasn’t making a return?
This year, Social Worx and other like-minded companies got shut down allegedly from the increasingly rigid Instagram policies, as a result of certain tragic incidents. In 2017, UK teenager Molly Russell, took away her life after seeing images of self-harm on Instagram and Pinterest. In 2019, a 16 year-old girl has reportedly killed herself in Malaysia, after posting a poll on her Instagram account asking followers if she should die or not, and 69% of responders voting that she should.
I met some eccentric characters through Instagram, which gave me plenty of #jokes, #lmaos, and #lols to share. In May 2017, I noticed an account called @jonnytanna, a profile with the caption profile “Feminist and lesbian curator”, popping up on my feed. With my characteristic naiveté, I thought that some of my paintings would appeal to this “target audience”, so I started @ing my paintings to this mysterious profile. I imagined Ms. Tanna to be a short, unattractive, butch lesbian in a tank top and baggy trousers similar to Billy Ellish, but 30 yeas older. Soon after, she DMed me, “To what do I owe the honour of your @s?” In an attempt not to make facile generalizations regarding what art would appeal to this lesbian, Feminist curator, I answered ambiguously, “Well, I thought that some of my content would appeal to you,” Ms. Tanna requested me to add her on Facebook, where she had the self-same monochrome, cartoon avatar.
Owing to my self-absorption, I never check out the profiles of new Facebook contacts. I invited Ms. Tanna to my art show at the Chelsea Galleries: my stall and I on the Portobello Road, featuring some old paintings I wanted to get rid off. Ms. Tanna insisted on meeting her at The Muse at 269 gallery down the road. Her voice sounded gruff and low. “Maybe she’s transgender,” I thought to myself. I was slightly nervous to meet her in person. Sure, I experimented with an 18-year-old girl on Tinder, but winging it, as a hard-core lesbian would present a challenge to me. I was extremely relieved when I saw a hetero-normative guy in his mid thirties.
The meeting with the elusive Mr. Tanna heralded a new chapter in my #artlife. During our photo session, Mr. Tanna talked endlessly about the illustrious, post-Internet artists, Amalia Ullman and Ed Fornieles. He gave me Photoshop files of their fox and mouse cartoon characters to integrate into our collaborative photo shoot. I imagined them to be boring, middle-aged artists, with whom I had nothing in common with. After glancing at Amalia’s Instagram post-Internet feed, which presented her fictional narrative that her followers believed. It involved her getting a boob job, finding a sugar daddy and getting pregnant, falling in love with a cartoon pigeon and getting covered with cum, I felt despondent about the future of conceptual art. “Contemporary artists are running out of ideas, so they jump at anything they can find: however dull and banal it is. What is this world coming to?” I pondered with melancholy.
Following the influence of my new post-Internet environment, I would strive to render my Instagram channel less salon and more conceptual. Competing against artists with millions of views and likes, such as Chloe Wise and Alec Monopoly, I would seek attention by putting up shocking, overly sexualized Instagram stories. In January 2018, I uploaded my “black pussy masturbating video”, which everyone mistook for my vagina. In May 2018, I put up a video of my arse, receiving a pink vibrator: based on a BDSM exchange system I developed with a certain curator about getting a free art show in an exchange for 20 ice cubes up my anus. My Instagram policy-violating behaviour culminated with a video of me having diarrhoea and devouring my own poo this December. The last video expressed the commodity-driven exploitation of male characters in relation to my body. Amongst these epsiodes was my Instagram sexting exchange with a seemingly camp Los Angeles gallery director (to see this conversation, visit): https://vimeo.com/339892755
I got numerous warnings about my stories and the use of unlicensed music. Being a maximalist, I abided by Mario Testino’s slogan “Todo o nada,” and brought my Insta-apocalypse onto myself. With my frank immersion into cyber physicality, I subconsciously strove to escape from the frameworks of social judgement and what is deemed beautiful in a human body, portraying a comfortable view of body positivity. Isn’t it better to showing off your shit to your followers rather than flaunting your fake breasts, noses, chin outlines, Botox and silicon lips? I confess that a week after my Instagram deactivation, I still feel a certain twitch in my hands when I see this platform on my phone: the mild highs I got from seeing certain ex-fuck buddies look at my stories and validation from receiving more likes than usual. A sense of relief comes with this cyber elimination: as if an itchy mosquito bite just went dry and peeled from my skin.
I miss the golden era of the 1990s when the biggest form of validation was someone praising my childish watercolour drawing or winning at a game of checkers. I’m grateful that Instagram started permeating my life at a more mature age, where my psyche is immune to making erratic decisions, based on addictive social engineering algorhythms. Finally, my Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/___katyakan___) is back up again after a 5th attempt …
