Post Truth Artist (2017)

Performance, Video, Photography, Text

 

A brief asked to define ‘post-truth art’ in the light of the 2016 political upheavals of the Brexit referendum and the Trump presidential race. The term ‘post-truth’ had just earned status as word of the year and its place in the Oxford English dictionary where it was defined as - ‘relating to circumstances in which people respond more to feelings and beliefs than to facts’. 

 

Conceptualising a ‘post-truth art’ lead to a personal embodiment of ‘post-truth’, resulting in the creation of an alter ego, The Post-Truth Artist. In response to ‘fake media’, quick news and sensationalism and working under the pseudonym AAZZBB, I produced a rapid and rudimentary body of art-work in an attempt to gain kudos from an internet audience. Embedding myself in a lie in order to cultivate outwardly perceived truths. 

 

A Post Truth Art Manifesto was written to deliver boundaries to the project, the points of which correlated directly with my observations of the ‘post-truth’ landscape at the time. The manifesto was intrinsic the project, designed to steer the work ethic and the art-work made by the fictional artist, AAZZBB. Can be read here

 

Work included:

 

Giving my ‘post-truth’ artist mantra ‘I AM AN ARTIST’ foundation through repetition and self-validation.

 

Constructing fake social media accounts to promote my ‘art-work’, in an attempt to cultivate followers and ’fans’.

 

The non-stop creation of inherently meaningless work, adding politically fuelled meaning retrospectively.

 

Dehumanizing strangers who did not meet AAZZBB’s ‘post-truth’ artist values by casting them into a void, removing them from the artists immediate sphere of opinion. 

 

Throughout the development of the project a blog was maintained which voices the real feelings and doubt involved in producing work which was forcibly valueless. That can be read here. 

 

The work was unveiled during a performance presentation by myself as, unbeknownst to the audience, the fictitious character - coincidently on the day of Trumps’ inauguration. I presented myself as the artist with mundane elements of my own truth embellished and skewed to bolster the character. The breadth of my perceived, quickly-gained achievements and tales of fabricated successes in the art industry including a nomination for ‘blog of the week’ and flourishing artwork sales revenues had, it was admitted, whipped up some envy amongst my fellow peers.