Profound Procrastination

The boundary between production and consumption is increasingly dissolving in current technological and cultural conditions. The meaning of producer and consumer is also changing. In what way are we productive when we post a meme or read an article or comment on it? Is scrolling on instagram and sharing our data, therefore generating money, equal to being productive? The shift in the classic user role redefines the understanding of the self, as a working self, as a productive self, as a consuming self. What value do my activities have?

The economic and social pressure to be productive does not seem to be weakening. Instead, the phenomenon of procrastination, the postponement of pending tasks, has been receiving remarkable attention online and offline for several years. Procrastination is not a passive state, nor is it similar to indulgence. Talking and laughing about our procrastination only scratches the surface of a deeper question about working in our time, especially in creative or academic fields.

How do we make the distinction between high-value and low-value products and activities? To what extent do these categories even exist? How does our self-worth correlate with the value we place on the products we consume or produce?

“not reading bookclub” I developed an interest in how scientific theories are used on social media platforms. I observe an active community that engages online with texts and positions from standard works and communicates them in the form of memes. The humorous appropriation of sophisticated theories challenges the sovereignty of classic academic discourse and makes this knowledge available and shareable. Channels like @ripannanicolesmith on instagram and Contrapoints on youtube maintain a decidedly critical stance toward the exclusivity of academic discourse. Other channels like @booksididnt humorously question the necessity of reading original texts at all. This stimulates interesting discussions about the position of science, the role of researchers and the accessibility of scientific texts.

With the @intraactions project I engage with the text On Touching – The Inhumane That Therefore I Am by Karen Barad. I approach the complex text and mediate it through the Instagram account @intraactions. A dialogue is created between found Instagram captions with the hashtag #mirrorselfie and excerpts from Barad’s text. A contact is established between two supposedly distant universes. In both universes, social media and academia, certain cultural codes prevail, manifesting in different vernaculars. With @intraactions I lift the sentences out of their context and create a new environment in which the artifacts appear equal. Motivational quotes, everyday philosophies, etymological investigations and physical theories gather in a chimerical narrative.

#mirrorselfie

I click the magnifying glass.

I type in #mirrorselfie.

An endless grid of people standing, laying, squatting and posing in front of a mirror.

Mirrorselfies are self-portraits. They reveal the process behind the picture and what camera was used. They show what the person sees. You can see their rooms, their mess in the back, the places they shop and where they cut their hair.

Some people look in the mirror at their own reflection, some people look at the image on their phone.

These pictures feel really personal.

I think about how they took this picture. How they took five, twenty or sixty minutes looking at themselves, changing their pose, switching on the light, opening the curtains, switching off the light, ruffling their fringe, opening their mouths, lifting their shirts, hating their teeth, liking their lips, thinking about who’s going to see this, who is going to like it, how weird they look, wondering how others see them, wondering if this picture is the right image

– reflecting.

It is interesting how we hold our phones when we take a picture. Because we have to click the button with our thumb and the phones are so big, most of us have to spread our fingers in this very specific way. It is similar to the way we hold a wine glass if we want to look casually sexy.

That’s how we end up covering the apple with our fingers.

I take a screenshot. I zoom in and crop it.

You can only see the fingers and the logo now.

The person in the mirror behind the phone and the room disappear. The context and the story get lost by my crop.

I don’t ask the people if I can use their mirrorselfie. I just take them, save them, use them, make them my own.

@intraactions

In the end their reflection is just a pile of pixels.