Considering the Space of the Online

I wanted to write down a few thoughts at the start of my position as Online Editor for BlackFlash Magazine: to take some time to think through my approach to the role; to give you a sense of what to expect; and to share where it is that I’m coming from. First, a bit of context: I’m writing this in mid-December 2021, the start of winter here in Edmonton, which, while late arriving this year, has now taken a firm hold. The news cycle is filled with updates on Omicron, the latest, and much more transmissible variant of COVID-19 to move across the globe, alongside reports of governments opting to de-prioritize essential and front-line workers while expecting our healthcare system to work above and beyond their capacities. Again. It feels as though the 21^st century just keeps on keeping on, and it’s hard to imagine what new news will be cycling once this editorial is published in February 2022.

In anticipation of the upcoming year, I’m excited to not only have the chance to support artists and writers in the development of new online content, but to also sit with the question of what it means to do so: what it means to actively and enthusiastically contribute to the generation of material online. I see the space of the online as one with incredible potential in the arts, especially considering the opportunity to bring communities together and foster conversations across distance. We’ve seen the ways in which online programming has opened up our sector across the past (almost) two years, offering opportunities to engage with artists from distant regions, along with the greater accessibility it has shaped as a new baseline for engagement. It’s an exciting time to dive into the role of Online Editor at BlackFlash, and over the next year I plan to share work by a number of artists and writers while also spending time with a series of questions that I have about what it means to prioritize work in the space of the online.

In April of 2020, I wrote for Blackwood Gallery’s SDUK 07: TILTING (1) about the beginning of the push to online across the arts, and I’ve been revisiting the text as 2021 comes to an end. I wondered how the artistic sector might tackle the sudden shift to digital, and while I was excited by the prospect, I had a lot of questions. As I (re)consider the text now in light of my new position as Online Editor, I would like to take some time to unpack a few of those questions across this editorial:

We’re quick to adapt to the push online, but as art galleries and organizations scramble to digitize their programming, what happens to the critiques around the greater impacts of the internet?¹

By the time you’re reading this, we’ll be at least twenty-one months into this push online, and I’m taken by how little such conversations have surfaced across the arts. People talk about being “zoomed out” as much as they’re grateful for the increased availability of online events, but many of the issues that sit at the heart of our turn to the online have remained quite invisible across artistic discourse. What does it mean that so many arts organizations have fuelled content on corporate platforms like Instagram and Facebook, while those same platforms simultaneously sit at the crux of society’s misinformation, challenging democracies and fuelling the rise of white supremacy and fascism? Where is the critique of our engagement with these platforms as a sector? Surely arts and culture sit in a privileged position to draw attention to these issues.

I recognize these platforms hold a necessary and important role in terms of outreach—I make use of them too—and I value the ways in which they engage with spread. But I question the invisible acceptance of these platforms when it comes to institutional programming, and see the need for more of these conversations to be held and acknowledged by artists and cultural workers. In his 2017 essay, Towards a New Universalism, Boris Groys posits that “being contemporary means being involved in the politics of one’s own time,”² and I see artists as uniquely positioned to take on the questions most relevant to our moment’s political sphere; online technology most certainly sits at the centre of how contemporary politics are shaped. Groys ends his essay with a frank foretelling: “Can art help us make the world a better place? I doubt it. But I still hope that it can prevent us from making it much worse,”³ and quite honestly, my thought is: same. But the questions need to be asked, and the conversations need to be had in order for us to get there.

How are the discussions about data collection, surveillance, and the commodification of “public” space—so prevalent a few weeks ago—being taken up now?⁴

Are we considering the repercussions for privacy and access when programming takes place on Facebook Live; or when a gallery plans a virtual tour of an exhibition via Google Arts & Culture or Chrome? Where do all of those concerns about the inherent problematics of the internet end up?⁵

The problems that sit at the heart of the social media platforms we engage with are no secret. Heavily corporatized, the spaces of Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter (and on) are both highly extractive and surveilled. The ways in which social media platforms have monetized their most prized commodity—our personal data—has been discussed for over a decade now, we all know how it goes. But the ways in which we have accepted it as the norm is wrapped up in both its invisibility and convenience. Maybe it’s worth taking a second to remind us all that in 2020 alone, “the five tech superpowers—Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook—had combined revenue of more than $1.2 trillion,”⁶ all thanks to us.

Ruha Benjamin reminds us of our complicity in this process in their 2019 book Race After Technology: “[…] I think we should stop calling ourselves ‘users.’ Users get used. We are more like unwitting constituents who, by clicking submit, have authorized tech giants to represent our interests.”⁷ And given the bias, racism, and sexism making up “the architecture and language of technology,”⁸ written about by Safiya Umoja Noble in 2018, we have to heed her reminder that this oppression “is not just a glitch in the system but, rather, is fundamental to the operating system of the web.”⁹

I especially wonder about the recent prevalence of relying on social media as a space for artistic programming, primarily in response to the many levels of arts council funding which encouraged increased online programming across 2020 and 2021. At the centre of the issue remains the reality that corporate platforms profit off of the monetization of our personal data, and, across just the past two years, they’ve made a staggering amount off of our additional artistic programming. I wonder what it means for our artistic sector to be utilizing these platforms, often without question or critique.

The role that social media has and continues to play across our society as spreaders of misinformation, along with the fuelling of white supremacist and fascist views, is well understood.¹⁰ None of this information is new, and those living outside of North America in particular have been telling us for years about the ways in which these platforms—especially Facebook—have been influencing and manipulating their social and political assemblies.¹¹ Even just last year, activists within Black Lives Matter saw their posts on Instagram shadow banned by the app.¹² I wonder what it means for arts institutions to be encouraging increased traffic to these sites.

A study from 2021 by the Art Newspaper documents the level of increased use of social media platforms across the pandemic, homing in on the ways that museums began to prioritize their presence on the sites. Looking to museums globally, the study found that “Instagram had the greatest growth in terms of social media followers for the top 100 museums. The platform’s numbers went up by 13 million—a 30% increase—compared with a 13% increase in followers on Twitter and just a 5% increase on Facebook.”¹³

At the same time that a coalition of US state attorneys general are investigating Facebook (now Meta) for the negative impacts Instagram has on children and young adults, I worry about the lack of dialogue within the Canadian artistic sector, especially when it comes to early career artists who are expected to perform on the platforms in increasingly visible and performative ways.¹⁴ I’ve had a number of conversations across the year with artists about their hesitancies surrounding the apps, where they are often expected to groom a particular image of artistic practice for an audience, and continually have to navigate the blurry lines between personal and professional (this has become especially apparent in recent years in my role as an educator). Hearing from a number of artists about the expectations they feel they have to perform on social media sites, especially as curators tend to look to their Instagram profiles for information on their work, troubles me.

Wanting to hear from more artists about how they felt about their practices being centred by galleries and museums in this way, I invited four individuals to complete a survey of questions about their social media use: where their comfort lies and doesn’t, and how they see the role such platforms are playing in their practices. While each manage and approach their social media accounts differently, a general concern was the pressure felt to regularly update their accounts (especially Instagram). This added labour shifts the relationship artists have with platforms to that of work, making the already blurry lines between personal and professional even more nebulous. Still, one common response was the benefit of connection that social platforms offer: the opportunity to discover artists, find commonality, and shape relationships.

None of this is easy, and I want to make clear: I’m not advocating for a sector-wide retreat from Instagram or social media at large. I myself especially love Instagram’s inherent prioritization of the image: something that I care for deeply as a visual artist and see as a powerful form of communication. Social media platforms offer a lot in terms of community building and information sharing, and I love the ability they have to spread out beyond one’s locale—a lot can be gained from such engagements. I just question our willfully uninformed outward facing use of the platforms. I think (hope) most of us know and understand the problems with a platform like Instagram by now: it’s no big secret. But I wonder where the critical conversations are, and how we as a sector might advocate for using the app in ways that offer care and critical consideration alongside it.

What happened to the conversation about the 300 million tons of carbon dioxide generated in order to keep the internet running?¹⁵

While I hope this expanded online program contributes new attention to the larger discourse surrounding contemporary art across Canada, it will inevitably increase the carbon footprint that BlackFlash currently holds. I wonder about what it means that many arts organizations, encouraged to push more content online through the funding they receive, do so without considering such implications. We know it’s not individual actions that will shift the global track we’re on when it comes to the environmental crisis—we need real action and regulation from governments to do that. But when so many institutions are being encouraged to engage online from large government bodies like arts councils, I find it curious that the issues aren’t at least hinted at in the application process. If we agree that a network includes both the human and non-human (as we frequently cite within the arts), then we must also consider the ways that our social networks are enmeshed with the technological as we contemplate overall impacts. My approach to this year-long project will aim to centre the digital space in ways that consider the environment of the online as one directly tied to and interwoven with the off. Afterall, as James Bridle reminds us: “The cloud is not weightless; it is not amorphous, or even invisible, if you know where to look for it. The cloud is not some magical faraway place, made of water vapour and radio waves, where everything just works. It is a physical infrastructure consisting of phone lines, fibre optics, satellites, cables on the ocean floor, and vast warehouses filled with computers, which consume huge amounts of water and energy and reside within national and legal jurisdictions.”¹⁶

There are a number of strategies of approach I plan to research and employ as this new online program is unveiled. Things like improving design and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help make a website less demanding as viewers engage with online content, and in addition to switching to green servers, there are a number of steps that can be taken to improve the balance of carbon generated when increasing engagement online. I’ll be sharing tips across the year as I work through strategies and find the best approach for BlackFlash’s online presence. Not everything will be possible, not only when one considers cost, but also given the complexity of the issue. Carbon offsets like planting trees to compensate for carbon footprint, for example, have the potential to distract from the urgency of the issue given the time it takes for trees to develop into carbon sequestering solutions. And after the summer of 2021, where we saw an exceptional number of forest fires across the country, how can one be sure that trees planted in order to offset one’s footprint now don’t promptly turn around to release even more carbon later?

I admit that all of this is entirely exhausting to think about, and in the already overtaxed labour force of the Canadian non-profit artistic sector, who continually face the very real struggle of doing a lot with very little, we can’t do it all. But I think it is our role as a sector to not only hold these conversations at the forefront, but to also imagine new methods of approach. I look forward to sharing the research I uncover and strategies, along with failures, for others to learn from as they consider their own tactics.

We need to speak about technological systems in ways that draw attention to the complexity, that reveal the ways in which they function and impact us.¹⁷

My strategy for BlackFlash Expanded online will be to focus on the complexity: not only the ways in which the space of the online is driving contemporary concerns—the ways in which it is reshaping communication—but also, how it is bringing us together. As an approach, I take cues from Keller Easterling’s concept of Medium Design: “The activist designer is not designing a thing, but rather the means to engage, unwind, infect, hijack, or rewire an arrangement over time.”¹⁸ It is the space between complexities where information is generated and new ideas are fostered, and I’ll be holding this at the forefront as I consider what it means to be facilitating and sharing works across this space. I’m excited to support BlackFlash’s mandate to “[be] responsive to artists and relevant to contemporary art practice […] while affirming its distinctive prairie perspective.”¹⁹ My approach will be to focus on the ways I might help advocate for and promote artists while fostering connections across different regions. I look forward to supporting artists and writers working to challenge the ways in which we do things in the arts in Canada: those who are taking risks, calling things out, and experimenting with new forms and models of engagement. Those who are pushing the boundaries of what contemporary Canadian art means now. I plan to expand on this editorial repeatedly across 2022 as a chance to reflect on where we are and where we’re headed. Please feel free to be in touch.

Christina Battle is BlackFlash Expanded’s Online Editor.

1. Christina Battle, “Social Distancing in the Time of Social Media,” SDUK 07: TILTING (1), April 2020.
2. Boris Groys, “Towards a New Universalism,” e-Flux Journal, Issue #86, November 2017.
3. Boris Groys, “Towards a New Universalism,” e-Flux Journal, Issue #86, November 2017.
4. Christina Battle, “Social Distancing in the Time of Social Media,” SDUK 07: TILTING (1), April 2020.
5. Christina Battle, “Social Distancing in the Time of Social Media,” SDUK 07: TILTING (1), April 2020.
6. Shira Ovide, “How Big Tech Won the Pandemic,” New York Times, April 30, 2021.
7. Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Cambridge, UK/Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2019), Introduction.
8. Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: New York University Press, 2018), Introduction.
9. Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: New York University Press, 2018), Introduction.
10. I could point to a number of sources here, but perhaps will centre Jaron Lanier, who has both spoken and written about the ways in which the structure of the internet prioritizes negative emotions, which rise up and are more easily amplified online because of the ways monetization is built into the system itself (see: How We Need to Remake the Internet, TED TALKS, April, 2018).
11. I’ll point here to journalist and recent Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria A. Ressa’s work on the Philippines-based social media-powered news organization Rappler (where she is founding CEO and Executive Editor). The 2016 series: “Propaganda war: Weaponizing the internet” outlined the ways in which propaganda spread via Facebook influenced the Philippines 2016 election.
12. Paula Akpan, “What Exactly Is Shadow Banning?” Bustle, Aug. 2, 2020. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, responded to the incident in June of 2020.
13. Aimee Dawson, “Instagram overtakes Twitter as most popular platform for museums during Covid-19 pandemic,” The Art Newspaper, March 29, 2021.
14. Guardian staff and agencies, “US states investigate Instagram for ‘wreaking havoc’ on teens’ mental health,” The Guardian, November 18, 2021. And, Damien Gayle, “Facebook aware of Instagram’s harmful effect on teenage girls, leak reveals,” The Guardian, September 14, 2021.
15. Christina Battle, “Social Distancing in the Time of Social Media,” SDUK 07: TILTING (1), April 2020.
16. James Bridle, Notes from “New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (London: Verso Books, 2018), 7.
17. Christina Battle, “Social Distancing in the Time of Social Media,” SDUK 07: TILTING (1), April 2020.
18. Keller Easterling, Medium Design: Knowing How to Work in the World (London: Verso Books, 221), Chapter One.
19. About, BlackFlash Magazine.