Jasmine Golphin—Facebookland
From the artist: Without trying at all, I became "Someone to Follow" on Facebook, which sounds like a brag but I promise it is instead just a very surreal experience. Somehow this corner of the internet I used like anyone else has resulted in total strangers quoting my statuses back at me, people telling their friends to follow me at parties and constant requests for me to formalize this experience in some traditional way - a blog, a vlog, a podcast, etc. But I never had any sort of intent in my Facebook use. I just wanted a space where I could say whatever was on my mind. I didn't think anyone would care this much.
But care they do. I made a significant amount of money last year in donations solely based on something I wrote. Someone I have only met once and I don't believe has ever even liked one of my statuses (certainly never commented on one) messaged me to say "I thank you for being who you are and for sharing that, because the world can be a noisy, careless place and you inspire me, at least, to consider new things and to be less afraid." Again, I barely know this person. I can not stress enough how I'm not an influencer, or media personality, or anything of the sort. I'm just a girl who still uses her .edu email address to log in. So, as our collective relationship to social media morphs under the weight of AI, filter bubbles, and lax privacy standards, I'm left wondering what to do with this strange period in my life.
"Facebookland" will be a virtual gallery of surreal photography that will be a remix of twelve of my most memorable statuses and the conversations they started. Less a monument to my impact or whatever, and more so my emotional response to how people reacted to my social media usage. I think some of the fascination with my account centers around the fact that I'm a Black woman who has no need to bite my tongue for my employer's or social circle's sake. I think what I'll find through this process of artistic articulation is that there is a dynamic here that isn't discussed enough - the virtual Black friend. I don't know where the line between genuine appreciation starts and the desire to gawk at the exotic Black creature in the cage ends. There's something inherently voyeuristic about social media in general and I can never be sure if the way I've made myself available over the years has only flamed some dark and old tradition of putting Black people on display for everyone else's consumption. Has this usage been a good thing, a bad thing, or just a new complicated thing born of the digital age?
Facebookland is a part of a larger artistic piece I'm working on called Oasis, a multimedia virtual gallery that will explore who I am in response to a world not built for me.