5 Takeaways From Yesterday’s “Instagram as an Artistic Medium” Talk

by Corinna Kirsch on December 5, 2014 · 1 comment Art Fair

From @hansulrichobrist on Instagram.

From @hansulrichobrist on Instagram

Yesterday, a panel of the world’s leading experts convened to discuss Instagram at Art Basel Miami Beach. Top-level art curators and business leaders joined Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom for a panel called “Instagram as an Artistic Medium” (Simon de Pury, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Klaus Biesenbach, the sole artist Amalia Ulman, and moderator Bettina Korek). Think what you will about Instagram as an art form, we have five takeaways from the talk, all by Simon de Pury and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The thoughts are typically self-involved, and not very deep, but we thought that by italicizing them, they could seem more consequential than they actually are.

1. There’s a lot of different types of artists on Instagram.

You have different types of artists. Hans Ulrich [Obrist] is the ultimate consequential artist because he is like Daniel Buren, On Kawara. He is sticking to one thing, and he’s sticking brilliantly to that thing, his Post-it stickers, at a time when nobody writes anymore. —Simon de Pury

2. Klaus Biesenbach and Simon de Pury are *like* artists on Instagram.

Klaus and I, we are more [like] artists. We have different things we follow. Klaus has the window. So we know now the view from his window in New York every minute of the day….So it’s fascinating! I know immediately how Klaus feels like, if I’m on the other side of the globe.  —Simon de Pury

3. Instagram allows for experimentation.

It’s really the idea of the artist having a laboratory. —Hans Ulrich Obrist

4. Simon de Pury told Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom how his company could be better.

If it were possible to regroup our images, it would be fantastic because you could really fine-tune your artistic output like that….

Nobody dares to admit it, but we all want to be loved in this universe. And so we want to measure the likes. So I want to know what is my most popular image ever, and I want to see what was my least [popular] image ever. So I want to press a button that goes “Brrrrpsss” and I immediately see from the most popular image down to the least popular image. —Simon de Pury

5. Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Post-It Instagram is saving the written word.

Well, he is single-handedly saving it, handwriting today. And he can demonstrate how beautiful it is! And also, in a purely visual world, he shows the power of the word: the power of the word, visually expressed. —Simon de Pury

Audio clip provided by Becka Vigorito.

{ 1 comment }

Carolina A. Miranda December 5, 2014 at 9:00 pm

“He is single-handedly saving it, handwriting today.” Bwahahaha….

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