Artists on Social Media: How to Succeed in Art

Welcome back to my channel today I want to talk about artists on social media

maybe you are already a very successful artist on social media like Instagram

and you're trying to get represented by galleries entering the art world or

maybe you're already accepted in the art world like graduated from a prestigious

art school and you're trying to succeed on social media no matter what is your

direction where you come from this video will be relevant because no matter if we

hate social media we love it we embrace it totally or we want to be a digital

minimalist and try to avoid using social media we cannot ignore the power of

social media in the world of art in 2020 and that's why in this video I'll talk

about the issues surrounding social media no matter if you are going into or

coming from social media as an artist it would be totally relevant and hopefully

I can help you come up with a strategy based on my understanding of social

media I want to start today's video with a very personal story a few years ago I

was working as a multimedia technician in a team of 20 similar people but there

were a lot older than me senior to me and they had tens of twenties of years

of experience in the world of communications marketing and all of that

jazz and I was in a night out casually speaking to some of my colleagues and

one of the more senior colleague told me you know what you should stop using

social media and I was like what do you mean which one particularly because

there are there's so many and they're all different and she was like I know

what you did on YouTube I did not like it and I think you should not use you

should remove all your videos because real filmmakers don't use YouTube and it

was quite shocked because I knew it was not true at that time I knew already

social media would be the future and many Hollywood established award-winning

filmmakers were using social media to promote their films and to promote their

projects and charity to maybe push a message to be an activist and

politicians were using social media as well and guess what now we know that

it's very important it's everywhere today but at that time I knew it's

coming and I think what she was saying was not true and she was very bitter

she was very serious she was telling me to stop using social media

she actually meant it so I didn't want to cause an argument so I just say

you know what one day if you become my boss I will totally listen to you that

didn't happen she was never my boss and I did not work with them

too much longer afterwards and I started working with social media on

social media for this Very Private Gallery Very Private Art project I had been talking

to different groups of artists established in the art world going to

Bienales going to top art fairs and art exhibitions and I was talking to them

and many many occasions they were telling me that the social media artists

Instagram artists were not real artists because they will never be in the art

history book or any relevant book and they will never be published this

attitude really annoys me and I think it is not necessary because come on it's

inevitable to have more and more artists converting to social media and to

actually use social media as a way institutionalizing social media I would

say and also having social media is rather a personal choice again if you

like it or not other people can have their opinions and it should be a

personal freedom and we shouldn't penalize or stigmatize the usage of

social media I think it's a totally a personal freedom even a professional

freedom if you may say but that is not exactly a problem the real problem is

when you try to 'cross over' so if you are art school graduate trying to succeed on

social media or if you are social media artist trying to go into art school this

is when you face resistance you will face a lot of negative bias against you

because where you come from and this goes both ways seriously I know many

very very successful institutional artists when they go to social media

that gets two digits followeres and I also know some other very successful

social media artists like the most famous artists on Instagram I follow him

and I saw that he was applying to study art at Yale and he was rejected

I'm not saying that he was rejected because he is the most famous artists

and he used social media but guess what I cannot rule out this possibility and

because who he was and what he represents did not fit the institutional

world and many people had the bias against him and that has blinded them

from recognizing that he was a bright young man that he would totally achieve

whatever he want to achieve including in the surrounding of art school but he was

never given that chance by Yale maybe one day he'll be accepted by other

institutions maybe you did not have this personal experience maybe your friend

didn't have this experience but that does not mean that it will never happen

to you so no matter where you come from when you try to cross over it's almost

like you're divided by the Congo River on one side is the bonobos on the other side

is the chimpanzees and we will try to cross over you're not accepted you're gonna be

bashed you're gonna be downgraded you're gonna be looked down upon and it goes

both ways and it's not a very positive thing I'm not making this video just to

tell you how negative you will be when you try to make something different out

of your career what I really want to say in this video is how to react when you

try to cross over I think I have some experience in terms of crossing over

because traditionally I was trained as a academically a filmmaker I went to film

school I did 4 years I did my BA in film production and I did one year more

in the Faculty of Art History I try to use social media I also face the same

difficulties when I try to cross over and then now I have been working on

social media for several years and I could reach totally maybe 300,000

followers across different platforms and I think I had the taste of the both worlds

and from this experience I can tell you a few things when you try to

cross over to the other side of the Congo River first of all you have to be

mentally prepared I'm telling you this negative experiences to help you get

mentally prepared is that one day will you cross over you will face biases

you'll face a lot of resistant and it is not personal it's not because you are

from this world and you are who you are it's simply because it's let's say

rather peer pressure right so if a very established curator in the academic

world of the contemporary art world embraces social media artists he will be

penalized for being the ally of the wrong side so 'penalized' I don't mean

that by law I mean that by peer pressure so this is the first thing that I want to

tell you and that's why I'm telling all the negative things about the

opinions of others the second thing you need to prepare is you have to be ready

to lose all your privileges all of the things that you had taken granted for

example you had achieved maybe MFA or PhD and you go to social media

guess what you're nobody you are absolutely nobody and you have to start

from zero vice-versa you are very successful artist with maybe half a

million followers when you go to the Gagosians or you go to a

prestigious art gallery in the world and they will look at you like

you're nobody and all your previous achievements from

your world would mean very little to them maybe they're impressed in the

inside but this will not give you a straight green light to their chamber to

be embraced and accepted by them the next thing you need to know is that you

have to follow a different set of rules and that is it could be like an algorithm

it could be also man-made or unspoken rules for example when you are a digital

artist from the social media you follow algorithm you follow a way to get

followers but then we'll go to the contemporary art world you have to build

a body of work within the rules of contemporary art that is very different

from social media vice-versa the last thing you need to know is that

you have to speak a different language than your mother tongue

or your native language maybe natively you speak the world of

contemporary art and you want to use the same language to communicate you art

to talk about your art to the people on social media

but this will not work because people on social media generally they

are not selected by the art schools and they have a different backgrounds they

have different levels of education I'm not saying that it's bad or good but

different and they might be literally speaking a different language period

like Chinese for example and you have to be ready to use very simple language in

order to get your message through and simple not saying is worse or is

diluting your genius or talent in art I'm just saying that you have to meet

your audience by speaking their language in order to make them understand what

you're trying to do to make them realize how great you are as an artist so if

you're willing to give up your privileges and put up with some biases

from the other world and if you're willing to follow their rules understand

their rules play by their rules and speak a different language and learn

that language to master it you will be able to succeed and it will take time if

you spend five years to get your MFA it will take you five years to achieve the

equivalent of what you have achieved in the art world in the social media world

and this is invertible because it's gonna be hard work either way so if

you're willing to do that definitely you can no matter which way you're trying to

go hopefully my videos are adding value to you because all these videos I put

out there over 250 videos I uploaded so far about helping you get to the other

side so you can have the best of both worlds and if you face frustration and

you find that you're not getting the results that you wanted and perhaps this

is the reason the reason that you are actually crossing the border and trying

to go to the whole new world and you don't know the language and you don't

know the realities and that's why you're not getting the results that you want it

and I'm asking you to keep an open mind to try not to bash the different kind of

artists that are different from your own because you are basically hurting

yourself by doing that you're blocking your own possibilities

so keep an open mind and keep a consistency build a body of work and

more overly the proof of value that you're able to demonstrate that you're

valuable you can give value to either social media followers or to the people

that you want to work in the art world so that you can achieve whatever you

wanna achieve and that's all for today if you have any questions or if you want

to discuss further in this topic make sure to leave a comment below and if you

find it interesting make sure you give it a like that's off of the day and see

you in the next video