Capturing all the world's moments
Instagram as an artistic medium was the subject of one of the sessions in this year's Art Basel Miami Beach Talks programme, featuring four panelists with a combined 1.6 million followers. Amalia Ulman took the stage first, describing how she had created a fictional online narrative around the character who appears in selfies on the amaliaulman Instagram feed. Simon de Pury was next up saying he uses the service to catalogue pieces and items that he finds beautiful, followed by Hans Ulrich Obrist who talked about his handwriting project, a massive series where artists and cultural figures write short phrases on post it notes for his Instagram feed. Klaus Biesenbach then explained how Instagram helped him get over his aversion to revealing anything about himself, and co-founder of Instagram Kein Systrom wrapped up the session saying “our mission is to capture all the world's moments, but our core value is to inspire creativity.”
Image: James Franco's post-it note for Hans Ulrich Obrists' The Handwriting Project.