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BYE INSTAGRAM !


FROM DISCONNECTION ... TO RECONNECTION


When I go to recharge my batteries at the little fisherman's house, my phone goes into Edge mode. I don't have a television, no internet box. The heating is weak, there is just a saucepan, a kettle... nothing in duplicate for a simple and disconnected life.


Away from the networks and close to the fireplace, I realized how much I had let Instagram abuse my energy, my time and my creativity over the last few years.


The ELOVUTION account has already disappeared due to ethical concerns. This is why I am also deleting the Studio account today.


 

Instagram has just changed the iconic square format of its publications. The arrival of the 4/5 portrait is at the same time ruining the walls of many of us who have used (or even abused) grid presentations composed of three, six or nine images for artistic purposes.


The emphasis is definitely on video: the appearance of stories was followed by the advent of reels, which have now become the only format that guarantees visibility. And to be spotted by the algorithm and shared, you have to publish them at a very sustained pace!

At Saint-Cast with my pola. | Photo © Caroline Maby
At Saint-Cast with my pola. | Photo © Caroline Maby

But I am not a videographer and do not intend to put myself on stage. From the narcissistic shoot that this requires comes a feeling of splitting oneself and a distancing from the pictorial matter.

Filming yourself creating is not creating.

Making a time lapse of a “wow painting session” is not reality: the video must avoid hesitations, latencies, and second thoughts. To be visual and synthetic, you have to resort to tricks and shortcuts.


How to paint knowing that the condensed film of the session and its "result" will prevail over what really happened between the brush, the support, the color and the silence? How to share the sacred intimacy of the studio without resorting to anecdote? How to express yourself on camera when you embrace a painter's life to avoid speaking?




I endeavour to create in order to show the invisible from a non-egoic space. It is both laborious and prodigiously immediate, but to film this meditative commitment would amount to contorting myself to the point of contradicting the principle of this research. It would be a question of crystallize the archetype of the “Artist” — persona — which does not exist when I enter the studio.


I also don't want to hire a community manager to give him a job and submit myself to a new regency: that of a creative line that is necessarily artificial since it is driven by a “marketing and communication” perspective.


I loved Instagram in its early days, for its simplicity and immediacy. It allowed me to create a simple and fun gallery. Interaction with art lovers was possible and joyful. I used the app as a vision board; it could inspire me.

But the promised providential connections… I never had any. My presence on Instagram never resulted in a sale, nor did it allow for a decisive meeting. It is clear that I met all my sponsors, clients and partners in real life: through presentations and networking, friends, trips, retreats and heart alignments.


And what does the algorithm know about matters of the heart?

Paradoxical message, Brooklyn | Photo © Caroline Maby
Paradoxical message, Brooklyn | Photo © Caroline Maby

Beauty and humanism are not values Meta (Instagram / Facebook): Mark Zuckerberg is now openly aligning himself with the American conservative voice. By joining the Trump-Musk cohort, he is formalizing the sovereign motivation that was suspected of him: that of power and money.

Those who would have attributed to him a societal vision are thus out of pocket. He announces the end of fact checking and now advocates virilism.


This would be enough to make any user with an engaged conscience think.

I do not have the media aura or influence to claim that I am banning the application as a militant act. To proclaim it would be presumptuous, but the disgust that its orientation inspires in me is combined with its deleterious effects on my creativity.




Today, Instagram no longer serves creators but vampirizes their works to feed and educate its Artificial Intelligence ogre in deep learning.

He enslaves them by imposing the dictates of his algorithm on them. However, the application is definitely outdated in its functionalities. The choice to want to follow and imitate TikTok betrays boomer management.


And then above all, our news feed has stopped showing us the publications of the people we are subscribed to: the accounts that do not respect the program's shifting injunctions disappear. The creators create, train, run after the algorithm and become at the same time less and less visible.

We are drowned in ads and posts from accounts we don't know. Commercial strategies obscure the authenticity of links. Meta rapes our brains.


The whole world is contained in this ink, this mulberry paper and this brush. | Photo © Caroline Maby.
The whole world is contained in this ink, this mulberry paper and this brush. | Photo © Caroline Maby.

Time is speeding up. I miss it and try to focus my attention on the priorities of the moment.


Instagram is a dangerous tool because it distances me from reality, from my presence in the world. It makes me miss the rustling of paper, the variation of light, the shadow of my cat. It makes me believe that this fantasized “I” is more important than what my hands do, than where my steps guide me, than what the muses whisper to me.


But I have nothing more to share in the new format imposed by the application.

I just want something real, something human and people to meet.



The workshop windows remain wide open with THE PORTFOLIO of my site, THE LETTER , THE JOURNAL , direct and sincere sharing channels, without filters.




And then also and above all, let's talk about art, creativity, projects and Nature face to face: at the studio, at the café f my village, or on Zoom!


See you soon in real life!



 

PS : My approach would be more coherent if I also left Facebook. It' is done. :-)

Social media don't last, nothing lasts. (Were you also on Myspace in 2003?)

I have no doubt that in the face of these pitfalls, which are widely observed among creators, other proposals for more ethical platforms, adapted to the current upheavals, will soon emerge.


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