026 - SOCIAL MEDIA IS A CANVAS
026 - SOCIAL MEDIA IS A CANVAS
Elijah tell us how to create art online without losing your message
MØRNING! It’s a strange time for creativity. While the internet offers infinite new ways to make art, capitalist digital structures have us in a chokehold. Rather than being free to express and connect, our online lives are stifled by algorithms and engagement metrics.
So how do we navigate this chaotic digital and creative doomscape? How can we use technology to create and share our art, without compromising our message? This week, Elijah - artist manager, DJ, and the brilliant mind behind those iconic Yellow Squares - shares wisdom that we all need to hear. Dare you not to feel inspired.
Introducing the Yellow Squares
I started Yellow Squares to bring new ideas into the post lockdown atmosphere. We all wondered what the music and creative scenes would look like about months of closure. There was a yearning for equality post the Black Lives Matter June 2020 pledges. Marginalised voices were being put front and centre of the reopening of everything.
There was a distinct appetite for change. But the live music industry was on its knees. I believed that the shift the next generation wanted to see wasn’t going to happen by liaising with the previous era. It was about starting new things from scratch. Lots of collectives had emerged online, new artists were breaking through, and people were figuring out ways to make this work.
I wrote short notes about creative sustainability, scene building and the creative industry, from the perspective of a London based artist manager working in the electronic music scene.
Prioritising ideas vs instruction meant things could have many different interpretations and apply across artforms, scenes and nations.
Art, online
This gradually turned into a project that made me question how artists use social media itself.
The reality? 90% of it is advertising. Tour posters, Teasers, #ads. Not a lot of what you would follow an artist for.
How often do you click the link in bio? How often is there genuinely great art on the platforms that takes up so much of our mindshare day to day? I thought about how to intertwine practice ideas for scene building and a public art practice.
I picked black and yellow as these were the colours for the first record label I ran, Butterz. It was much later that I realised this looked like a post it note.
Why are we on social media in the first place?
Most importantly, what would make it a better place to be? Social Media Is A Canvas: I think it’s having information that will help you in your life, to be inspired to create, and to be entertained. As artists of any discipline what we share on there should satisfy one of these 3 boxes or it’s going to bypass most people. Don’t think about likes and shallow comments like a fire emoji. Think about what would motivate someone to share your post, and or leave some deep feedback.
What is deep feedback?
Leave behind all the vanity metrics people want you to chase after. Followers, likes and to a certain extent streams, especially if they are coming from passive playlists. What we want is connection over engagement. Some of my posts I’ve had 1000 word long Instagram DMs, songs made in response to them, or invites to come and speak across the world. These haven’t been on the posts that have the largest engagement statistics either. But they moved someone enough to make a tangible difference in their world because of it. That is what we want our art, writing, music or whatever we are sharing to do. This can happen whether you have 20 followers or 20,000.
Experiment with mediums
‘New music won’t blow through old distribution’ was one of my early notes that connected. What I meant by this is if you are a musician, don’t limit the way you share your music ideas to songs, to streams, to pop star style roll outs, when you likely don’t have the resources to compete at the same level of visibility. Doing all the things that the stars in your world don’t do is a different way of letting your ideas cut through, and finding an audience in an unusual way. This is a constant state of an openness to experimenting and a fearlesses of putting ideas out there. Most won’t work, but when it does, it will work in a different way to everything else.
Fold the real world into your socials
Whatever your core messages are, they need to find a way to live outside of these apps. My way of making my messages connect outside in the real world was by putting up billboards of my posts in the area I live in. The people that saw them, and recognised it as my work, took photos of them, posted it on their socials too. It created this feedback loop of discovery, that wasn’t advertising to buy anything. But it was giving people a reason to come into the world I’ve created. That's enough of an ask from your audience sometimes. Buying something can come later.
Give yourself space to create work that you need no public validation for
Creating art, and trying to make money from it is hard as it is. But what can completely take away all the joy from this is creating, feeling like you need this next thing to hit another metric. If it needs to be a side project, a collaboration, something completely different. Create things that have no intention to live in this ecosystem. What you learn from these experiments will no doubt blend into your public work too. Nobody needs to know.
What’s changed since I’ve started the project?
It’s made me question the work I do thoroughly. The reasons I started aren’t the same reasons I’m here today and that realisation has taken a long time to adjust to. It’s been a journey of self reflection and most of the positive change that this helped me make in my life will never be shared with the public too. That makes me feel at peace with wherever the project goes next.
MØRNING asks Elijah
- which social media accounts do you think are worth opening the app for?
I enjoy following artists when they aren't in campaign [not working with brands]. That's usually when they are more interesting. Things can be random, and you can see some tweaking ideas in real time before they find the next thing.
- what's your most recent saved IG post and why did you save it?
I don't like or save anything, if it's worth remembering I'll remember it. It's a good mental test.
- what's the weirdest account you follow?
Maybe not so weird, but I enjoy watching the Space X progress, so probably that.
- what was the last piece of art to blow your mind?
Jim Legxacy - HNP
- what's the best place to find inspiration offline?
Live everything - music, sport, comedy, art. People creating in real time in this city will always be a buzz.
- if you had ownership over the internet, what's the first thing you'd do?
Make sure everyone across the world has access to high speed connections for freeeeeeeeee
That’s (almost) all for today. One final thing from us: if you want to see a MØRNING panel talk, we’d love it if you voted for us to be at SXSW here.
Now go forth and create! We’ll see you next time.
Words: Elijah (@eli1ah)
Editor: Letty Cole (@letty_cole)
026 - SOCIAL MEDIA IS A CANVAS
"Social Media is a Canvas" is my go to quote - loved reading this Elijah!