Here at Glasstire we’ve told you to feel free to get off Instagram, gave you advice on how not to get kicked off Instagram, offered an artist the keys to our Instagram, and offered you some Instagram accounts that get it right. Starting on Labor Day, Performance Art Houston will begin its fourth series of Instagram-only performances, with posts from David Ian Bellows/Griess, Brittani Broussard, Elaine Thap, Dominique Duroseau, Raki Malhotra, and Sierra Ortega. The series, titled Me(me) (dis)content, will begin with David Ian Bellows/Griess on September 2 and end with Sierra Ortega on October 13.
Ester Neff, curator of PAH’s Instagram-only performances, 2019
This year’s Instagram exhibition is curated by Ester neff, who writes in a press release about the show:
“Corporate social media controls and distributes (dis)contents, capitalizing on our urges to(re)present ourselves and express our feels. As a post-consensual space that seems both private (interior/internal) and public (exterior/external), Instagram in (p)articular reduces our selves to the contents of a sticky, mass-metabolic belly of (data)combs. Yet such mediation devices also spread viral contaminations of the very modes of consciousness that demand such assimilation and digestive (re)productions in the first place.” You can read more of the statement here.
Elaine Tharp, one of the performers for Me(me) (Dis)content.
Glasstire’s Brandon Zech curated the first iteration of PAH’s online performances, which included works from Lauren Moya Ford, Megan Solis, Pierre Krause, Iva Kinnaird, Evan L. McCarley, and Eric Thayer. You can catch an interview about the curation of that show with Zech here.
From “Not Like The Other,” PAH’s first Instagram-only performance series.
In 2016, Glasstire’s Christina Rees included PAH’s Instagram series in Glasstire’s year-end round-up of the best art shows in the state, and had this to say about the online performances: “I’m one of those people who stays away from Instagram and Twitter in order to keep my blood pressure manageable. But with this inventive new series by Performance Art Houston, I’m happy to visit Instagram every few days to see what the week’s chosen artist has posted. It’s fresh works of real art each day in your feed; some of them are only a few seconds long, and some are substantial. If you’re not digging one artist, just wait a couple of days for the next one. You can’t go wrong here. I love new art in a new era on a new platform.”
To follow the performances online, go to the series’ Instagram here. For more on the history of PAH, please go here.
