"On View" Takes a Sardonic Look at Selfie Culture

“On View,” a new site-specific installation at SCAD’s Museum of Art, documents a pivotal point in our relatively short yet eventful digital history: one in which we, as digital producers and consumers, can no longer claim willful ignorance in participatory data mining. (The contemplation couldn’t be more topical—just the week before last, Hudson Yards’s much-discussed Vessel quietly amended its over-broad intellectual property policy following rightful outrage over usage rights.)

The brainchild of artists Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti, “On View,” which the artists themselves call “performance installation,” is in itself a metaphor for the benefits and deficits consumption culture provides us. The installation is a direct result of convenient social media connections: Storm Janse van Rensburg, head of exhibitions at SCAD, first saw the artists’ work on a mutual friend’s Instagram story before connecting with—and ultimately commissioning—Catherine and Ti to create a work for SCAD’s annual deFINE Art festival. The artists were given free rein, ultimately resulting in “On View,” which was produced by the duo’s Operator art house.

“It brings attention to aspects of our digital engagement that we often ignore or try to suppress—but that increasingly are taken for granted,” Janse van Rensburg says. “I love the fact that Dejha and Ania’s practice also incorporates the human body—of both audiences and performers—in all its fragility and power as a central aspect of their practice.”

Stylized in a monochromatic palette, “On View” shows that when it comes to critically examining the sinister nature of consumption culture, all too often, we’re glossing over the fine print. Below, in their own words, Catherine and Ti take us through their performance installation.

DT: That’s how we got to “On View,” the whole idea of are you going to see what’s on view, or are you going to see yourself on view? And just with the [parallelism] with Vessel, how do you ever start that process of giving up your data and—

AC: What is the incentive behind it all? They’re not philanthropic, ever. It’s a very blatant way of showing what your selfie is worth, what it’s worth in front of Vessel, in front of this wall, in front of that step and repeat. People are spending millions, even billions of dollars building selfie stages for people.

And, still, [the selfie stage] is for you; it’s for the person standing in front of it [to enjoy]. [But, all things considered] it’s really not for you.

There’s a market and you’re participating and selling and being sold at the same time—most of the time without your knowledge. It’s bizarre that people always want to interact with and stand in front of [our art] instead of look at it.

So it started with how people are engaging with our art, and then it took us into these totally other areas we didn’t expect to get into like, data brokering.

All these selfie stages are coming up, but then people go to a museum and think it’s a selfie stage. What’s the underbelly of this phenomenon? What’s causing all of this? We got into this kind of serious territory, the terms and conditions with privacy, the selfie as currency, and being an advertisement under the guise of giving you a fun experience.

DT: We always had the idea of photographing the subject and the audience participant essentially being the subject of the work. Just like social media literally does nothing unless you push content and human energy into it. An art exhibition is the same thing. It does nothing without a person inside of it. That is one parallel we made, and the other is the first thing we do when we download an app, how many times do we mindlessly agree to a terms and condition we never read? [So we thought] instead of having that be a subconscious click, let’s make an immersive contract once you’re inside that is disproportionate to what we usually experience. Something that shows you it’s a real step.

That’s how we intended this piece. It starts out with you agreeing to be the subject. Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti, the artists, will take your likeness and use it in the art. But we are not Cambridge Analytica. It’s more of a social contract.

AC: A lot of people looked in the space and were like, I’m not doing this. It felt intimidating in the same way as if someone handing a huge agreement or contract to you that and you don’t really understand. No one is scared of the tiny checkbox. They are scared of the room, but not by giving data to who knows.

With Vessel, there’s no contract you’re signing. They skip that step altogether.

DT: It’s theoretical, like parallel to the phenomenon.

AC: Agreed capture distribution.

DT: We based the design of “On View” off of the selfie stage phenomenon, which is essentially agree, capture, and distribute the image. “On View” is not actually selfie stages—it’s meant more as commentary—although people turn them into that. There’s two mock stages, and we named both of them. One of them is called “Data Body,” which references our data double as we exist online. We all have a data double. The other mock stage is called “I Didn’t Sign Up For This,” which we kind of pulled from the name of the document of our terms and condition is “On View: What You Were Signing Up For.” And so that kind of like parallel.

And then the last space is called “The Golden Gallery.” It’s sort of the central function of the piece in where you can see yourself on view and, because we used facial recognition to encode your facial data into the images that we take once you arrive to “The Golden Gallery” at the end, only the subject of the art photograph can recall the image at the art case.

AC: You are only on view to yourself.

DT: Which is counterintuitive to this incessant daily sharing of our lives. There’s no other way that you can get the photo; they aren’t distributed. I was in there opening week, and we had just mulled through the space.

AC: People were asking where to get the photos.