Alex Saum

#SELFIEPOETRY
Web-based multimedia poem; Dimensions Variable

#SELFIEPOETRY: Fake Art Histories & the Inscription of the Digital Self is a collection of bilingual and multimedia, web based poems conceived as an intervention in the social media platform NewHive.

The series explores the articulation of two main ideas or codes, and the switches between them: the (un)truth behind artistic or literary histories and our (il)legitimacy to intervene and organize events to create narratives that “make sense,” vs. the interpretative role of the recipient of said narratives. Each poem is intrigued by the roles assigned to the producer of art and its consumers, roles that have been traditionally separate and that have begun to blend and blur indistinguishable thanks to their performance on digital media. Consumers subjectivity and representation has turned into a very particular way of individual signaling, turning the subject into an object of massive amateur (some have called it “democratizing”) representation and distribution. The self (and the photographic image of the self) keeps reappearing in different digital platforms, inscribing itself through the space and time of the Web. In other words, we are obsessed with our faces (and this obsession goes well beyond taking photos in the bathroom).
My #SELFIEPOETRY series looks thus at some ways in which the inscription of the self (in today’s paradigmatic digital manifestation, i.e.: the selfie) can be reinterpreted against a very vague and unorthodox selection of artistic and literary trends in English and Spanish. There are 8 poems, each constituting an intervention in a different movement. They also touch upon some very personal matters, since I am intrigued by the many ways in which women today share their personal lives online.