Photo Credit: Nathan Eldridge
My interview with Donna was without question one of the most interesting and informative that I’ve conducted since I launched this blog in February 2013. She has a very unique perspective on social media due to both her professional and personal experience. Donna is also the curator of the self portrait show, SELF/Selfie, which opened in May and is up through July 19 at Engine in Biddeford. The exhibit features the inner reflections of several widely known regional artists, including Cig Harvey, Alison Hildreth, Alan Magee, Joseph Nicoletti, Mark Wethli and Shoshanna White. SELF/Selfie also includes a collection of selfies submitted via Instagram tagged #SELFtheshow. You may view them all at selfselfie.tumblr.com.
As part of the ongoing exhibit, I am honored to be sitting on a panel with Donna tomorrow night, July 10, discussing the phenomenon of selfies titled, From self-portrait to selfie. Need to be seen. Panel members include Donna, myself, and Maine College of Art graduate and creator of #ProjectSelfiePride Sabrina Volante. The voice behind the Black Girl in Maine blog Shay Stewart-Bouley, curator of contemporary and modern art at the Portland Museum of Art Jessica May, photographer Nathan Eldridge and Julie Longua Peterson, assistant professor of psychology at University of New England, round out the discussion. The panel will be moderated by Joshua Bodwell, co-founder of Engine and director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
The event begins at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 10, at Engine, 265 Main St., Biddeford.
Building on forty years of professional experience and devotion to the arts at the highest levels, Donna McNeil is currently serving as an independent arts administrator through private curatorial services, grant writing, administration, panels, mentorship and professional development counseling for creatives, board service, steering committees, advisory panels and advocacy. She firmly believes that the arts are essential to the creation and sustainability of livable communities, that they are a powerful economic driver and that they serve to educate and enlighten a citizenry toward its best self. To that end she offers her deep knowledge and expertise where needed to advance a better future.
Zapruder, selfies, and One-Dimensional Man
As with most of my interviews, what you’ll read here is a greatly condensed version of our conversation.
On her first experiences with ‘social media’ and how that evolved through time
My first encounter with social media was as an observer of the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. This was just a regular guy taking a film that turned into this monumental recording of an incredible event. A historic moment in our lives. I makes me reflect on the way social media plays out in our lives today with events like the Arab Spring and other kinds of events in the world that are exposed and revealed and populated by regular people. The Zapruder film went “viral” in the ways that it could at the time and still remains viral today. With the technology we have today, of course, it’s become more enhanced and informs us to as what really happened that day.
My experience with the Zapruder film led me, as a Woodstock-era person, to the 1968 Democratic National Convention where the chant was, ‘the whole world is watching.’ So, I think that speaks to the awareness that social media brings to our lives that, yes, the whole world can watch. They can watch pretty much everything you do. And, how do we reconcile that with the need for privacy in both our personal and professional lives? And, what are the assets of that and what are the detriments? I think people are struggling with that all the time.
When I was director of the Maine Arts Commission, and working in government, I was an incredibly public figure. We use social media, of course, all the time in the government job because transparency is paramount. So, in my private life I avoided everything. No Facebook page. No MySpace. Nothing. Because people were finding me and accessing me in ways that I found really invasive, even through my job. So, I decided that I definitely was not going to engage with social media on a personal level. And, sometimes when people talk about — ‘Oh, I saw that on Facebook.’ — I miss it a little bit. But, I think the trade-off is worth it. I’m actually a very private person and I have an awareness through my political life that everything we do is material … is fodder to be filed in a way. And, big-brotherized. So, I have this mindset from years ago and I can’t really let it go. So, I’m very careful about what I put out on the Internet. On social media or otherwise.
When you work in government the taxpayer is your employer. And, you’re completely accountable. And, you should be.
In terms of your personal life and how email and texting and Twitter and Tumblr can ‘enhance’ that, in a way, and can give you broad outreach instantaneously … it also becomes somewhat Victorian. This way of exchanging ideas through ‘letter writing’ — exchanging ideas through the written word. So, if you don’t have any facility around that you’re kind of sunk. If that’s what you’re depending on.
I’m old enough to be born before television and remember when color television came about. Everybody had rotary phones. The push-button phone was kind of fabulous. And, there were no message machines so if you weren’t there to pick up your phone and answer it … you missed the call. You had no idea that someone had called you. That’s unimaginable today.
Jackie Kennedy would never even allow herself to be photographed with a cigarette. It was about image control. And, if people are so interested in branding themselves, then they need to understand image control. I feel like I should get to choose the image of myself that gets put out there. But, obviously, that means I have to make choices about what I allow to get put out there. I mean, I’m out in the world looking not-so-fabulous a lot of the time, but it’s not necessarily being photo-documented. Forever. At least if I can avoid it.
On One-Dimensional Man
The other kind of fascinating thing that I felt like I wanted to talk about today is how in 1964 a philosopher named Herbert Marcuse wrote a book called One-Dimensional Man. The title actually is, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Which, you know, was pretty advanced thinking for 1964 in terms of how it reflects on what we’re facing today in relation to the question, ‘What does the effect of of a one-dimensional communication have on us and our psyches? And, our relationships?’ We seem pretty ok with fairly one-dimensional relationships. Relationships that are not only built, but carried on, through a limited character amount. Or, texting, with the new language that text messages brought about — which is also a very interesting phenomenon in terms of English and literature and writing. I prefer three-dimensional relationships. So, how do you use the benefits of a one-dimensional form of communication and blossom it into three-dimensionality? People are becoming more afraid of even phoning other people — where there is a nuanced, expressive tone that is also in the moment.
The social media form of communication allows us both more brutality and more intimacy. Simultaneously. And, what are we going to do about that? How do we get more sensitive around that? Because it happens all the time.
I like mystery. And, I think that people who surrender everything about themselves every minute of every day are giving away too much of their own personal mystery. You know, mystery is sexy. What you don’t know about somebody is what keeps you coming back. The ‘great reveal,’ as you might want to call it, of Facebook is a phenomenon of today that deserves a whole lot of discussion.
On the self-portrait show: SELF/Selfie
As I was mounting the self-portrait show at Engine — and self-portraits, of course, have been around for a very long time — I knew that you can’t really talk about them today without talking about the phenomenon of 350 million selfies being uploaded to the Internet every single day. And, people’s great need to be seen. It’s constant. You know, having reflected on this in terms of the exhibition I think that everybody is interested in themselves. That’s human nature. That’s fine. Absolutely fine. It’s normal. But, where my inquiry begins is with this need to be seen. Even though we know that 350 million selfies are posted everyday, we don’t know how many are actually looked at. I haven’t collected the statistics. It would be interesting to see the volume going out and to determine what the interest was toward that. And, is it really fulfilling the need to be seen? Because I believe that’s the primal instinct there — to be seen and to be understood. Or, to manifest yourself in an aspirational way.
On trust
Trust is a big issue. You can write a personal text or email to someone and they can send it out to the world. That obviously betrays a kind of a trust. So, I think getting back to an awareness and carefulness around what is on the Internet is important. The things that you share personally, I think should be shared in person. In a room that is safe (laughs). Which is getting less and less possible. Oh Lord. What are we going to do about that?
On young people and social media
Young people are somewhat cavalier about how things will play out in the future. Sometimes it seems like there is no awareness of that. I mean, they’re often willy-nilly posting anything and everything. Social media enables and facilitates the impulse factor and young people just don’t have the same impulse control as older people with more life experience. So, there they are spontaneously giving their privacy away. Forever. And, one has to wonder if they really know what they are doing?
On the social propaganda
The social propaganda is that people are surrendering every bit and piece of information about themselves for their own betterment and good. People buy into this and believe it. Much like Herbert Mancuse was talking about with industrialized society — creating needs that were before nonexistent. And, how that changed people socially and how it flattened them. Because of the needs that they didn’t really need. That they had manufactured.
I think that people are continually struggling for authenticity and I think there will be some kind of resetting.
I want to thank Donna for taking the time to talk with me about her opinions on, and experience with, social media.
PHOTO CREDIT: Nathan Eldridge