at the mercy of the scroll

there was a hype for a while within creative circles on instagram: artists presenting their painting from the back and slowly turning it to reveal the work. i remember questioning why an artist of all people would follow a trend like that. it started to feel like the platform speaking through the work, using formats. i could sense the hunger underneath it, the desire to be seen and heard, and how quickly that desire gets shaped by what the platform rewards. what i felt most wasn't anger. it was a kind of misplaced embarrassment. the real discomfort was the audition feeling, as if i was watching someone get pulled into a format that wasn't theirs.

artworks don't stay artworks for long in the feed. they become images: compressed, sped up, made to travel. and when i say images, i also mean reels, stories, and the rest of the moving feed. lately the influx of ai-generated images has added another layer. it doesn't just increase the volume, it destabilises trust. you start to question what you're looking at, and that uncertainty becomes its own kind of manipulation. of course every image influences. what i resist is the demand that influence be predictable, measurable, and convertible. buy, believe, envy, react. even when i'm "just looking," it can feel like being handled.

it happens fast. my chest tightens. i'm shown so much i would never choose to invite into my day. what drains me is the sense of being steered. it turns looking into exposure, and i take that as information. something in me is trying to protect my attention.

at the same time, i know confrontation isn't always bad. sometimes it's healthy to see something you didn't go looking for. an image can wake you up, unsettle a fixed perspective, show you what you've been avoiding. i don't want to live inside a perfectly curated bubble. but there's a difference between being met by something real, and being managed by a system built to capture attention.

i grew up with a large book called 'the history of art' and my dad's collection of medical books on anatomy. i was absorbed by them. those images shaped me, not by persuading me, but by giving me something to return to, something that could hold my attention without demanding anything back. and i can't help wondering, if i'm honest, whether i would have found the same concentrated direction if i'd grown up now, with the endless feed in my hands, pulling my attention apart before it could deepen.

i have not found a way to make social media work for me. years of trying, deleting profiles, starting again, repeating the cycle. i've never sold anything through it. i've collected likes, but you can't live on likes. no real business, no lasting recognition. just the cycle.

i make the work, and then i release it. my enjoyment is in the creating, not in managing what happens afterwards. my work needs slowness and ambiguity. the feed rewards speed and legibility, and it rewards outcomes that can be counted.

when i say i care about integrity, i don't mean being perfect. i mean the absence of posturing and smoothing over imperfections just to be palatable or shareable. it can be painful, confronting and raw but it feels clean.

i deleted my last instagram profile and created a new one, trying again to find the balance. i still haven't found it. if i'm honest, i'd rather not need it at all.