As a way to "add relevance to art" and remove social capital, artist Constant Dullaart launched a project with DIS Magazine and Jeu de Paume called High Retention, Slow Delivery. The artist bought 2.5 million fake Instagram followers and has been distributing them to the accounts of galleries, artists, and curators to get them to the coveted 100,000 milestone.
According to Artnews, followers have been added to the Instagram accounts of galleries including Zach Feuer and Gagosian, and others in the art world including Jeff Koons, Performa, and Petra Cortright. In a video on the project page, Constant Dullaart says that "audience is a commodity. A commodity to sell to advertisers, to sell to ambitious artists that want their work to be seen. A target group of people to captivate, thrill, and buzz whatever to."
By bringing more followers to certain accounts, the artist hopes to level the playing field. "No more difference in followers or social capital," he says. "No 97k followers compared to 217 followers. The aspiring artists have been made equal to the world famous ones, the young gallery to the rich institution, the critic to the wealthy power hungry collector. 100,000 followers for everyone, as a social economic reset, and what social value their profiles represented before is lost."
Constant Dullaart told Artnews that he doesn't mind being shut down for buying followers because "this is a symbolic gesture...It exists within this realm of the poetic gesture." To learn more about the project, head over to the DIS Magazine where they have included a full transcript of the artist's video.
Not all the recipients of the free followers are happy with the project. Zach Feuer has responded to the surge in followers on Instagram, thanking Constant Dullaart but also requesting that he stop because "the notifications are useless with this flood of robot followers."
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[via Artnews]
