The Social Ties That Unbind - An Xiao

Who Shall I Be Today? (via keboch.wordpress.com)
Using social media in an unbounded way has served many artists well. Take, for instance, the story of Ma Yongfeng. A Beijing-based artist known for his conceptual works, he maintains a variety of online personas depending on the type of piece he is producing. His most well known is Forget Art, a collective of artists playing with redefining public art and public space. But he’s also adopted the persona of the Youth Apartment Exchange Program, a Weibo-based social media art practice, not to mention his own online persona as Ma Yongfeng, the artist. Each identity reveals a facet of him without tying him down to a specific practice.

Closer to home are examples like Jayson Musson, who uses the online persona Hennessy Youngman to full effect. While Musson is relatively quiet and unassuming, his brash, online alter ego allows him to mock the art world in his popular Art Thoughtz series. Everyone is in on the ruse, but if YouTube required that even online personas be tied to one’s real name, it’s hard to imagine Musson achieving the same kind of effect. Much as artists have used pseudonyms to enable a wider variety of creative expression, Musson has embraced a more unbounded use of artist names online.

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