A brief collection of memes centred around the theme of spectacle.
Featured in The Void Magazine’s Big Web Issue, these memes explore the sensation of becoming a spectacle simply while being oneself.
Live meme-reading/performance at the launch party at Brasserie Beabien on January 31, 2020.
From the editors: Remember when you fell three times in one day? Once before class running around the playground, you fell and scraped your knee. Just a scratch, big laugh, carry on, take a seat. Next, at recess you were running even faster and turned a sharp corner and slid on the hot concrete and busted open the other knee, but you laughed even louder, face turning red, and kept running. And finally the third time, le piece de resistance, playing four-square you rolled your ankle and fell head over heel in front of your whole middle school class: tears streaming, face the reddest it’s ever been. A rug of composure had been yanked from under your feet, and in that moment, the nakedness of entropy threw you to the wolves, eyes agape with both sympathy and schadenfreude. Somewhere in a parallel universe is another version of you, falling and re-falling ad nauseam, a glitch in the cosmos. Oh, how the moment stuck! What is falling in front of a group of people? Falling on the street? Falling emotionally with tears on the bus? How are you figured in these moments as a spectacle? Are you failing to impress and representing a rupture in the big show? We want your embarrassment, your pride, your stadium-wide moments. Show us your show or the show you're watching.
The VOID Magazine | Issue 23.1 Spectacle | Curtis
Featured in The Void Magazine’s Big Web Issue, these memes explore the sensation of becoming a spectacle simply while being oneself.
Live meme-reading/performance at the launch party at Brasserie Beabien on January 31, 2020.
From the editors: Remember when you fell three times in one day? Once before class running around the playground, you fell and scraped your knee. Just a scratch, big laugh, carry on, take a seat. Next, at recess you were running even faster and turned a sharp corner and slid on the hot concrete and busted open the other knee, but you laughed even louder, face turning red, and kept running. And finally the third time, le piece de resistance, playing four-square you rolled your ankle and fell head over heel in front of your whole middle school class: tears streaming, face the reddest it’s ever been. A rug of composure had been yanked from under your feet, and in that moment, the nakedness of entropy threw you to the wolves, eyes agape with both sympathy and schadenfreude. Somewhere in a parallel universe is another version of you, falling and re-falling ad nauseam, a glitch in the cosmos. Oh, how the moment stuck! What is falling in front of a group of people? Falling on the street? Falling emotionally with tears on the bus? How are you figured in these moments as a spectacle? Are you failing to impress and representing a rupture in the big show? We want your embarrassment, your pride, your stadium-wide moments. Show us your show or the show you're watching.
The VOID Magazine | Issue 23.1 Spectacle | Curtis
See more #deardiarymemes on Instagram
Dear Diary,
I do not always find it easy to tell others how I feel. I need creative ways to express myself and to work through the things I cannot speak out loud. The meme format - text on graphic - has provided a new and unparalleled outlet for me to share my innermost thoughts and fears. By pouring out my heart onto the internet, I have shared parts of myself I never thought I could, and connected with others in the process.
I am witnessing continually the need we have to hear and be heard, to be reminded that we are not alone and that many of our experiences are deeply relatable to both those around us and people we may never have a chance to meet.
Now, I invite you to take part in this process with me by making an anonymous entry into my diary. Some of your words may inspire memes. All of your words will contribute to a collective experience of letting go, of being heard without having to speak. Check @rude_oil_pipeline and #deardiarymemes on Instagram regularly for new entries into my meme diary. <3
On November 27th, visitors to the In House Intermedia III class vernissage were invited to participate in a live installation of #deardiarymemes. Participants entered a cozy bedroom-scene one at a time wherein they could handwrite a diary entry. They were then invited to remediate their words onto IRL memes, posted around the installation.
Concordia University | Communications | Curtis
Dear Diary,
I do not always find it easy to tell others how I feel. I need creative ways to express myself and to work through the things I cannot speak out loud. The meme format - text on graphic - has provided a new and unparalleled outlet for me to share my innermost thoughts and fears. By pouring out my heart onto the internet, I have shared parts of myself I never thought I could, and connected with others in the process.
I am witnessing continually the need we have to hear and be heard, to be reminded that we are not alone and that many of our experiences are deeply relatable to both those around us and people we may never have a chance to meet.
Now, I invite you to take part in this process with me by making an anonymous entry into my diary. Some of your words may inspire memes. All of your words will contribute to a collective experience of letting go, of being heard without having to speak. Check @rude_oil_pipeline and #deardiarymemes on Instagram regularly for new entries into my meme diary. <3
On November 27th, visitors to the In House Intermedia III class vernissage were invited to participate in a live installation of #deardiarymemes. Participants entered a cozy bedroom-scene one at a time wherein they could handwrite a diary entry. They were then invited to remediate their words onto IRL memes, posted around the installation.
Concordia University | Communications | Curtis
Oversharing Online as Self Care: Putting the ‘Me’ in ‘Meme’ is a lecture performance on comedy and alternative meme culture.
‘Welcome to the permanent carnival’ as I meme my way through the text “Comedy Has Issues” by Lauren Berlant and Sianne Ngai (2017), inserting myself into the text. I reflect upon the increased pressure to be funny in modern Western society - but we aren’t always laughing. I examine some of the problematics and changing dynamics within comedy, through, comedy!
During the performance I shift focus to examine how comedifying my own life has become a form of self care. The internet is my diary and memes are the pages onto which I spill my deepest, most personal thoughts and fears. Someone once accused me of taking the me in meme too literally - I reclaim this as a powerful mode of self expression and a site of healing.
Finally, I invite my peers to engage in this practice by memeing their fears and excitement relating to our Intermedia III class for which this performance was created.
@rude_oil_pipeline
Concordia University | Communications | Curtis
‘Welcome to the permanent carnival’ as I meme my way through the text “Comedy Has Issues” by Lauren Berlant and Sianne Ngai (2017), inserting myself into the text. I reflect upon the increased pressure to be funny in modern Western society - but we aren’t always laughing. I examine some of the problematics and changing dynamics within comedy, through, comedy!
During the performance I shift focus to examine how comedifying my own life has become a form of self care. The internet is my diary and memes are the pages onto which I spill my deepest, most personal thoughts and fears. Someone once accused me of taking the me in meme too literally - I reclaim this as a powerful mode of self expression and a site of healing.
Finally, I invite my peers to engage in this practice by memeing their fears and excitement relating to our Intermedia III class for which this performance was created.
@rude_oil_pipeline
Concordia University | Communications | Curtis