Art, Narcissism and Our New Existential Crisis.
A sense of realization. A short essay for my generation and the society that i live in.
The Society we live in today is mostly consist of what known as Millennials and Post-Millennials. Millennials is a generation born between 1980 to 2000, while Post-Millennials are others born post that period. These two generations are the generation that born and raised by the existence of technology.
Just yesterday, I visited an art exhibition in Yogyakarta, ARTJOG. It’s a contemporary art exhibition. It is indeed a prestige and famous exhibition. Its growing name is proven by how crowded it was on the opening day and also daily ever since it was opened.
The visitors were surely coming from various group, yet it was dominated by the Millennials. With phones in their hand, these people started lining up on any artworks, took turns on taking selfies and pictures on instagramable piece of art. It was quite a bothersome for some people including me because we’re there to enjoy arts by examining them. Instead, we were distracted by people with their phone and camera. Noticing them instead of the artworks.
But something bothered me, pardon, some things were bothering me. These thoughts just popped up inside my head. A sense of realization. This might sound a bit cliché with the “Ugh, millennials are so vain and they’re (mis)using art to project their vanity.”
Since it isn’t my rights to tell people how they should appreciate arts, so I’m just wondering, “What drives our generation on acting that way?” “Why can’t people just live a life in front of their eyes?”
Our generation is exposed to technology more than ever. Technology, through social media, provides us personal information of families, friends, acquaintances and even strangers. It also gives us a new way to communicate with one another. In other words, technology has altered our perspective upon our world. This exposure impacts on how our generation behave towards other people in real life. Social media turned our generation into narcissists, consciously or not. It is because social media encourage its users to do self-promotion on their accounts, as their users generate all the contents.
Existentialism is a philosophical concept that describes the contemplation of life’s purpose, questioning its meaning. But sometimes this question comes up empty, our life is meaningless. This is how existential crisis (or dread) emerge. Existential crisis are mostly cause by major life events but also can be caused by daily events. Nowadays, people have more leisure time for everything which seems comfortable; short workweeks, TV shows, internet, online shopping. As if we don’t need real life because we can just stay home 24/7 and still live a life. Life lost its meaning. And that’s where social media fill the gap.
The new existential crisis is a crisis where social media plays a part. Social media allows us to curate our lives (or I prefer, our realities), show the best part of our lives and put them in the stories or highlights them in our Instagram profile, and put away the less attractive part. Then we got confused by the reality we created, blurred its meaning. And guess what is the worst part? The rest of the world are doing the same. All of us are looking for extra validation.
“All this technology we have, it’s just an illusion, of community, companionship, a sense of inclusion yet when you step away from this device of delusion, you awaken to see, a world of confusion.” — Gary Turk on Look Up
We’re all fake. A charlatan.
Indeed, technology makes this world more interconnected. Social media is connecting us to each other. But we let our reality shifted, from the real one to the virtual one. As equal as the art exhibition, which is basically a place of expressions, of the artists and the observers, shifts as a place to validate your existential and follow the trends.
By no mean it is our own mistake. We unconsciously promote this kind of events wrong, by saying “There are interesting objects and colorful paintings you can take pictures with there.”. We offered the visitors their own selves. Not the arts.
Nevertheless, as a millennial, I am surely as guilty as all of you, yet it is our responsibility to remind each other that we have a truly life to live. A better way on living our life.
Thank you.
