This interview with Hana Pera Aoake marks the end of a two week social media experiment, where Hana and Jordana took turns in taking over the Lokal Stories Instagram and Twitter as a conceptual medium for communicative solitary.
You and Jordana took over the Lokal Stories social media accounts for the last two weeks. It was nuts! What happened from your point of view?
On Twitter I felt very raw and as though I needed to say whatever was on my mind. I was aware that Jordana would delete everything. Jordana and I both just used the accounts as though they were ours.
What did you choose to share via Twitter and why?
I shared whatever thought came to mind. I didn’t draft anything. I think during this week I worked 40-50 hours a week (mostly nights), I was heartbroken, had just changed medications, was living on garlic bread, was angry at this guy i had been talking to, had had a terrible one night stand and just done two shows. I was raw like an onion. I just went a bit buckwild if I’m honest.
Was it freeing to feel anonymous?
I was never anonymous. I can never be anonymous. I think my personal Twitter and Instagram accounts are realms where I should be able to say what I like but can’t because my body is always too present. It feels too vulnerable. On the Lokal stories page I felt like I could overshare and spam as a way of being loud af and of my body being able to be more impartial and fluid.
Jordana deleted all your tweets, approximately 200 a day, whilst also analysing the content you shared. How did it feel having this week of your thoughts erased?Relief. Nothing is ever completely erased, especially online. Never forget that we don’t really exist
How were Twitter and Instagram different for you?
On Instagram I thought a lot about the way users constantly curate their content to establish certain class signifiers and I found it harder to figure out what I was doing. On Twitter I felt free to say and post as much as I wanted, including tweeting, ‘Truffle butter on ur pussssay.’
Where are you on this journey?
Lol journey. Don’t stop believing
I’m really happy we made a video for Fusion that’s sick and everything is coming together for the group show we are organising at Meanwhile.
It’s nice yknow?
Please explain what the title Cyber Nectar means to you.
I think the name derives from a project I did with Jordana and Mya Middleton last year called My space, which was a Google doc as part of a show called Silicion dry computer systems and wet living biologies in the library at the Physics room. This was a research doc in which we discussed multiple concerns around our bodies and digitality. We were really interested in Roy Ascott’s term called ‘moist media’. It was used as a way of describing new media art which aligns (dry) computational systems and (wet) biological processes. This notion of ‘moist media’ also highlights the plurality of digital ‘selves’ in the way that we distribute and disseminate information, especially in terms of disrupting the idea of authorship. We are fluid, yet always tied to our bodies. Basically it’s thinking about how we engage with digital interfaces using our bodies. The words ‘cyber’ and ‘nectar’ really bring these concepts together. Nectar also illuminates for me the importance of bees and of these exasperated biological processes that exist all around us. It makes me think of our planet becoming an ecological wasteland for which we are responsible.
Photo courtesy of Hana Pera Aoake.
Leave a Reply