Art vs. the Algorithm
Every day, my newsfeed serves up new footage of a different unvaccinated person, hooked up to an oxygen cannula, pleading from their hospital bed for anyone who is watching to please get vaccinated. Run, don’t walk! I didn’t believe it before, but I do now! I wish I had listened! The segment always ends with the reporter’s lugubrious voiceover informing us that the person died two days after the interview.
These life-saving videos are likely not reaching anyone who needs to see them, though, because the algorithm’s primary function is to fortify the carefully constructed digital silos we’ve created for ourselves, ensuring that we remain as comfortable as possible by having as little exposure as possible to anyone outside of our delicate reality.
No, the algorithm delivers these videos to already-vaccinated people like me, thereby confirming our worldview and, more importantly, not challenging anyone who might be made uncomfortable by an opposing perspective.
Because we wouldn’t want anyone to be uncomfortable.
How different the digital space is from the spaces that most thrill me in the embodied world.
The last show I saw before the pandemic was the opening of Ed Bereal’s retrospective at the Portland Art Museum. Some of the pieces arrived from a larger retrospective in a conservative part of the country where they’d just been shown.
During his artist talk, Bereal spoke about the kind of interactions he’d had with people on the opposite end of the political spectrum who’d come to see his work, which includes themes of police brutality, white supremacy, and extractive capitalism. He said that police officers and 80-year-old white Republicans had stood in front of his pieces and spent real time considering them. No one stormed out. No one shouted. No one blocked or unfriended anyone.
When you’re alone in a room with an inanimate object that calls into question your beliefs or worldview, there is no one to @, no one to reply to, no audience for your snarky rejoinders. With the artist at a safe remove, the only source of your discomfort is an idea. And you can’t argue with an idea; you can only wrestle with it.
Art gives us time and space to be angry. Confused. Conflicted. It even allows us the grace to hate something, quietly to ourselves, without having to direct that hatred outward. And sometimes, under the warm light of consideration, that hatred melts into something more malleable, like disquiet or doubt.
At a time when the algorithm is literally killing us, the space for reflection, uncertainty, and discomfort that art provides is more important than it has ever been. (This is also why it’s imperative that we fight for increased arts funding—so that anyone who wants to see art can do so without a financial barrier for entry.) Unfortunately, many of our arts institutions are taking their cues from the algorithm—worrying more about minimizing the public’s reaction to difficult work than about creating a resilient and compassionate container for whatever reactions the public may have.
It is not my intention to suggest that art is always meant to provoke. On the contrary, I think that art can be a powerful balm. It certainly is in my life. I mean to say that though art often provides comfort, it is not its job to make us comfortable. Its only job is to make us more human, something the algorithm will never do.
If you want to learn more about Ed Bereal, here he is in conversation with the always-thoughtful Grace Kook-Anderson:
this is a profoundly crafted piece filled with insights. i kept thinking i'd quote one of the incredible lines as a comment but would have ended up quoting the entire thing. i'm anxious to share this with everyone. thank you!
A great essay! I have had these thoughts for years and have often stated them, though not nearly as articulate as you. Thank you!