In late February 2024 I started transcribing my Instagram ‘Story’ feed. It was around the time Aaron Bushnell had set himself on fire to protest what the UN’s Human Rights Commission has now confirmed as Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Opening Instagram had for nearly six months had meant witnessing extreme violence and probable war crimes alongside my friends’ life and work updates, and advertisements. At the same time, attempts to respond to or even to describe what was happening – to discuss without censorship the ‘content’ I and many other people were viewing through social media every day – had become increasingly fraught in ‘mainstream’ news media, in art spaces and at universities.
I transcribed for one year, recording only the date of any day I missed. Each entry was made by propping my iPhone on the edge of my laptop screen and running Instagram stories until a timer rang, typing as they played. The description of each story was completed within the time it was played by the app. This is why some entries are incomplete and some – usually videos and sponsored posts – are much longer than others. This document is the result. It begins with a former American soldier’s self-immolation and ends with Creative Australia renouncing Khaled Sabsabi’s appointment to the Venice Biennale.
Gemma Weston is undertaking a Master of Library and Information Studies at Charles Sturt University, specialising in Librarianship. Prior to this, she held curatorial and administrative positions at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth Festival, AVA (formally sweet pea) and ART ON THE MOVE, whilst occasionally exhibiting as an artist under the ‘pseudonym’ of Gemma Watson or collaboratively as Pet Projects (with Dan Bourke and Andrew Varano). The relationship between text and image has been central to her creative work – in writing about art, as a curator working with archival material or in the semiotic jump cut between works in a group show, or as an artist exploring guttural sounds and failures of language (AAAAAAAAAA, uh oh).
Witnessing Catalogue:
