Tag Archives: Maurizio Catellan

My thoughts on Twitter

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Before joining Twitter I couldn’t understand the concept of writing a 140 characters message as it seemed to me a constrained version of the “status” feature on Facebook. But contrary to Facebook, which is more friends driven, the ability to interact with strangers is what makes Twitter interesting and rewarding.

Personally Twitter reminds me of a dating site. But while most dating sites serve the purpose of matching strangers for the sake of love, in Twitter strangers interact for completely different reasons.

Twitter offers the ideal platform for someone that intends to follow a particular person, a celebrity, a cause, people sharing the same interests or even to protest about paying taxes. It is also ideal to follow a hand full of comedians to combat boredom. It still dazzles me how celebrities, such as Jim Carrey for example, are one tweet away from everyone on Twitter. The likelihood of receiving a reply is remote to say the least, but the possibility is there.

I use Twitter mostly to engage with people that I wouldn’t easily meet in the real world. It is relaxing to log on at the end of the day and join a completely different conversation then the one I had during the day. I have joined Twitter using my real name since I have no intentions to offend anyone or to be politically incorrect.

I have been particularly interested in the way Klout analyses the influence of my Twitter account. Klout has been subject to strong criticism. Concerns have been raised regarding the validity of the data provided, but going forward I think there is an interesting business plan in what the platform can potentially achieve. Imagine being able to see the degree of influence of pretty much everyone we know (as long as they use social media). I often wonder how society will assimilate this data in the future. Imagine a junior colleague for example. What happens if you by accident discover later he has a better Klout than you? Or the person you dislike most? As human beings we often have a sixth sense for these things but it is going to be interesting to see what happens when rather than using your senses you have the data readily available.

The following is a personal sketch I did about the how Twitter can influence our society in the future.

Twitter is also about favouring and retweeting tweets. This is how former Twitters expand their legion of followers (if we forget about #teamfollowback). I used to think tweets were retweeted or favoured accordingly to the laws of natural selection, but the most interesting thing I learned about Twitter is not to expect followers to retweet or favourite my tweets if I don’t do the same for them.

A powerful feature of Twitter is the search engine. Contrary to Google, which finds information on the web, Twitter lets you know what people are talking about which is way more powerful if you know what you are looking for. For example, try searching for Maurizio Cattelan, one of my famous artists. The first tweets you see will tell you straight away where he is showing at the moment.

However, there is one thing I dislike about Twitter. On Facebook and other social platforms, sales people cannot get to you unless you open your newsfeed or correspondence to them. On twitter this is a completely different story as the conversation is open to everyone. For example if I tweet about how eager I am to eat bananas most likely I am going to receive several tweets telling me where to go to buy bananas without my consent. I have also received direct messages saying, ‘these people (with a link) are spreading rumors about you’, hoping I will follow the link to their website.

I guess these are minor annoyances as perfection requires imperfection. Twitter is quite funny as it is.

I personally think that most brands should be careful how they use Twitter, especially if they are actively targeting potential customers. They can build a true hate for their business if they are not careful about their marketing strategy.

Maurizio Catellan at the Tate and the Sydney Museum of Contemporany Art

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This post is about a thought that has been in my mind since I first saw the work of Maurizio Catellan at the Tate in London. I was in transit to Sweden. Without much to do during the day I decided to visit the Tate.

Disappointed to notice the main installation in the turbine hall was not yet ready I decided to stroll through the permanent art collection. I had done this many times before and wasn’t expecting to see anything new. Lost between the modernists and the contemporaries, as usual finding it difficult to engage with the art, I saw the Ave Maria of Maurizio Catellan.

Associating a fascist greeting to such a religious name was a brilliant combination and having three arms coming off a wall was so unpredictable that worked well to caught my attention. Also the fact that this art piece was surrounded by abstract works, made the message even more effective and clear, as I have noticed in my post about the Madonna Enthroned with Child and Saints by Giovanni Bellini.

One year later, I happened to be at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art and amongst the various art pieces was Catellan’s dead horse hanging from the ceiling. I didn’t understand the symbolism of this work immediately, but seeing the animal in such an awkward location caught my attention once again.

I think that portraying perfect representations of nature in such unpredictable forms and locations helps to spark curiosity between the art piece and the observer. But what truly talked to me was the fact that although hands coming off walls and horses hanging from ceilings are abstract representations of the reality, despite their deep meaning, these art pieces were presented in format that allowed me to interact with them.

These days Maurizio Cattelan is one of my favourite artists. I like how he mixes art with humor as I personally think art, or the business of art, is a form of entertainment.