Today I am putting an indefinite hold on posting to all Minus Plato social media accounts. Back in January 2018, I created Minus Plato Instagram and Twitter accounts, as well as a Minus Plato Facebook page, as a way of disseminating my work on the blog Minus Plato, specifically as it (and I) transitioned from a focus on Classics and Contemporary Art to Art and Education after documenta 14. Over this nearly two-year period, while no doubt extending the reach of the Minus Plato project, specifically the promotion of my book No Philosopher King: An Everyday Guide to Art and Life under Trump (AC Books 2019), these social media accounts have also redirected attention away from the blog and other real life activities of the project. Perhaps most alarmingly to me, it has at times meant that Minus Plato had developed the features of a troll as part of broader aims of critique (see both the #junkclassicsnow and #caryatidsandthepatriarchy campaigns as examples). While social media may be a valid and powerful tool for critique, it is time for me to step back and focus on the blog as well as other offline projects, including writing The Great Unlearning: A Stateless Exhibition and its Unfinished Curriculum, my sequel to No Philosopher King about documenta 14 and its ongoing legacies. I know that my life and work (and my life-work balance!) will be better for this move. As my dear friend, the artist, activist, writer, publisher, classicist, and philosopher Paul Chan stated in a talk he delivered called ‘Personal Data, Online Privacy, and Fake News – According to the Greeks’, at the Gerry Villa earlier this year:
Cultivating pro-social relationships in real life helps reduce the negative effects on health as a result of prolonged social media use.
Moving forward, the only time I will post on any of the Minus Plato social media accounts is to direct you to new blog posts and other offline projects.
Thank you for looking, reading, scrolling, liking, reacting, retweeting, reposting, and tagging Minus Plato. You can always contact me by sending an email to minusplato@gmail.com.
See you at https://minusplato.com/ or out there in the world!