Tag: onlyfans

progress

I’m thinking about my study statement and objectives for my project, what have I done and not done, where am I. I seem to be doing what I planned to do. I’m still committed to creating self-portraits for the duration of the course and have been doing this consistently and am finding it meaningful. I’m still using Instagram to build a world and perform this world. I’m still reading as much as I can. I’m making a physical book. I had planned to present some kind of very small scale installation by the end of this year. I still want to do this but I’ve had to put it on hold for a little while and change my thinking about the logistics of it for reasons I won’t go into just yet. The reasons are not bad, there are just things to wait for and figure out.

I now also have plans to make two more books. One will include a selection of the printed self-portraits and their captions. The other will include images made from text (building on this kind of thing that I experimented with in the interim show). The text will also come from the image captions but will be edited and abstracted, not written in their original form

There was mention in my Unit One feedback about whether I could make some kind of short film within this project. I don’t want to do this in any kind of conventional way but I have been enjoying experimenting with the editing of some recent videos on OnlyFans and I do think about how it would feel to compile them all together into one “film”. I also had an idea about creating an experimental video that would play with the format of an “instructional” video, using poetic narration.

class 2/5/24, group critique

In class we had a group critique. I showed these self-portraits (one is a screenshot of a video posted on OnlyFans):

The conversation was supportive and valuable. I feel reassured that the work is doing something towards what I’m wanting it to do – elicit questions about commodifying the self, commodifying art, different “gazes”, what constitutes work, the problems of work, the blurred lines between performance/reality, selling art and selling the body/self/sex/sexuality.

I talked about the three thematic/conceptual/aesthetic phases that my self-portraits will have throughout my project. The first phase which is pretty much at an end is the corporate/office aesthetic and kind of sexy secretary/office siren persona. The second phase is a wedding/bridal inspired aesthetic using a bride persona. I have just started taking images for this phase, there are a couple of examples above of photos that incorporate the bridal veil. The third phase is the persona of the maid/cleaner/housewife. Certain visual elements will run throughout the whole project for example, the setting of a hotel can easily be applied to each phase, so there will be a bit of overlap, but overall each phase will be visually distinct. It was useful to articulate these ideas to the group and to identify their significance. I have a personal connection to/interest in all three personas/aesthetics. They each represent or allow an opportunity to explore different ideas of work/performance. They each also represent three commonly fetishised images/ideas/”categories” of women.

We discussed the interactions I have with people (men) online on Instagram and OF and how sometimes reactions to the content can be unexpected. Something that has come up for me quite recently, which I talked a little bit about with Dee after the class had ended, is an increasing awareness of the potential for parasocial or semi-parasocial relationships forming through this work and the problems that can come with this. I think I’ll try to write about that in a separate post as I don’t have the energy for it right now and it’s a big tangent.

I think it was Dee who asked whether I plan to use the comments and messages I get on Instagram/OF to make some kind of art work. This is something I’ve thought about, because there are some quite compelling messages, questions etc. that I receive. For example, I shared the following message with the group. I posted the below self-portrait to my Instagram story and someone responded: “Very interesting photo, I understand that it’s you, I understand that it’s something very beautiful, but I can’t understand what exactly”.

I thought this message was really poignant and insightful. Of course, there are sometimes responses that are more sexualised and vulgar and more in line with what you might expect. Another recent message I received said, “Your profile just made me c*m so much”. They seem like quite different reactions but they are both quite intense.

I feel okay about occasionally sharing messages like this on the blog because while this is technically public I don’t share or promote this blog anywhere and the purpose of it is to learn and reflect on learning. However, using other people’s words to make an art work that I call my own, especially words from private messages, isn’t something I feel completely okay with. I think I would feel guilty about this. I also want my work (at least for this project) to be very much my own voice and representative of my experiences and actions and my subjective point of view. Something I’ve considered is keeping a document where I copy text from messages I receive and then edit, cut, rearrange them into a poetic text similar to my own style of writing, so that they are transformed into something that ends up being quite removed from the sharing of an exact copy of other people’s words. Given that I am already making text based images using my OF captions in this style, it might be interesting to also make versions of these images using the message text, so this is something I will think about more. It’s probably worth experimenting with, even if I don’t end up showing it anywhere publicly.

OnlyFans, Instagram, reactions and reflections

I was talking to Martina about my project and she asked me if I would still have done this project/be using OnlyFans if I was still with my ex-boyfriend, who I broke up with not long after the course began. I said that I would still have wanted to do the project and that he probably would have been okay with it to an extent, or at least would have reluctantly “let” me do it. But that I would probably have needed to run things by him, check what he was and wasn’t okay with, check certain photos with him etc. And I don’t know if he would have been okay with me making custom content for subscribers. I don’t mean that entirely as a criticism towards him because I think it would be mostly reasonable to not be okay with something like this (depending on the reasons) especially when it’s being introduced into a relationship as opposed to being something I was already doing when we met. But it was interesting to think about the restrictions/parameters that this would have placed upon my work.

I spent some time with a man recently who called me one evening, I think drunk, and started asking me why I post photos showing my body on Instagram. He asked me to imagine how I’d feel if I had children one day and if those children were to see those photos what they would think. I told him the next day that I didn’t like the way he had spoken to me. He said he was sorry and that maybe he was “jealous”. “Jealous of who?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he said.

I was messaging with a male friend who I don’t talk to super often (this was quite a while ago) and I mentioned that I had broken up with my boyfriend. He said that he assumed we must have broken up because of the kinds of photos of my body I had been posting on my Instagram stories. What he didn’t realise was that I had broken up with my boyfriend, yes, the only boyfriend that he had ever known me to have, but that was a while ago and I was actually in a new relationship (my most recent). So I was in fact posting photos of myself while also in a relationship with a man.

It’s frustrating to feel like men are only capable of considering women and their bodies in relation to themselves, other men/people and in the context of ownership in general. I know there are men who are capable of more than this but I haven’t encountered many of those lately. There are some other recent situations I’ve been in that I would like to write about to illustrate this but they feel too personal to reveal at the moment and/or too emotionally gruelling to recount.

OnlyFans updates, reflections, Holly Elizaveta

Something I don’t think I’ve written about yet in the blog is that on OnlyFans my name is Holly Elizaveta. My real given names are Holly Elizabeth. Using this slightly different name is something I did to kind of enhance a feeling of adopting a persona within this facet of my work without trying to be a totally different person. I like that it’s subtle. And I like how it points to the thin line between authenticity and facade. I advertise my OF through my Instagram, which has my full name. I’m therefore not trying to use OF anonymously or hide it from people. Yet the name I use on OF is slightly different to my real name, which would imply a desire to obscure my identity. I like the confusion of this, the blurring of who I am and what I’m doing and why.

An OF subscriber recently requested a video of me in the shower. At first I was going to decline as I didn’t know if I would be able to make something like that within the bounds of my project’s conceptual and aesthetic framework. However I thought about it some more and had some ideas that I felt might work so I decided to do it. I ended up quite enjoying the challenge of making this video and I particularly enjoyed editing it, the filming itself was kind of tiring and tedious but fortunately didn’t take very long.

I film and edit all of my videos on my MacBook. I used random things from the apartment I’m staying in to position and prop up my MacBook in various positions in the bathroom so I could film – cushions, towels, books, etc. I covered the keyboard with a towel after pressing record each time to try and protect it from water. I went into the shoot with a basic idea of what I wanted to capture and some other ideas also came up while I was filming.

I can’t post the video here because I don’t like to re-share anything custom that someone has paid for but here are some screenshots to give a sense of the aesthetic:

I liked experimenting with aesthetics of dreaminess, fantasy and performance. The shower/bathroom actually has a lot of the things I like – shiny surfaces, mirrors, opportunities for glowy-ness and blurriness (via steam). I like making use of mirrors. They illuminate questions about performance, reflection, watching the self, being watched, doubling the self.

I was aware of constructing shots and angles that would cater to the so called male gaze or fit into a kind of conventional category of heteronormative visual erotic-ness. But I also felt able to include stylistic choices that subtly undermined this, via a kind of pointing to it. For example, in one shot I am sitting on the floor of the shower while water pours down. The shot cuts out my face so only my body is visible. I am almost directly facing the camera. I sit there for quite a long time holding a pose completely still amidst the water and the white noise the water creates.

To me there is a kind of overt objectifying of the body that occurs in this shot, a more obvious objectification than in the shots that are very quick or in which my body is in some kind of motion. Through the sitting still, for a length of time that is quite long for a video like this, with a shot just of my body, no face to remind the viewer of individuality or personality – I offer my body as a static object for the viewer. A little clue to indicate my consciousness and control (or an attempt at some kind of relative control?) over what I’m doing and how I’m presenting myself. My objectification is not an accident and hasn’t been imposed upon me. Or rather, it has been imposed upon me in a broader sense, because I am a woman alive in a world in which women are routinely, almost automatically objectified in various ways. But in this moment, I am using, or trying to use, a particular version or instance of objectification to my advantage.

This choice is quite subtle and might not be picked up on by anyone but me. But I like including these kinds of things. It’s sort of amusing to me. And I wonder about all the videos I’ve made and will make, if they were put together into a compilation at the end of the project, if these clues would become more apparent when viewed consecutively.

Something that has also occurred in my self-portraits, both still and video, is that I don’t really smile or appear to be having a good time. Most of my portraits don’t include my face, but some do, and in those my expression is always neutral, maybe even bored or annoyed. This happened kind of intuitively at first and now it’s something I’m interested in exploring further as a deliberate choice.

text in art

I’m thinking about ways to make images using text, the ways I’m currently using or could potentially use text in my work. I’ve written about it here.

I went to the Tate Modern on Friday and there happened to be a small area in the gallery dedicated to art that uses text. I was drawn to two works. The first was by Douglas Gordon, part of his series from 2010 titled Pretty much every word written, spoken, heard, overheard from 1989…

The second was by Louise Bourgeois, titled I am Afraid (2009).

In both works, I was drawn to the simplicity of the presentation, the colours, the fonts, the formatting of the words and the words themselves.

The first work in particular reminded me of one of my initial aesthetic inspirations regarding using text in my MA project – corporate themed wall decals. When I presented the text based works in the interim show I used whiteboards mostly for practical reasons but my initial ideas were leaning more towards applying text directly to a wall as opposed to attaching text to another thing to then put onto a wall.

What happens when text is placed on a wall? Well, there is a lot of text on a lot of public walls. Paper signs or instructions taped onto walls, more permanent signs with symbols indicating lifts or stairs or bathrooms, graffiti, scribbles on bathroom walls. It just fades into the background. But when it comes to art specifically, and in a gallery setting, text maybe becomes imposing somehow… Not necessarily just in relation to the size, although this can contribute. More like, the specificity and deliberateness of it makes it stand out and seem significant. Maybe it has something to do with the “instructional” connotations. Like, because text on a wall is usually related to information, instructions, directions, rules, restrictions, guidelines, when it appears on the wall as a form of art, there is something about it that has a resonance with those things, subconsciously.

I do feel there can be a specific kind of “coldness” that is created when text is used as art (not always) and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s something I would like to utilise. I like the idea of reconfiguring the text from my poems, which are extremely personal and subjective, into images that are quite cold and stark. This is one of my earlier office decal inspirations which gives some context to the kind of aesthetic I’m talking about:

Image source.

My thinking about text relates to my ideas around book making as well. I want to make books of my poems which I have already written about a few times, including here.

My ideas around all of these text-related things feel quite chaotic at the moment. The things I want to do are:

  • make a handmade copy of my poem Sermon on the Body, viewing this as a work of art/sculpture
  • make a handmade copy of a book that brings together all of my OnlyFans content captions, viewing this as a work of art/sculpture (can’t do this until the end of the degree as I will be creating for OF throughout the whole course)
  • consider making scaled-down versions of the books above that could be replicated, printed in multiple copies
  • think about and experiment with ways that poetic text could be presented in an installation context with the view that this is something I might like to incorporate into my final MA show

interim show reflections

Some notes and thoughts:

  • The act of making the effort to print my photos onto canvases, packing them into my suitcase, praying they wouldn’t be damaged in transit, getting to London, finding a shop in London that sold whiteboards and magnets, rearranging my text on paper over and over on the whiteboards, putting the canvases together and hanging the whiteboards and canvases on the wall (with assistance from the technicians who were so kind and patient and offered their opinions in a helpful way), taking the packaging back to my apartment, then bringing it back to CSM, taking the work down, taking the canvases apart with help from Jonathan showing me how to use a drill, repacking everything, taking it all back to my apartment, then arranging to post some of it home so I don’t have to repack it all back into my suitcase, was all worthwhile.

  • It was worthwhile because while it can be a logistical and mental nightmare to present even a small work, I learned a lot doing it. It was useful to see my photos in a physical form, hanging on a wall. While I only showed nine images, it still gave me a sense of the mass/saturation idea that I’m thinking about – the idea of presenting the images as a mass, as a way to perhaps illuminate questions around work, labour, productivity, creating products, commodities, online content creation, etc. I liked how the photos looked on canvas and I liked the way I presented them close to each other and the way this allowed them to sort of bleed together, especially as they all use a similar colour palette. I presented them in a grid of three squares by three to create a big square, inspired by the format of an instagram grid.

  • I would like to be able to experiment with printing huge versions of the images, but this would be really expensive so I’m not sure how feasible it is.

  • I enjoyed experimenting with presenting some of my images made of text. I really wasn’t sure how it would look/feel, if I would like it or not. But I felt that this was a good opportunity to just try something. I liked playing around with the paper that I printed the text onto, it was just regular printer paper and I allowed it to become creased, bent, folded etc. I think this aesthetic worked fine in the context of this show. But I think in future I would like to keep the images more pristine and present them in a different way. I’m not sure yet what the most effective way to show them is, it’s something to keep thinking about. I went to the Tate Modern yesterday and there was a section of text based art which gave me some things to consider, I will write a separate post about this.
  • Part of the reason I wanted to try presenting the text images is because I’m trying to figure out how to present the self-portraits in a physical/gallery setting while including some of the context regarding their original presentation setting of OnlyFans. All of the text presented in the interim show was from the captions on my OF photos, as well as text presented directly from my OF profile. This is something that I need to keep considering. Do the images need this context and explanation and if so, what is the best way to provide it? I’m really not sure yet.

  • I felt confident about my work in the sense that I feel secure about who I am as an artist and what I’m doing. I’m experimenting and figuring things out of course and I can always improve but I didn’t feel concerned about what other people were doing, didn’t feel the need to compare. I haven’t always felt like this, so it’s a relief to be in this place now. I still want to keep learning and finding inspiration from other artists, and I very much do. But I don’t worry much anymore about whether my work is more or less good/interesting than other people’s. My work is my work and I only need to really compare it to versions of itself.