Dolan Stearns Talks Art & Originality in the Age of Social Media

Dolan Stearns was recently in the U.K. showing work alongside Brian DeLaTorre in Brixton’s Public Service Announcement show. Slam City took the opportunity to conduct an art-focused interview with Stearns. He weighs in on both the positive and negative effects of social media, and how it’s personally impacted his work. His insight really speaks to the age of Instagram, and if it’s even possible to  produce anything original within a framework that allows for unlimited influence and subsequent copying of ideas.

It’s hard, I mean I’ve randomly found people on Instagram who are jocking my shit. They’ll follow me, I’ll check their page out and they’re totally ripping it off. The comments will be people going “Oh this is sick, it’s so original”, and I’ll leave a similar comment just to fuck with them. It’s hard to put anything out there without someone jocking it – but it is good and bad, you do reach a wider audience. I went through this Instagram phase a couple of months ago where I unfollowed a lot of pages, because I felt like it was brainwashing me into making a certain type of art. I come up with an idea, I think it’s an original idea but maybe I’ve seen it three months ago on Instagram and I liked it. But it’s definitely half and half, it is rad having a free platform for your work.

For more, head to Slam City’s site to read the interview piece.

Image Via Slam City