The reel I posted because I was exhausted and half-drunk outranked everything I actually planned

So I was brutalizing a canvas at 1am, the one that wasn't working, and I filmed 20 seconds of myself just slashing at it out of pure frustration, no plan, no caption strategy, phone propped on a paint can. Posted it the way you post something you don't care about because you're too tired to care.

106k views. My best planned post this month did 800.

I've been sitting here trying to reverse engineer what the hell happened. Was it the rawness? The fact that I didn't look "on", I looked like a person actually struggling with the thing, not a person performing struggling with the thing? The lighting was garbage. I had no ring light. I genuinely look like a raccoon in it.

It's making me question every polished thing I've put out. Like do people smell the production the way dogs smell fear. The comment section was full of people just... being honest about their own blocked creative work. Nobody even asked about the painting. It wasn't about the art. It was about watching someone not be okay for a second and keep going anyway.

Anyway now everything I post feels fake in comparison and I hate that. But also maybe that's the answer and I just need to accept my content strategy is "genuinely losing it, filmed badly." 😭

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Mateo Serrano·4d

the rawness thing is real but i think it's simpler than that honestly. you looked like the work mattered to you. not like you were showing the work off, like you were IN it. people can smell the difference from a mile away.

i do ceramics and i have the same stupid pattern. the pieces i post because i'm genuinely excited or genuinely frustrated do numbers. the ones i plan out with good lighting and tags and a whole caption about process? crickets. because when you plan it you're performing, and when you don't you're just... doing it. and that's the thing people actually want to watch.

not saying planned content is dead or whatever, but maybe the lesson is that the version of you mid-struggle is way more compelling than the version of you explaining yourself. that's what i keep having to learn anyway.

Sol ReyesOP·4d

the "in it" thing. yeah. yeah that hit.

i think you're right and it's annoying because it means the answer is just... give up trying to control it? which my brain hates. i planned that stupid canvas too, i had sketches and a reference and everything, and the second i stopped giving a shit about making it good and just wanted it to stop fighting me, THAT's when it came alive. on camera, in the work, all of it.

the ceramics thing is so real though. you know you've done it when you post something mid-glaze-fail at 11pm covered in slip and it does better than the piece you actually babied through three firings.

i don't know how to make that into a strategy and i'm kind of tired of trying. maybe the move is just to be more honest with myself about when i'm showing off vs when i'm actually doing the thing and only post the second kind. which means posting a lot less lol. but the numbers don't lie.

Lukas Brandt·4d

The one thing nobody's saying is that the exhaustion is the point. When you're that tired you stop performing, and the camera catches what the work actually looks like when nobody's watching. Which is most of the time, for most of us. That's what people are responding to, I think, more than the rawness itself. They're not watching you destroy a canvas. They're watching something that looks true.

I've been making paintings for thirty years and I still don't know how to film that. The moment the phone comes out the thing changes. You caught it because you weren't trying to catch it.

The other part, and I say this as someone who's been on the gallery side of the fence too long: don't build a strategy around this. That's how it dies. You can't schedule authenticity at 1am. Let it be the accident it was.

Sol ReyesOP·4d

thirty years and you still can't film it, that's the part that got me. that's the whole thing isn't it. the second you try to catch it it runs. it's like the camera is an audience and the work knows when it's being watched.

i've started leaving my phone propped up permanently now. not even recording. just there. so the act of pulling it out isn't a thing anymore. tricking my own brain a little. i don't know if that works or if i'm just making a different kind of performing. but something about removing the "ok now i'm filming" moment feels less like a lie.

the other? you cut off. i want to know.