The Relief of Empty Spaces
My Instagram grid, with what seems like a row of emptiness.
As life moved online in new ways from March 2020, after a while, I started to avoid social media. Rather than providing a way of connecting with like-minded humans, platforms seemed to become advert-heavy in ways I’d never noticed before, and accounts I’d previously enjoyed following became so focussed on PRODUCTIVITY and SUCCESS and PIVOTING and NOW’S THE TIME TO LAUNCH YOUR OWN ONLINE COURSE and THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY, NOT A CRISIS that it felt like a different reality from my day-to-day existence.
More and more posts had a tone of desperation about them, and they were (and still are) appealing to desperate people. Desperation squared. I felt guilty for not checking in more often or for only posting when I had a blog to share, but I couldn’t deal with the constant news and the seeming pressure to become an expert in all aspects of virology, immunology and epidemiology on a par with top scientists through the reading of a handful of Wikipedia pages, a sprinkling of infographics and a few screen-grabbed Twitter threads.
Worse than all that, I couldn’t cope with the denial of so-called COVID-truthers, conspiracy theorists and mask naysayers who still seem to crop up despite everyone’s best efforts. When I did pop on Facebook, I tended to just share funny or cute memes and then disappear again, which is so far removed from my typical social media behaviour that it felt oddly jarring (and so I sort of fictionalised it in a Letter on Social Media way back in April).
COVID was already very much in the news when I started taking photographs of blank and empty signs in February. I was still enjoying finding and photographing them right up until I put up the Empty Signs photo series (now with added signs that got lost in my photos) at the beginning of October. When I spotted an empty sign on a walk in September, a friend I was with commented that I seemed to be taking pictures of a lot of depressing subjects. It was a surprising thought: for me, the gap where there is usually some text and/or imagery provided both a welcome relief from endless content (information! advice! instructions! demands! entertainment!) as well as a space for creative thinking. What could be there?
‘Doomscrolling’ is one of the brilliant, apt neologisms of 2020. We all know how social media platforms work to keep our attention fixed on them through infinite scroll and that it’s to their financial gain and our disadvantage on every level. I started wondering what it would be like to have a space that was a bit like an empty sign on social media. Just enough for a nice gap. Something that made room for breathing, or where a shift could occur. It couldn’t be simply be a picture of a pretty hillside or a film of a leaf blowing, because those would be equally guilty of requiring attention or of provoking jealousy (look what I have on my doorstep!) or broadcasting wholesomeness (look where I’ve been!) or personal branding (look at the type of person I am!) in some way. I wanted to post something that was utterly minimal.
Behold: a square that blends into the background of Instagram so that it looks like nothing at all.
A 53KB square, in the colour #ffffff (white).
(I should have tried this on Facebook and Twitter, too, but I didn’t because I’m not sure what the mobile apps appear like, and I was aware that on larger screens the backgrounds aren’t necessarily the same colour as the content stream, so wouldn’t blend in in the way I wanted.)
I ummmed and ahhed over what text to include. Ironically, I have felt barraged and overwhelmed by mental health memes and self care advice since March, and I didn’t want to add to it, but I did want to suggest that the blank space was purposeful. For the first post, I wrote, “No content.” For the second, “A space.” For the third, “An air pocket.” Use the arrows to scroll through them below:
Nothing much happened, obviously. The first post got 12 ‘likes’ and a comment, which is more attention than I thought it would get. There were some unfollows, but not from anyone I know, and who’s to say they were due to the nothingness? The second blank square got another two ‘likes’ and a comment. Someone I know in real life unfollowed me, which convinced me to post the third empty space. That, amazingly, got 16 ‘likes’, which is more than I usually get for any Letters on Social Media images. Some people clicked ‘like’ on every single one. I hope they enjoyed the space. If you did, I’d like to hear about it, or if you found it irritating, I’d like to hear about that, too.
I’m going to keep seeking out more empty space.
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