Learning To Love You More: Individualism, intimacy, and intersubjectivity within online participatory art
Assignment #37: Write down a recent argument.
The next time you have an argument, write down what you and the other person said to each other. Write this in a script form, like:
Me: You said you would do the dishes if I made dinner.
Henry: What? I'm going to do them. I just don't want to do them immediately. Some people like to digest first.
etc
Try to be really accurate, capturing the real words that were used. If there was important movement this can be included in parentheses: (Henry turns on the tv.) The argument need not be long or dramatic, it can be brief and seemingly petty. The most important thing is that it be an accurate record of the exchange. If possible, ask the person you were arguing with to also complete this assignment and submit a separate report. This person can either use the same argument (if they have a different memory of it) or another argument with you or someone else.
Between 2002 and 2009, Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher uploaded a total of seventy assignments of this nature onto learningtoloveyoumore.com, the website of their project Learning to Love You More (hereafter LTLYM). Through this platform, the artists invited participants create and upload artworks in the form of reports. The assignment prompts ranged from the briefly accomplished, playful, and mundane (Assignment #9: Draw a constellation from someone's freckles) to the elaborate, laborious, and profound (Assignment #4: Start a lecture series). July and Fletcher likened the prescriptive nature of these assignments to a recipe, a meditation practice, or a familiar song, set with the intention of guiding people towards a more ‘authentic experience’ and a new way of ‘feeling the everyday’ (July and Fletcher 2007) after noticing that their most joyful and profound experiences often arose while following other’s instructions—that the moment they let go of trying to be original, they felt something new, which was ‘the whole point of being artists in the first place’ (ibid.).
The rise of the Internet at the turn of the century offered artists interested in participation a platform to engage a broader, more diverse network of contributors. While the Internet expanded outreach, enabled global connections, and encouraged self-expression, it also raised concerns about the decline of authentic social interaction (Czudaj 2016: 25). LTLYM was situated in the midst of this field of tension, illustrating the dual role of the Internet as both a hindrance and a catalyst for the objectives of participatory art.
At the inception of LTLYM, July and Fletcher were already aware of the isolating potential of the Web, envisioning art as a means to offer ‘aesthetic and affective tools’ to navigate the psychological and social consequences of technology (Balestrini 2015: 132). Both before and after LTLYM, July’s practice has critically engaged with the Internet, exploring possibilities of reconciling spirituality and affect with technological advancement. As Fletcher explained, their focus was not on the website itself: rather, they were interested in ‘getting people to leave the website and go do something’ (SFMOMA 2019). The website of LTLYM was merely the activation point, while the aim of the project was to encourage participants to have in meaningful experiences and interactions ‘out in the world’ (ibid.); the assignments of LTLYM required participants withdrawing from the computer and communicating with other human beings. The project’s relational microterritories (Bourriaud 2010)—settings in which participants interacted and engaged in a shared experience—alternated between offline engagement during the creation of responses, and online connections which overcame geographical distance. If Bourriaud sees participatory art as grounded in the sphere of human relations, LTLYM engaged with ‘the sphere of human relations as mediated by technology' (Literat 2012: 2972).
LTLYM not only blurred the realms of online and offline intimacy but also complicated the dichotomy of “artist” as producer and “audience” as consumer. While art has long relied on the constant re-examination of human relations, artists engaged in participatory practices advanced this relationality to the point where intersubjectivity became not just the context for the artwork’s reception, but its very essence (Bourriaud 2002: 22). Although the Internet offered a platform that facilitated this collaboration and co-creation, involving the public as contributors to an artwork was no new impulse. Participation in art can be traced back to Bertolt Brecht’s radio theory—that every receiver should also become a transmitter—and Walter Benjamin’s 1934 assertion that every author should enable others to become authors themselves. LTLYM was influenced by numerous historical precedents in participatory art, the most notable being Fluxus. Founded in 1960, this artistic movement valued collaboration, accessibility, and playfulness, integrating art into the everyday and prioritising presence and creation over the final product.
Participatory art does not attempt to motivate the audience to create high art. Instead, it takes its inspiration from the private sphere, embracing what Bryan-Wilson calls the ‘annexation of everyday life into the realm of art’ (2007: 144). This approach is of interest to artists who seek to demystify the traditional “artist” position and dismantle hierarchical distinctions between artists, subjects, and the public—wherein artists occupy a position of pedagogical or creative mastery, subjects are governed by artists’ parameters, and the public are mere spectators. Joseph Beuys is known for advocating a more inclusive reconceptualization of art based on his belief in the inherent creative potential and expressive abilities of people in their everyday lives (Literat 2012: 2973). This act of believing in, of giving of opportunities to, makes up the core of LTLYM—not, as Beuys’ well-known exhortation goes, that “everyone is an artist,” but rather the empowering possibility that “every can become an artist.” Fletcher had previously formed collaborations with people about aspects of their lives that might have otherwise gone unnoticed, and LTLYM assignments similarly enabled participants to achieve insights into aspects of their lives they likely never considered as art. As Czudaj notes, such opportunities to view the ordinary as extraordinary is ‘deeply motivating’ (2016: 42).
Another key principle of participatory art is to render the audience visible and, more importantly, active: participants not only follow the artist’s instruction and intent, but ‘actively expand and shape the understanding and experience’ of the artwork (Frieling 2016: 232). This activation functions in opposition to the passive consumption of art that accompanied sociocultural shifts in late capitalism (Bishop 2012). In this sense, the emergence of participatory practice can be understood as a reflection of the commodification of experience and the decline of social relations, as contemporary communities are increasingly led to favour individual fulfilment rather than communally orientated goals or collective identity (Wu Song 2009: 129). LTLYM can thus be considered an example of a genre of online participatory art which no longer responds to an excess of signs and commodities, ‘but to a lack of connections’ and social bonds (Czudaj 2016: 25), which it seeks to restore through a ‘collective elaboration of meaning’ (Bishop 2006: 12). Over its seven active years, LTLYM connected over eight-thousand participants worldwide, turning them into “semionauts” (Bourriaud 2010) who navigated the signs within the artworks uploaded to the platform, facilitating the circulation of meaning among one another and challenging the receptive spectatorial gaze.
Although it may seem antithetical to the principles of participatory art that the participants willingly adhered to July and Fletcher’s instructions, the uses of “assignment” and “learning” in the project’s vocabulary implied the initiation of a process—a form of collective education which did not come from the artists as “teachers,” but which was shared amongst participants. The effort to make something was at the heart of each assignment, while the framing of each report seemed to contribute to a larger collective effort. The assignments were thus a ‘coursework for learning together about internal desires’ (Bryan-Wilson 2007: 146), however imperfect.
While it is tempting to view LTLYM through an optimistic, micro-utopian lens, doing so risks neglecting the complexities of creative agency, artistic hierarchies, access, and even the efficacy of participatory art in realising its intentions. For example, despite not the producing the artworks themselves, July and Fletcher implicitly remained the omniscient, virtuous artists who orchestrated the work of the contributors, assigning the assignment prompts as they saw fit. Fletcher acknowledged that if ‘there wasn't an archive that existed’—one he and July simply thought would be ‘nice to have access to’—the LTLYMwebsite served as a ‘device’ that gave them the power and means to create it (SFMOMA 2019). He viewed the prompts as interventions through which to encourage participants ‘to do things they wouldn't normally do’ but which he and July ‘thought would be good for them’ (ibid.). While the participants perceived their involvement as autonomous or collaborative, they were unknowingly guided by July and Fletcher towards outputs that served their overarching artistic narrative. Thus, while LTLYM emphasised interactivity, public participation, and the decentralisation of the artists, these qualities did not preclude the complex, obscure, and potentially exploitative artist-participant hierarchies which participatory art attempts to avoid.
Despite maintaining minimal barriers to participation, LTLYM also nonetheless excluded more people than it acknowledged. At the project’s conception, the Internet was far less accessible than it is today, making universal participation unfeasible. Even for those with online access, discovering the project was unlikely unless they were already familiar with July or Fletcher’s practices. LTLYM consequently attracted a homogenous participant group—described by July as the ‘technologically privileged who have the means to retreat into interconnected, yet solipsistic digital realms’ (2011: 57)—and led to assignments which confirmed the American ‘middle-class luxury of wanting to talk about the self’ (Czudaj 2016: 69). Neither the homogeneity nor the identities of LTLYM users were necessarily faults; in order to build a trusting environment that enables the sharing of intimate details online, common identifying denominators must be established among participants (ibid.: 58). But if LTLYM attempted to connect and empower a fragmented public sphere, the inaccessibility of the Web and the project itself functioned as constraining structures for its democratic ambitions. In its failing to address this demographic deficiency, LTLYM subdued—rather than revealed—the imbalances and exclusions within the Web, undermining its ability to create genuinely accessible and inclusive spaces.
In uploading and externalising their intimate personal experiences, the LTLYM reports occupied a liminal space between private realisation and public confession. The website implied that participants could find relief in revealing their offline experiences to strangers online (Balestrini 2015: 137). However, it is crucial to distinguish between genuinely understanding and acknowledging others, and merely evoking the impression of doing so (ibid.: 139). The Internet-mediated social relations of LTLYM often took on a sanitised, impersonal quality, partly due to the anonymous nature of its participants who were free to enter and leave the project at will. This absence of any requirement for sustained commitment arguably reduced the reports to controlled and comfortable exchanges, falling short of the vulnerability and sustained communication necessary for developing trust and genuine community.
Without this foundation, LTLYM became more of a platform for inconsequential self-exposition or voyeuristic glimpses into unfamiliar lives, with one’s report serving as an artefact to satisfy another’s voyeuristic curiosity, provide transient entertainment, or offer superficial reassurance that they aren’t all that alone in their strange and lonely human experience. For the voyeur, the reports only allowed for a fragment of another’s life—decontextualised and devoid of subjectivity—inviting projections of their own feelings and resulting in ‘deceptively impersonal exchanges’ (Balestrini 2015: 128). For the confessor, LTLYM could not relieve the lack of genuine online social relations, as the limited acknowledgment and affirmation fell short of what was necessary for emotional fulfilment. The “relational” aspect of LTLYM thus aligned less with Bourriard’s notion of social interaction and more with the individual’s introspective relationship to their own ‘opaque desires and muted longings’ (Bryan-Wilson 2007: 146).
July and Fletcher’s project, while influenced by utopian ideals and American myths of ‘emotionally fulfilling social relationships fostered by progressive technology’ (Balestrini 2015: 127), is critiqued for failing to achieve broader political ambitions—objectives the project itself never explicitly claimed. As Bryan-Wilson (2007) aptly asks, what if the goals LTLYM were far less grandiose? While LTLYMmay have lacked a direct social or political agenda, it remains worthwhile even when its value lies in the nuanced, emotional, and affective relationships it facilitated. July and Fletcher did not use the project to advance a singular political vision, recruit for a totalising social movement, or propose LTLYM as the singular solution to individualism and internet isolation. Instead, their incentives were modest and twofold: through their assignments, they sought to ‘bring people together’ and ‘give them a new way to feel something’ (2007: 155). LTLYM was at its most successful when participants’ interpretations simultaneously fulfilled and unsettled or the assignment’s instructions, subverting the expectations of the artists. By positioning the act of creation at the heart of each assignment, the project allowed for unpredictability and play in both in its light-hearted and its darker, more complex dimensions—even seemingly straightforward instructions could transform from mundane to fantastical (Bryan-Wilson 2007: 145).
The unique strength of LTLYM resided in its ability to transcend mere self-reflection; in their ‘humour, honesty, and unsettling familiarity’ (Bryan-Wilson 2007: 146), the reports invited participants to lay their own narratives onto them, encouraging empathy and intersubjectivity. The project relied on the participants’ ability to observe and appreciate others’ stories and creations, with some assignments prompting direct engagement with previous reports. For example, Assignment #38: Act out someone else’s argument required participants to select a submission from the preceding assignment and perform it. By facilitating the recreation of one another’s vulnerable moments, the project encouraged creative interactions with both others’ and one’s own experiences through relational art. In doing so, LTLYM created opportunities for meaningful engagement and online connection.
These intersubjective emotional experiences align with Lauren Berlant’s “intimate publics”—spaces where personal emotions are refracted through collective contexts (2011: 226). By inviting participants to share, revisit, and reinterpret moments of tenderness and vulnerability—be it nostalgia (Assignment #45: Reread your favorite book from fifth grade), grief (Assignment #31: Spend time with a dying person), yearning (Assignment #52: Write the phone call you wish you could have), or regret (Assignment #53: Give advice to yourself in the past)—LTLYM encourages an emotional novelty that transcends creative inertia and online isolation. These virtual relational microterritories can thus be viewed as Berlantian efforts to create alternative frameworks for a ‘more lovable and intimate sociality’ (ibid.: 227), enriching both online and offline connections through shared empathy and artistic exchange.
While the content submitted to LTLYM is finite, the website’s archive remains an endless reservoir of surprises. Each response renews the urge to look further and uncover intricate stories within the over eight thousand submissions, which capture the ‘frequently wild, sometimes hilarious, and quietly stunning creative lives’ of individuals living on Earth during the project’s active years (July and Fletcher 2007). As Fletcher noted, the lasting fascination with the project lies in ‘the different variations on how people approach the same set of instructions when they're not trying to be different. They just are’ (SF MOMA 2019). In an increasingly algorithm-driven world, it is rare and exciting to witness people completing the same activity in different ways, revealing the plurality of the human experience through their unique yet overlapping realities.
Almost two decades after the project’s conclusion, co-created online spaces for play and social connection are more vital than ever. With Meta and other profit-oriented corporations monopolising the Web—commodifying communications, social interactions, and harvesting vast amounts of data—the digital landscape risks becoming ‘one giant surveillance machine’ (Medosch 2016: 376). Opportunities for online engagement removed from the pressures of reputation, profit, and production are thus ever-more sparce. LTLYM offers an inspiring alternative: an artist-run, non-commercial digital platform where play and creativity are valued for their own sake, embodying the potential for experimental and emancipatory media which resists the homogenisation of the contemporary Web.
Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher’s LTLYM revealed both the hierarchal and exclusive shortcomings as well as the intersubjective and intimate triumphs of online participatory art. LTLYM prompts us to envision how such projects can be adapted to enhance online access and creativity empowerment without compromising participatory practice’s fundamental qualities. Empowerment through digital technologies is not a ‘foregone conclusion—there is no automated utopia sitting there like a ghost in the machine’ (Medosch 2016: 376). Instead, it is a continuous process, requiring political will, collective action, and creativity. Ultimately, LTLYM has demonstrated that art can create new emotional experiences for those who choose to seek them.
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