#ArchinectMeets is a series of interviews with members of the architecture community that use Instagram as a creative medium. With the series, we ask some of Instagram’s architectural photographers, producers and curators about their relationship to the social media platform and how it has affected their practice.
Social media has undeniably affected the way we perceive, interpret and share opinions about architecture today. While we use our own account, @Archinect, as a site for image curation and news content, we wanted to ask fellow Instagram users how they navigated the platform.
We spoke to Ryan Scavnicky, the meme extraordinaire behind @sssscavvvv. Marshall Mcluhan's maxim, "the medium is the message," is nowhere more tested than with his class-bending Instagram posts, where a cryptic essay on Object Oriented Ontology can be interrogated by a forcefully skewed image under Clip Art text. Between his Instagram and his teaching fellowship at the School of Architecture at Taliesin, Scavnicky interrupts the self seriousness of the profession to reach Architecture's core intention: to delight, to surprise and to make evident the absurdity of living in spaces of our own creation.
What is your relationship to architecture?
I develop agencies for architectural practice. I am the visiting teaching fellow at the School of Architecture at Taliesin and I started Extra Office in 2017.
How did @sssscavvvv begin?
TLDR; praxis.
Long answer: My account started like any other, with a selfie of me in my apartment. At the time, architecture memes were just something I shared with some friends. Back then, meme formats were slow to evolve and, as such, difficult or awkward to hold architectural content.
Separately, I grew frustrated with the status quo of architects using the medium to simply post pictures of their work or renderings etc and hope for a repost by a larger account like @superarchitects, @Amazing.Architecture, @next_top_architects etc to gain followers. Since those pages have no clear curation strategy, they aren't really gathering an architectural position, only accelerating its discord.
Eventually, I found memes to be the best (and sneakiest) way to insert criticism, theory, and discourse into the online culture of architecture and its resulting agency.
What have you hoped to communicate about architecture or the built environment through your posts?
I take very seriously the idea that we need not be so serious.
How do you incorporate the lessons you've learned from your Instagram account to your teaching fellowship?
I encourage students that they must be their own filter. In addition, they should find like-minded colleagues across disciplines and institutions and connect with them.
What do you believe are the limits to the meme as a medium for communicating the thoughts and concerns of the architectural profession, if any?
There are no limits. Anything can be communicated, but not everything can be understood. Good humor isn't universally understood; who will get the joke? How do we define the discipline without fully understanding the border between itself and the broader public?
That is what I set out to do with my Instagram as much as I can. When humor or criticism can be understood by an ingroup and an outgroup there is an inevitable change to the ingroup.
Your memes not only challenge the seriousness assumed by the field of architecture, but also the cleanliness and claims to authenticity of its image production. Beyond producing a unique form of architectural criticism, do you believe memes might affect the way architecture is produced?
Internet memes start and accelerate trends as social media images, but also the 'floating stair' and 'corner problem' can be thought of as memes. They aren't themselves forms of production but the material of discursive production.
Has Instagram (or social media in general) affected your views toward the profession?
Yes, and it shows that we are greatly lacking the ability to be critical about how images augment architectural agency.
Do you post your work anywhere else online? Is Instagram your social media channel of choice?
Right now I am focused on Instagram specifically, but I also work with the same friends who shared my hunch years ago to manage Dank Lloyd Wright on Facebook.
Do you have a meme you are particularly proud of?
This was the turning point in January this year when I confirmed to myself "whoah this could really go somewhere, and I have to keep it going."
What are some of your favorite Instagram profiles to follow?
Assuming the audience has enough suggestions for architecture, these accounts offer the most unique perspectives on the future of digital art and/or criticism: @noeloquence, @gayvapeshark, @the.brisk.god, @truewagner, @calkearns and @arthandlermag
2 Comments
One of the best social media pages out there!
#canonizesssscavvvv
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