What would happen if you archived all of your Instagram content, announced that you had taken a job at a fictional wellness company, and then got fired for disclosing your experience with company-mandated colonic hydrotherapy? Well, Leigh Stein did exactly that.
Leigh wears many hats—novelist, poet, cultural critic, book coach, publishing expert. And when she realized that she wasn't wearing the hat she wanted to wear on Instagram, she decided to have some fun with a satirical performance art project.
Listen for the whole story and a provocation to embrace your own social media use as a project of identity performance!
Footnotes:
- Leigh Stein's books and cultural criticism
- Leigh Stein on Instagram, TikTok, and Substack
- Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
- Judith Butler on Why Is This Happening with Chris Hayes
- Sarah Urist Green on performance art for The Art Assignment
- Performance by RoseLee Goldberg
- "From Work to Text" by Roland Barthes
- RuPaul explaining drag on The Preachers
Also in this series:
- Organizing Indie Labor with Chiarra Lohr of the Indie Sellers Guild
- Figuring Out the Creator Economy with Charlie Gilkey & Kate Tyson
- Building Solidarity in the Creator Economy with Charlie Gilkey & Kate Tyson
- Rethinking Creativity: An Interlude
Find an essay version of this episode at whatworks.fyi
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I'm teaching a new workshop on May 15 & 16, 2024! It's called World-Building for Business Owners, and it's based on a process I've been honing for more than a decade. I'll help you apply creative, even playful thinking to your business strategy—and help you create an internally consistent business that causes fewer headaches, meets your needs more efficiently, plays to your strengths, and creates satisfying work.
Click here for all the details or go to explorewhatworks.com/world
- (00:00) - Digital performance art?
- (02:27) - Identity is performative
- (03:11) - Gender Trouble
- (04:38) - Leigh doubles down
- (06:46) - Leigh's "Canva period"
- (07:24) - Autofanfiction
- (08:08) - "I've been fired!"
- (09:38) - What is performance art?
- (10:47) - The real vitamin company has entered the chat
- (12:42) - What if we embrace the performance?
- (14:14) - Time to sell some books
- (14:52) - The confession
- (15:42) - Witness to and participant in
- (19:05) - Thinking from the reader's point of view
- (20:29) - Leigh's other identity performances
- (22:59) - Learning TikTok
- (25:28) - The audience participates in the text
- (27:27) - An optimistic view of social media
- (28:57) - Playing the game
- (30:10) - Credits