“#florence” is a video installation by Harshini J. Karunaratne that examines images posted to Instagram that are hashtagged ‘Florence’. Hundreds of images of Florence are posted everyday on Instagram alone, and thousands of hashtags along with them. The use of the hashtag, indicated by a word following the ‘#’ symbol, was intended to group posts together in order to easily locate specific content. However, hashtags are often generic, limiting, or simply do not provide any sense of context to the image.
This installation detaches the hashtags from their images in order to examine the words associated with the city. What image of the city is evoked from #s alone? How do #s enrich or devalue the city? The installation also composites photographs of the city taken by the artist in order to reflect on the value of image making at a time when similar kinds of images are easily created, shared and consumed. |
