Do we use social media
or does it use us?
That's the fundamental question
posed by artist Dave Cicirelli
in a series of works produced over
the past decade.
They include "Fakebook," a memoir
of a fabricated, increasingly
unbelievable cross-country trip
that Cicirelli documented in real
time for his followers
on Facebook.
Fake Banksy Sells Out:
A street sale of openly counterfeit
paintings in Central Park.
"All Minus One," a graphic-novel
version of John Stuart Mill's ideas
on free speech and social conformity
done in collaboration with Jonathan
Haidt and Richard V.
Reeves for Heterodox Academy.
And The Infinity Cube,
a mind blowing glass and mirrored
immersive installation that
challenges participants to
deny their urge to take a selfie.
Born in 1983 and raised
in New Jersey, Cicirelli calls
himself an experiential artist
who forces the audience to
participate in the creation of
meaning. A longtime Reason reader
who is skeptical of both government
and corporate power, he's quite
possibly the only artist
who counts comic book legend Jack
Kirby and the late Senator Barry
Goldwater among his inspirations.
Dave Cicirelli, thanks for talking
to Reason.
Thanks for talking to me.
You work in multiple
media.
How do you define yourself as an
artist?
You know, I guess the term for what
I do is "experiential art," which is
really anything that involves
audience as the art where people
interact with it in a moment, in an
experience and their reaction
or their interactions with it is
as much part of the art as
the work that I do.
You published "Fakebook: A
True Story. Based on Actual Lies."
What was "Fakebook"?
So it was 2009, I
fictionalized my Facebook
profile and with the mix of
bad Photoshop and status updates,
had everyone I ever knew
believe that I was in this
disastrous cross-country
hike. And I kind of picked that
scenario for a couple reasons.
One, is this the kind of thing
you've heard of people doing?
So it straddled that line of like,
is this real? Is it not?
What I kind of overlooked was
that people found that story
right when they couldn't look at a
spreadsheet any longer and they
logged on to Facebook for their, you
know, 32nd distraction.
And then all of a sudden there's
this guy they kind of know
doing a thing they've always kind of
thought about doing, especially in
that moment.
Right.
So suddenly all these, like, thin,
loose connections
became very real and really
resonated. And people became so
emotionally invested in
the fact that I was brave enough
to do the thing I wasn't doing,
that they became
very, very supportive in a way I
was really not prepared for.
Take us through, you know, do a
spoiler alert.
Like, what's the arc?
Yeah, I mean, it ends with a
confession. So, you know, I mean, I
start, I do it for six months and
it goes, you know,
through this whole series of kind of
interesting moments, you know, I
go to Amish country, fall
in love with this Amish girl.
I go on the lam, she ends up
cheating on me, which was compelling
because everyone had an opinion, and
everybody was 100%
convinced they knew what happened,
what side to be on, all this sort of
stuff. You know, I was a drug mule
at one point. I was in a doomsday
cult.
Like, I just kept on daring and
challenging people to find out.
Right.
You know, I mean, ultimately, when
the whole thing was confessed,
the reactions were very...they
almost had an arc, you know, which I
was, like, angry
then, like, actually that's kind of
funny.
Yeah.
Then like, wait, how did I possibly
believe any of this nonsense is kind
of interesting?
Yeah.
Again, this was 2009 I did
this. This was before fake
news was a thing.
Before influencers were
a term, but it was poking at the
right questions.
It was, you know, I mean, I had
somebody literally send
me a note, said I inspired
her to quit her job
and then, you know, immediately dry
heave because I don't have that kind
of, you know, weight.
But, you know, that idea of the
influence and all this sort of
stuff, it was all right there at the
very budding of it.
You know, does it pervert or debase
an authentic self or does it
call into question, like, you know,
are you the person you are on
Instagram or are you the person
right here in this conversation or
in your studio?
I think that's the negotiation we're
all doing. You know, like, I'd say
the two things that it kind of gave
me unique perspectives on was
fake news and influencers.
And I'll just say the influencer
one. First off, I felt very much
like I was shoveling coal
into, you know, into the
engine to make it keep moving
down the track.
It's all disposable.
It all goes away.
And just I felt my entire
life was feeding this thing,
you know, that I was subservient
to it. And I think that's got to be
what it's like.
Talk about fake news.
How does this anticipate
fake news and how are you
using that term?
And what does that say about our
kind of current moment?
Well, I think part of what
I really got away from doing
this was I had a bunch of
people I would consider very smart
believing something very stupid.
Right.
You know, so this kind of, this
general thumb nosing
attitude about fake news of like,
look at those rubes, they're too
dumb, they'll believe anything,
blah, blah, blah.
I consider that nonsense because,
again, I had very smart people
believing pure nonsense.
And the reason is, there's that
emotional hook.
You know, like I said before, I was
doing something everyone kind of
idly fantasizes about doing.
So as long as that kind of emotional
resonance is there of whatever
that fake
story is, people will
go along with it a long way.
And let's talk about the,
the fake Banksy.
Sure. You know, so one of the real
iconic things he did was the Central
Park art sale.
He set up a stall in Central Park
and they were selling original,
authenticated Banksy spray
art for $60.
He had an old man selling it.
He sold there all day, like eight
or nine hours.
Sold, I think three customers,
seven pieces, three customers
then revealed that the following
day: I did this, you all missed
it, look, nobody cares about my art
if they aren't told that, they
should care about it—which is
brilliant and great and hilarious.
So I called up Lance
Pilgrim. We've collaborated for
years and years on all kinds of
different things, and I was like,
Y"o, we got to redo this,"
but we're go to the exact same
place.
We're going to create the exact same
stall with the exact same works,
and we're going to sell them for the
exact same price, except we're going
to call it "fake Banksy."
We're going to tell everybody these
are not real Banksys and we're going
to even have legally notarized
certificates of inauthenticity
decreeing legally,
these are not Banksy's.
I know I want one just hearing
about.
Oh, it was great. And we even
brought in an old man.
We got Lance's father to be the
salesman and we sold out in less
than an hour. You know, I mean, my
favorite moment was wind knocked up
spray-painted rat off
our stand, hit a woman
in the head, and then she bought it
for $60.
You know.
People just didn't know what to
believe. They were just like,
energized, like when guy was, like,
sprinting to the ATM and being like,
don't sell, you know?
Yeah.
I felt like we completed
Banksy statement.
You know, his thing was, you know,
my artwork's all hyped.
Yeah.
And then we created his fake artwork
in the hype.
Right.
And then it sort
of became kind of a nice complement.
What, what are the takeaways of,
like, the fake Banksy project?
Because one way of reading it is
you're pranking, you know,
the people who buy it or the art
world. But that's not where you're
going, right?
No, I mean, part of what I think is
kind of fascinating about art,
in one sense, art is sort
of above value, but
an individual piece of art is pure
capitalism. It's worth exactly
what someone's willing to pay for.
Right, at a given moment.
That can that can change because Van
Gogh, you know, alive,
not worth so much.
Van Gogh dead?
Hey, you know, this is a bargain
at any price.
Right.
Is, you know, is, am I
walking by nonsense Central
Park art stall.
$60, maybe.
Am I walking by a nonsense Central
Park art stall after
Banksy, you know, made millionaires?
Yeah.
You know, wasn't about
the spray art, as Banksy put it.
It was about the, the consumers,
about us walking by or
how we react to it.
Let's do a little biography here.
You grew up in Middletown, New
Jersey.
Middletown, New Jersey.
Intimately acquainted with as it's
my hometown as well.
Your interest in immersive
reality is that linked
to your biography in
any kind of obvious way that you're,
you think about.
You know, I'd say I grew up in a
very practical kind of household, in
a very practical way.
You know, I was kind of joke.
It was like doctor, lawyer,
fireman—pick one.
You know, it's, like, basic, basic
jobs.
I started taking
drawing lessons. I was, you know,
planning on being an illustrator, a
comic book illustrator specifically.
By this guy, Guy Dorian, still one
of my very good friends.
And he taught me a couple really
good lessons, which is, one,
it's doable.
Like, you know, like just proof of
example, you can make a living.
And then the other was kind of how
to give yourself permission.
So like even around the opportunity
to write "Fakebook," I kind of
walked into a Barnes & Noble and was
like, I can't possibly be the
worst writer with, you know,
on the shelves.
I've always felt somewhat liberated
that I was doing a thing that didn't
need credentialing.
Right.
You know, in fact, I've always
kind of never even,
I've never been tempted to get like
a master's in art because I
just think you just do it, you
know, like everything I've,
every skill I have is because I had
some idea then figured
out how to do it.
And then, through trial and error
you learn, learn bunch
of shit.
At some point you became a Reason
reader as well.
Sure, yeah.
But is there a connection between a
kind of soft libertarian
sensibility and what you're doing?
Yeah, I think so.
I grew up around smart Republicans
when I was a kid, which maybe is
part of this origin story.
But my brother read me
Animal Farm when I was like,
you know, just barely, just old
enough to get it, right.
Right.
So I kind of had that kind of
inoculation against
orthodoxy.
So then when I went to college, I
kind of counterprogrammed, and I
read things like "Wealth of Nations"
and I read Barry Goldwater's
"Conscious of the Conservative" was
the thing that probably shifted me
most libertarian,
where I kind of, that, that idea of
like it's we're not obsessed
with material gain, which
is the criticism, often.
It's, like, actually it's the human
spirit. It's this idea of doing,
you know, of what your passion is,
what you're thinking is.
And I read Federalist Papers, all
this kind of stuff. So I always kind
of had that instinct.
What I kind of appreciate about
Reason, I think
maybe libertarians general position
in the culture war is they actually
have the luxury of being
consistent, you know, with their
ideology or,
you know, not be so vetted
in every single win and loss
that there was, like, a consistent,
realistic and principled
conversation and perspective
that was kind of coming through in
pushing through.
A project of yours that I
want to ask you about.
And this is something you did with
Jonathan Haidt and Heterodox
Academy and with Richard Reeves,
the Brookings Institution scholar.
It's part of John Stuart Mill's
"On Liberty" arguments
about, you know, kind of free speech
and or free thinking, really,
called "All Minus One." Can
you talk a little bit about this
project and how it fits
in to your artscape?
Yeah, I mean, there was A, it was
just kind of an honor to work on it.
I was, you know, admirer
of John's work, and I kind of
reached out and he's like, I
like what you do.
This is what I do.
Let me know if what I do is
useful to what you do.
And, you know, John tends to have an
answer, you know, like, so
yeah, I mean, I read "On Liberty" is
part of that counter-program back in
the day, but the idea of it was
as kind of cultural censorship
is taking rise and people are,
you know, starting to view words as
violence. And, you know, this kind
of base instinct to silence
was sort of reemerging
in our, in our culture as a
puritanical force.
It was, you know, this work is
really relevant.
The idea was parse it down,
make it really digestible and
distribute it freely to college
campuses and high schools as part
of a curriculum effort and make the
work accessible.
And then it was my job again to kind
of distill even further into these
images that would really evoke and
drive it further.
And to me, it's, you know, the
general idea here is the most
central to anything to really should
be all creative work, which
is, you know, the freedom to poke
and ask questions.
I mean, that's, that's what it's
about. It's, you know, maybe you're
right or maybe you need to fold
a piece of other perspectives
and other wisdoms tp create the
truth. And sort of this shifting
of, of this idea
of truth, of being something you own
versus truth being the end
result of a process of finding it
out.
So let's talk about The Infinity
Cube, which is your kind
of current main focus?
Yeah, so I really like to think of
it more of a canvas than a single
piece of art, but obviously
I'm not the first person to point
mirrors at each other.
You got Yayoi Kusama, you've got
Hall of Mirrors, you've got
your mom's bathroom in the eighties.
It's been done.
But this is unique in a couple of
ways. Number one, you'll notice it's
motion, it's video-based.
It's kinetic, it's moving, and that
sort of creates a kaleidoscopic
experience.
Two, you'll notice not only is
there a screen, but you see past the
screen. So when you look through it,
you get that kind of uninterrupted
depth. So it's just like just
reflections.
Can we go inside?
Absolutely.
And when you're inside,
you can't see outside.
Correct.
Well, like we are, I mean, I'm
saying a perfect reflection of us,
but they're seeing
you and me chatting.
They're seeing us chatting, and
they're seeing all the reflections
around us.
So our image is being reproduced
and replicated and degrading
in all directions.
Is this a commentary on
like we live in a world now
because of social media or
technology where there
are a million versions of
us everywhere.
I mean yeah.
And they're all a little bit
different.
I think the metaphorical quality
of this space is exactly
that. You step in, you put
yourself on display to an audience
you can't see.
But they're out there.
But you forget that.
You forget that.
Your relationship to the work or to
anything really is, Are you
in front of it or is it in front of
you?
Mm hmm.
You know, that's the real tension.
And if you put yourself in front of
it, then you kind of make everything
kind of submissive to your own
vanity. You want your trophy?
I'm at the Sistine Chapel.
Let me put my face
in front of Michelangelo's work,
because Lord knows my face
is more important.
Like, come on. But if you let
yourself sit and let yourself absorb
and have it be in front of you
and in this case, wrapped all around
you, then you do actually
kind of transcend that moment.
And what I can do with the lighting
trick is that if you give in and you
want to take your picture, we
make that choice that you made very
real by changing the lighting.
And then all of a sudden the whole
audience can see you and you're
exposed, which is what you wanted.
But it's not what you wanted, but it
is what you wanted.
And it's sort of that tension is
where I think this thing can
really transcend just being kind of
a visually beautiful and cool
experience and actually kind of
really deliver on that idea of
experiential art and making the
audience that the
piece, the center of it.
The Infinity Cube has gone on tour,
you've been like the
baseball Major League Baseball All
Star Game, the Juno Awards,
the Canadian Grammy Awards.
Why are these large organizations
paying you to drag this thing out to
their events?
Kind of the exact opposite of what I
want to prove.
They want really cool pictures.
If Donald Trump walked into
the Infinity Cube, would he
explode or would it explode?
I don't know.
That's a good question.
I mean, I know there would be a rift
in the time–space continuum.
Yeah, it just depends how
comfortable it is looking at
himself.
I think it's very comfortable.
Might be.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what?
We're going to leave it there.
We've been talking with Dave
Cicirelli.
Thanks for talking to Reason.
Thanks for talking to me.