About three years ago, due to unpleasant experiences with social networks, I had the idea to post the word „Love“ on Instagram for a year to increase good vibes on the internet and to see what or if something happens. My self-imposed rules were:
1. only post the word „love“. Only in English, for general readability.
2. „Love“ can be self-written, but should mainly be everyday encounters of the word in public space: Graffiti, advertising, etc.
The start of the project was postponed until 2021, as it seemed unlikely that I would be able to write a „daily love post“ with my baby, but then one day in June 2021 I started spontaneously in my artist studio. I typed the first „Love“ quite „classically“ in the look of my minimalist text works with a typewriter on paper. What followed were a few weeks in which I primarily „wrote“ the word myself in some form or another (using tomato paste on toast, made from flowers and office supplies) and combined photos I took in public spaces with screenshots of „Love“ from the Google Translator. The multilingualism and translations of „Love“ seemed to me perfect for the intended „Love & Peace“ vibe – but it soon turned out that not all languages were displayed in such a way that a clear screenshot was possible (there were difficulties with Arabic or Hebrew, for example). So I stopped this posting strategy, also considered deleting the Translator posts, but finally decided to leave them as they were in order not to distort the project. The screenshots had now also created a new form of Love Post, namely posting the word as a screenshot. From then on, I began to alienate screenshots when using them for a Post, after all it was only about the word „Love“ as an excerpt.
However, from the beginning, the meditative and conditioning aspect of the daily love post was much more interesting to me than these technical details oft he posts. The project was also designed as a kind of short daily meditation, a short concentration on love. At the beginning, there were days and moments when I was annoyed by this self-imposed task, because „Love“ was not visible far and wide and a post was sometimes stressful. But that subsided over the weeks. Because the conditioning worked amazingly well, the confidence to meet a daily „Love“ manifested itself. On some days I consciously searched for the word on the street, in books etc. But this transitioned more and more into trusting an encounter. Regardless of whether I was out and about in the city or on the internet, towards the end of the 365 days, an almost natural finding of „love“ emerged in everyday life. My husband, who was the only one who knew about this project, was more and more amazed at where I saw it everywhere. This feedback from a companion of the project was very important for me not to consider the obviously accomplished conditioning as insignificant or a trifle. On the contrary. It made me even more aware of how blatantly we can condition ourselves, how our attention works, how strongly we can influence our consciousness – and how impressionable we are by others/things. After 365 days of focusing on „Love“, I now see such beautiful „Love“ lettering everywhere that it was almost difficult for me to finish the project. Sometimes I still take pictures of the lettering. But I don’t want to prolong the project artificially, but leave this kind of case study with all its initial problems and developments as it is.
Another key aspect of the project was its anonymity. I deliberately created an anonymous Instagram account, calling it „your daily love post“. Initially, I used others like #graffiti in addition to the hashtag #love, but soon limited myself to just #love. On the one hand, for reasons of time, on the other hand, because I wanted to concentrate exclusively on this one word. I didn’t advertise the account anywhere – after all, anonymity was the declared rule. The Outcome is: To this day, the account has no followers. A few „loves“ were liked, but only a few. The only time a bot reacted directly to a post was to a picture where I exceptionally posted „Love“ and „Hate“ together. Bots therefore only react to the term „hate“ (at least for 365 posts of „love“).
What else needs to be said about the project: I did not always succeed in posting daily. Sometimes there was too much going on in my private or professional life and it was suddenly after midnight. I started on 4 June 2021 and finished the project on 19 June 2022. Every now and then I used a Love twice, e.g. as a larger section, if embedded in an interesting lettering – at the beginning also because there was this plan to delete all Google Translator „Love“ again. As the project progressed, I occasionally used lettering where the word „love“ is embedded in a certain context in order to let different aspects of „love“ be heard. In this way, the entire reading of the 365 posts also results in a bit of love storytelling.
Conclusion:
As a conclusion of the project/this kind of artistic case study I can say that the project has brought me many surprising insights and my love meditation/conditioning continues to do me a lot of good. I can sincerely advise to try it out for yourself. Love is everywhere. And daily concentration on it is important, as hate is much more present and in demand. This is not esoteric. It’s „Love is the r/evolution“ – as a street art slogan currently very present in Berlin says. It also made me want to do more anonymous online art projects. We’ll see what’s next.
Love
Victoria