Cover image: Dominic Quagliozzi, Wreath OR Cockring?, 2012. Screenshot, 2023, Firefox 108.0.1 on MacOS 12.4, https://wreathorcockring.tumblr.com.
Following an open call and selection process, Rhizome has added nearly two dozen artist-made Tumblrs to the Rhizome ArtBase, our archive of more than 2000 born-digital artworks. Selected with a jury via a public open call, these artworks mark the second formal accessions since the ArtBase relaunched in April 2021, following the Executable Poetry open call in December 2021.
Artists were invited to submit Tumblrs that were relevant to three categories:
🎭Performance and portraiture, selected with artist Molly Soda,
🖌3D graphics, selected with internet culture expert Ari Spool, and
🤡Memes & Macros, selected with artist RaFia Santana.
Works were evaluated based on artistic excellence (as the jurors define it), relevance to the ArtBase collection, and adherence to the theme. Selected works were then archived using Conifer, Rhizome’s hosted service for archiving the dynamic web. (Note to other would-be Tumblr archivists: Conifer is free to use, with up to 5GB of storage offered at no cost).
These selections represent just a few traces of the many past artistic practices on Tumblr, where users have built rich communities and subcultures that developed distinct ideas and aesthetics with bewildering speed, and often disappeared just as quickly. Our hope is that these archived works will be complemented by additional writing, interviews, and other kinds of contextualization in the future.
Special thank you to Zion Douglass, Dragan Espenschied, and Mona Ulrich for their work on this project.
Without further ado, the new accessions are as follows:
animated text, animatedtext, 2012—Present.
For this Tumblr, the artist utilized the 3D graphics and animation software Xara 3D Maker to render sassy, often viral phrases and sayings into rebloggable, colorful text GIFs and graphics.
LaTurbo Avedon, new sculpt, 2012—2015.
newsculpt is an aggregation of Avedon’s original 3D rendered objects.
Andrew Benson, Wolf + Unicorn, 2014—2018.
“Wolf + Unicorn was a project that I produced anonymously—inspired by the kind of listless and self-destructive memes and the kinds of sexual identity politics that were popular with teens on Tumblr at the time. I don't normally work in this kind of narrative or cartoon-driven way, but I was interested in how a loose story could be told, and characters/relationships/archetypes developed through a series of looping vignettes. It was a project really made to exist in its own time in the social space of Tumblr where young people were exploring and establishing new kinds of relationships online. It had a pretty short run all considered, and came late in the Tumblr life-cycle, but it remains as a strange side project that had some potential.”
Biarritzzz, 314rritzzz, 2016—Present.
Experiments in online self-portraiture and self-representation are compiled on this Tumblr, which features custom-coded backgrounds and collaged and processed GIFs. The Tumblr was previously private, and some of the projects it includes were originally published on other accounts that were taken down due to limits on “pornographic” content. It also acts as a repository for the performance, reblogada (it’s not me, it’s the internet.), which revolved around a self-portrait that was circulated on porn and fetish Tumblrs.
Carl Burton, carlburton, 2011—Present.
Artist Carl Burton uses their Tumblr as a portfolio site to document finished and in-progress original works, including 3D renderings, GIFs, screenshots of itch.io games, and video stills.
Vincent Charlebois, dailywiki, 2009—2019.
"I am an artist working with networks and nature. dailywiki was a place on tumblr where I listed links to wikipedia pages. A directory of places, ideas and artworks. An archive of distant towns, opposing worldviews and forgotten masterpieces. As you scroll through the page, you might be able to guess where I was, what I was reading, or the stories I heard. Since then, I have planted over a million trees and continue to experiment with recursive world containers."
Cole Chickering, womans-day, 2010—Present.
womans-day is a Tumblr loosely inspired by “Woman’s Day”, a monthly print magazine that covers topics such as homemaking, nutrition, and fashion, targeted at female readers. In this project, Chickering collects commercial print images and other found/archival images (sourced from textbooks, magazines, catalogs) and aggregates them to showcase out-of-context media interpretations of late 20th century womanhood.
Christopher Clary, FkN JPGs on Tumblr, 2016—2017.
“FkN JPGs is a series where the artist becomes what he desires. Every week in 2016, Christopher Clary recreated and performed an image from his porn collection live on Cam4, an adult streaming website. Afterwards, he archived each performance to Tumblr. The blog theme overlays videos, photos, and chat to create a massive texture, an infinite scroll of becoming. Much was lost in 2018 when Tumblr banned pornography and offending posts were hidden and labeled in “violation of our Community Guidelines,” yet the algorithms didn't catch everything. Then in 2022 Tumblr changed their ban and promised a more welcoming “home for art and artists who publish mature content.” In actuality, the moderators were back at it—picking at FkN JPGs and eventually redirecting the blog to a dashboard view-only, without a trace of prior flagged content. Currently, Clary is working with Rhizome to appeal Tumblr's decision so the blog can be archived in its original form on ArtBase. Until then, experience what's left on Tumblr. In addition, the poetry collective TROLL THREAD published documentation of the deplatforming of FkN JPGs.”
Pamela Council, blaxidermy, 2010—2017.
“This Tumblr was the origin of my current artistic practice, which centers (what I now call) my Afro-Americana Camp Aesthetic, BLAXIDERMY. But originally, BLAXIDERMY was my Tumblr evidence board for connecting the dots between our culture's love for/derision of Black aesthetics combined with a lust for Black death porn.”
Cybertwee, cybertwee, 2015—2019
“We were specifically interested in creating a visual aesthetic to contrast the gritty dystopian aggressive depictions of the future in science fiction. We used Tumblr to moodboard and curate art, movies, anime, culture, design and fashion that we felt shared a thematic similarity that always existed, but didn’t have a name.”
Vivian Fu, vivian-fu, 2012—2020.
This Tumblr served as a personal photo diary for photographer Vivian Fu. Over the course of eight years, Fu documented intimate moments from her life—self-portraits, moments with her friends and partner Tim, travel photos—and shared them on her public Tumblr page.
Julian Glander, glanderco, 2012—Present.
3D artist Julian Glander uses their Tumblr as a portfolio site to share original 3D animated GIFs, graphics and videos.
Penny Goring, pgorig, 2009—Present.
Portfolio site of artist Penny Goring which features drawings, paintings, sculpture, personal photographs, GIFs, image macros, videos, documentation of her art gallery installations, works in progress, poetry, and text posts.
Celine Lassus, Neighborly-Action, 2020.
“Navigate the stench of white passive aggression as you sort through the different web pages of Neighborly Action—complete with Karens and their disturbing Internet searches.”
Jack Madden, SlurpeeBlog, 2014—Present.
This Tumblr is an ongoing visual record of slurpees and icees consumed by Jack Madden, created in 2014. All photos are time stamped and appear in many different scenarios, alongside a wide variety of objects, including a Christmas tree, two-way EMS radio, and pumpkin, to name a few.
Chiara Moioli, REAL_DANCING_GIRL, 2013.
“I’ve been dancing ever since I was created back in the days. With the rise of the internet I became a vernacular symbol of freedom among the net, and a source of inspiration for countless users in the pre-history of the web. The advent of social networks brought a severe change in the aesthetic of the internet; that's why I felt the need to renew my look, giving myself a more “topical” appearance. But don't be fooled by this: my 'hula' remains the same ;-) Feel free—as you’ve always been—to make me dance among your web universe!”
Dominic Quagliozzi, Wreath OR Cockring?, 2012.
“Blurring the line between wreath and cockring.”
Mario Santamaría, the-camera-in-the-mirror, 2014—Present.
This Tumblr shows behind-the-scenes documentation of a camera capturing an interior space, subsequently revealing itself in a mirrored reflection in the process.The interiors typically belong to that of royal, prestigious institutions—the Hungarian Opera and the Teatro della Pergola are both pictured. In some photos, the presence of the camera is jarring and intrusive, in others, it camouflages itself into its surroundings.
Solo Jazz, solojazz, 2012—2016.
This Tumblr documents the origins of the 2012 “Solo Jazz” meme, which employs the instantly recognizable Jazz design, found on widely used wax paper Solo cups throughout the 1990s. Early one morning in February 2012, user arjununcle logged in to the image chatroom dump.fm and posted some image "altars" incorporating the cup. These posts inspired a multi-day image editing session, where users enthusiastically remixed the Jazz design onto a wide array of everyday objects. Over the next few months, the meme spread across Tumblr, Facebook, and the broader Internet, culminating in a crowd-sourced effort in 2015 to identify the design’s previously anonymous author, Gina Ekiss. In 2016, the Dart corporation, which had acquired Solo a few years before, sent a complaint to Tumblr over this blog, claiming trademark infringement. Tumblr, which had just been acquired by Yahoo, de-listed the blog's URL in response.
Twee Whistler, twee whistler, 2016—2019.
“I often find myself analyzing fan communities; I am fascinated by how their social hierarchy is based on knowledge rather than economic power or by how their productivity is capable of overcoming and stratifying above that of the original product. I was wondering what it would mean to place in the same economic system fan art that was, in turn, the same product (an artwork) offered by another artist. Besides questioning the meaning of authorship, quotationism, copyright, production and post-production I want to play on the limits of privacy and emotional attachment in a fan vs celebrity dimension. I have therefore developed a complex fan-fiction where I am the girlfriend of an esteemed artist, Jon Rafman, who now becomes a meme, now a “senpai” (a name often used in manga by shy girls referring to a boy, perhaps barely known, which they have fallen in love with), now a sort of contemporary art Justin Bieber.”
Nikos Voyiatzis, facebookafterfacebook, 2013.
This Tumblr considers the role that spam plays within popular social networking sites, using a Greek and English Facebook feed to illustrate how spam transcends its 2D bounds to inhabit physical, animated noise on your screen. Voyiatzis removes all traces that this Facebook feed is still a Tumblr, and distorts and animates its “posts” to enhance the psychedelic and all-encompassing interference spam can have on one’s social media and web experience.
Madeline Zappala, gif face, 2014—2018.
In gif face, the artist built continuous, longform compositions out of short GIFs of themselves performing actions in front of their webcam. Resembling a digital flipbook, this Tumblr was organized into a grid, and the artist notes that the intended order of certain compositions was disrupted in December of 2018, when some posts were flagged and removed.