Scroll through the Tumblr known as the Jogging and you might see dogs in piles of beanie babies, Duck Dynasty cast members, Barack Obama as a Na’vi (from Avatar, duh), and wonky Ashley Judd Photoshop jobs.
This isn’t some subreddit of failed memes but an art collective founded in 2009 by Lauren Christiansen and Brad Troemel. Christiansen and Troemel were frustrated by the amount of time they put into creating art objects that were seen by the public only much later, if at all. Meanwhile, photos of artwork on social media platforms weren’t necessarily getting exposure either––let’s face it, they’re often buried by viral videos of belly-flopping corgis. The Jogging, which now includes ten regular artist-contributors, solves both problems. The Tumblr features art that’s quick to make and appealing to a wide audience, while simultaneously interrogating the problems that come with contemporary art becoming more commoditized.
The Jogging runs on what Troemel calls an "athletic aesthetic" system, where quantity is favored over quality. The artists submit mostly Photoshopped images, as they can be produced quickly and on a large scale. "The stakes are much different," Andrew Norman Wilson, one of the main contributors, explained in an email. "I can post what one could call 'b-sides' that don't seem to have a place in the world. Then they resonate with this strange, eager audience."
Eager is an understatement: reblogs and likes of individual posts can go into the thousands each day. "If a Tumblr post has no notes, is it art?" Troemel asked in an ESSAY last year. The Jogging's posts aim not only to steal those ten seconds you would have taken to see that slow-mo pup hit the water, but to encourage you to participate in their "success" by reblogging. “The Jogging's built-in audience allows for a video of mine to be seen by way more people than if I were to share it on Facebook or in a gallery,” said Wilson.
All this is great for Troemel, who considers the posts he puts on the Jogging “essentially an advertisement for [my] Etsy project,” he said in a recent Skype interview. Readers who want to own a part of the Jogging can go to Troemel's Etsy store and buy a strange IRL token of the Photoshopped works, such as Taco Bell shells attached to a Master Lock, or an art magazine vacuum-sealed with chicken nuggets. While the photos on Tumblr are forever preserved in Google searches, the ones on Etsy will rot in a matter of weeks due to Troemel’s choice of strange, perishable materials. Despite this, Troemel never makes an IRL object without the foremost intention of selling it, he says, for prices currently ranging from $30 to $80,000. “The images drive the sale of the product,” he said.
Not everyone who contributes to the Jogging makes work that is so ephemeral. Wilson’s posts, which include video pieces averaging over a minute long and a SoundCloud mix over three hours long, almost inherently go against the “athletic aesthetic” of the collective. In other words, they're more like a stroll than a jog. His album art for the mix harks back to a more surreal version of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, offering a telling representation of a more meditative state.
And yet, they have led to less “success” in te
This isn’t some subreddit of failed memes but an art collective founded in 2009 by Lauren Christiansen and Brad Troemel. Christiansen and Troemel were frustrated by the amount of time they put into creating art objects that were seen by the public only much later, if at all. Meanwhile, photos of artwork on social media platforms weren’t necessarily getting exposure either––let’s face it, they’re often buried by viral videos of belly-flopping corgis. The Jogging, which now includes ten regular artist-contributors, solves both problems. The Tumblr features art that’s quick to make and appealing to a wide audience, while simultaneously interrogating the problems that come with contemporary art becoming more commoditized.
The Jogging runs on what Troemel calls an "athletic aesthetic" system, where quantity is favored over quality. The artists submit mostly Photoshopped images, as they can be produced quickly and on a large scale. "The stakes are much different," Andrew Norman Wilson, one of the main contributors, explained in an email. "I can post what one could call 'b-sides' that don't seem to have a place in the world. Then they resonate with this strange, eager audience."
Eager is an understatement: reblogs and likes of individual posts can go into the thousands each day. "If a Tumblr post has no notes, is it art?" Troemel asked in an ESSAY last year. The Jogging's posts aim not only to steal those ten seconds you would have taken to see that slow-mo pup hit the water, but to encourage you to participate in their "success" by reblogging. “The Jogging's built-in audience allows for a video of mine to be seen by way more people than if I were to share it on Facebook or in a gallery,” said Wilson.
All this is great for Troemel, who considers the posts he puts on the Jogging “essentially an advertisement for [my] Etsy project,” he said in a recent Skype interview. Readers who want to own a part of the Jogging can go to Troemel's Etsy store and buy a strange IRL token of the Photoshopped works, such as Taco Bell shells attached to a Master Lock, or an art magazine vacuum-sealed with chicken nuggets. While the photos on Tumblr are forever preserved in Google searches, the ones on Etsy will rot in a matter of weeks due to Troemel’s choice of strange, perishable materials. Despite this, Troemel never makes an IRL object without the foremost intention of selling it, he says, for prices currently ranging from $30 to $80,000. “The images drive the sale of the product,” he said.
Not everyone who contributes to the Jogging makes work that is so ephemeral. Wilson’s posts, which include video pieces averaging over a minute long and a SoundCloud mix over three hours long, almost inherently go against the “athletic aesthetic” of the collective. In other words, they're more like a stroll than a jog. His album art for the mix harks back to a more surreal version of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, offering a telling representation of a more meditative state.
And yet, they have led to less “success” in te