The Importance of the Animated GIF as Social Commentary

A.L. Crego's GIFs are full of themes that are completely unexpected yet oddly familiar.

May 26, 2016, 2:00pm

You might recognize the animated street-art gifs of Spanish artist A.L. Crego. The GIF artist has also animated a wide variety of other subjects with his hypnotic internet-based creations, from clocks, matches, and barbed-wire fences to smartphone-wielding statues. Steeped in the idea of technology, Crego's aesthetic provides a thought-provoking visual lexicon full of themes that are completely unexpected yet oddly familiar. In their simplicity, they speak to many types of people.

While some say they don't like art, Crego thinks otherwise. He feels that some may proclaim they don't like certain kinds of art, but they're still exposed to it every day, whether through the typography of billboards, the packaging of supermarket foods, or the camerawork in film and TV. In this way, Crego believes art is the best tool for social commentary, because when creating any kind of subversive popular art, the artist relinquishes his or her autonomy in the name of a greater message or idea. He tells The Creators Project, "It is something impersonal, but at the same time, it reaches everybody."

Thinking of thinking of…

Crego believes that art is the best way to convey ideas to the masses, beginning way back when most people couldn't read or write, but could nonetheless understand stories as told through the stained-glass windows on churches. He says that historically, art was used to shape a collective narrative and control the populace, whether through icons, architecture, books, or drawings. He believes some artists learned how to manipulate their practice in order to encourage people to think for themselves. The same is true today.

While the general impetus to make art may not have changed over the course of several millennia, Crego concludes that the methods through which artists create art, and the way audiences consume it, has changed markedly over the last three decades. Before, it was a lot more difficult for artists to show their work outside of a gallery or the commercial landscape. Now, with globalization facilitated by the internet, Crego feels the new ways of creating and consuming art are growing exponentially, whether through VR, AR, video mapping, or the GIF format.

Crego says that there are four types of humans on earth at the moment: the old folks who were born without the internet and will die without using it, those who saw the internet being born but have a minimal understanding of how it works, the ones who grew up without the internet or cell phones, and the new generation of people who don't know anything else except technology. Crego says he always has these four groups in mind because there's never been a time in human history where such markedly different demographics coexisted so closely with each other. "I think we have too much to analyze," he says, "and the best way to do it is 'ironically' with the internet."

Crego eschews the happiness-making, self-help type of motivational memes littering Facebook feeds of aunts and grandmas. Instead, he wants to examine what he calls the "dark side" through what he deems a "pessimistic-realistic" lens, one that is informed by cross-cultural feelings, thoughts, prejudices, and behaviors. "I have always had in mind that 'the bad is good,'" Crego says. "Good things are motivation, bad things are knowledge, if you are able to understand them."

Still, Crego bemoans the fact that the rising popularity of animated gifs has made way for "stupid GIFs or weird things on an eternal loop." This classification has made it possible for artists such as Crego to work in the niche realm of GIF art, which he believes is only just being born. It's something that has arisen in response to the onslaught of information that makes it so that few people pause and really, truly look at art. "I think that we have the duty to stop and think deeply about where are we going," he says. "I thought it was the best way to get into the web to try to make people think…like visual mantras."

To learn more about the artist click here.