Infinite Duets: Co-Creating on TikTok at Museum of the Moving Image

October 2021

Collaboration is foundational to internet culture. On TikTok, the online video entertainment platform that has exploded in popularity since its worldwide launch in 2017, collaboration takes the form of co-creation or “creative catch” (a term coined by TikTok user @Absofacto). It’s a sequential game: I make a video and then you edit, add, Duet, Stitch, or otherwise make it your own. Now repeat this process ad infinitum.

Every TikTok is both a prompt and response, an endlessly regenerating scroll of inspiration. Other video platforms measure attention using views or watch time, but on TikTok the evolution of these short-form videos is what gives them meaning. Did your video spark another video? Perhaps it sparked millions of other videos.

Infinite Duets: Co-Creating on TikTok explores the co-creative evolution of six TikToks: Bella Poarch’s M to the B; Curtis Roach’s Bored in the House; Brittany Broski’s Kombucha Girl; FN Meka’s Can You Guess What I’m Cooking?; Rudy Willingham’s Lil Nas X Pride Month; and Jess the Mess’s What's a Video That Lives in Your Head Rent Free?.

Any creative endeavor that proves to have lasting cultural value begets conversations about authorship, ownership, and creative labor. So who benefits from such a uniquely iterative creative process? TikTok’s popularity brings such questions into sharp relief and suggests new economic models for creators in what’s increasingly known as “the creator economy.” 

The hundreds of millions of TikTok creators worldwide play creative catch every day, both with each other and the platform itself. This infinite duet is possible because of TikTok's massive scale, creative tools, and its interest-based distribution algorithm, all of which ease the labor of creative production. Although TikTok did not invent co-creation, this exhibition attests that its platform and tools have revolutionized it.

Co-create with us! Make your own TikToks inspired by what you see today at MoMI. #TikTokatMoMI

Infinite Duets: Co-Creating on TikTok is organized by guest curator and exhibition producer Sarah Ullman. Exhibition identity designed by RadicalMedia.