#self-surveillance

[transwarlock]

maybe one day I will write a poem or draw a short comic about what it’s like to live with a panopticon inside your head

[neoyorzapoteca]

Sheila Heti: You write in Frantumaglia that you were the sort of child who “apologized for everything.” But as an adult, you realize that goodness “derives not from the absence of guilt but from the capacity to feel true loathing for our daily, recurring, private guilt.” Yet how can a woman ever truly know what she should be guilty for, when women live in a world of codes that have been created by men; when we live in “male cities” (as you have termed it) and when the route to understanding who one is necessarily involves exploring one’s instincts to “disobey”? How can you tell the difference between what you should feel guilty for and what you are made to feel guilty for but shouldn’t feel guilty for?

Elena Ferrante: Our future depends on this connection. There is no true liberation without a strong sense of self. The systematic practice of disobedience is in fact an integral part of male values, and so doesn’t really free us; rather, at times, it crushes us, makes us even more acutely the victims of men’s needs, especially in the realm of sex. We need an ethics of our own to oppose that which the male world has imposed on and claimed from us. We need a hierarchy of our own of merits and faults, and we need to reckon with truth. But that’s possible only if we consider ourselves to be exposed to good and evil like any human being. When literature represents us as the positive pole of life or as having been exposed to evil only as victims—an evil that in the end will turn out to be a good, if looked at with spectacles different from those imposed by males—it is not doing its duty. The duty of literature is to dig to the bottom. We are a subject not only unpredictable but unknown even to ourselves. We have an urgent need for representation and for an ethics of our own. We have the right and the duty to explore ourselves thoroughly, to slip away, to cross the borders that make us suffer. I insist on self-surveillance, which means choice, assumption of responsibility, and the necessity of losing restraint in order to know ourselves, not lose ourselves.

[neoyorzapoteca]

Sheila Heti: So much contemporary female writing is accused of narcissism. Have you escaped the charge of narcissism, or have you received it? I’d like to bind this question to your comments about women who “practice a conscious surveillance on themselves” who before were “watched over by parents, by brothers, by husbands, by the community.” You have written that women who practise surveillance on themselves are the “heroines of our time,” but it’s precisely these women—real and fictional—who are accused of the sin of narcissism, as if a woman looking at herself (rather than being looked at by a man) was insulting to everyone. How do you understand this charge?

Elena Ferrante: I’ve never felt narcissism to be a sin. It seems, rather, a cognitive tool that, like all cognitive tools, can be used in a distorted way. No, I think it’s necessary to be absolutely in love with ourselves. It’s only by reflecting on myself with attention and care that I can reflect on the world. It’s only by turning my gaze on myself that I can understand others, feel them as my kin. On the other hand it’s only by assiduously watching myself that I can take control and train myself to give the best of myself. The woman who practises surveillance on herself without letting herself be the object of surveillance is the great innovation of our times.

[rdfmnism]

she imagines him watching her

unlearning patriarchal programming is a daunting task. i was recently reminded about the subconscious policing that we, as women, most likely have experienced and perpetuate.

it was a couple of tiktok posts (i'll link in the comments) that got me thinking. how many times have you thought yourself ugly when crying? i know i've thought of it. have you ever caught yourself cringing at what you must look like when expressing emotion, feeling anything, or doing literally any task?

even when alone, you survey yourself, you monitor yourself, you check yourself. check against what, though?

even when alone, women monitor themselves in consistency with the male gaze. why is it "ugly" to cry? why do i care in the first place? because i have been conditioned to care.

i am a woman watching a man watch a woman. inside me is a man watching a woman perform. the male gaze has been embedded into my own subconscious. i simultaneously perform for no one and for everyone. i have objectified myself. i have reduced myself to an object to view, to consume, to see, to take. even in my most vulnerable moments, even when alone, i am never alone.

the patriarchy's most successful campaign is not just male presence. it is the male gaze seeping into our very existence to the point you cannot escape it. it is the training of dutiful soldiers, agents that uphold the patriarchy even without a man present and without thinking it. but how do we escape it?

[endlessandrea]

[sylvialondon]

The Performer in the Audience

Thompson-Spires continues to explore the impact of surveillance with symbolism, employing similes, metaphors, and sly references. As technology has become integrated into modern life, it has become intertwined with self-surveillance. Many individuals behave as if they are being constantly watched.

In Raina’s case, she is already wearing a costume. Her digital platform motivates her to hide herself to appease others, which heightens her awareness of other people's views. Increased awareness of being watched leads individuals to monitor themselves. Thompson-Spires describes a moment where Raina begins, “to watch herself watching herself, like a character in a play who knew the audience was there but couldn’t break the fourth wall” (130). Raina examines her own performance, internalizing the audience's gaze. Thompson-Spires uses this metaphor of the “fourth wall” to emphasize how Raina feels trapped, like she cannot connect with reality. The fourth wall is traditionally a barrier between the actor and the audience. By saying she can’t break it, the author suggests that Raina can never escape observation, even from herself.

Digital spaces often cause people to feel this way; constant surveillance means a constant desire to perform. This leads her to lose herself further, focusing on the show and her judgmental audience. She morphs into her own harshest critic. She begins to define expectations for herself, many of which are influenced by her need for approval. She’s constantly “fitting into a frame of her own design” (132). This metaphor compares the frame to the expectations. Raina tries to “fit” by conforming to the ideal identity, or the frame, which she designed through her constant focus on performance and approval. Thompson-Spires shows that surveillance is more than just external but is often internalized. Raina polices herself, turning her mind into an extension of the audience and drifting away from who she truly is and wants to be.

[self-surveillance]

Parallel to all truth (statement)

(Statement included in the exhibition)

I grew up walking in forests and in cemeteries, and these places have grown and contained my mind. Walking in a forest is not totally different from walking in a cemetery; in both, paths and trails control views, directions and perspective in general. What is present in the mind and what (or who) may be present or lost depends very much on how one can take the place in.

I spent a few weeks in early 2023 at an artist residency in rural northern Georgia, nestled in the forested Rabun Gap. While there, I had very easy access to a network of forest trails, winding through a variety of elevations. Since it was still winter-time, there were many distant views to be glimpsed even with the density of the forest, and this openness lent itself to my thinking about how to work there. Walking through those wooded paths, I felt a sense of connection, not only to the landscape, but to my father who often took me on walks when I was young.

Prior to this, on a warm and sunny Memorial day in 2022, I visited Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis to witness the annual firing of a Gatling gun at the gravesite of its inventor and my ancestor, Richard Jordan Gatling. This surreal holiday event drew a small crowd of on-lookers, who gathered around the gun and the re-enactors, intent on taking in this small piece of history. I wanted to collect this watchfulness, and the sound that followed this waiting, all in this larger place. There, the Gatling gun was a central, commanding focus of attention. I wanted to see and hear the gun in a larger context, and try to locate it further in place, within myself and the history it is embedded in. The turmoil the gun signifies is all too common in our culture, and we need to collectively contend with this, with urgency.

These two experiences are brought into relationship with a collection of texts that are simultaneously markers of time and the structure of family. Gathered from late 19th and early 20th century publications, each text represents an individual voice in a specific time, and as such also has a parallel with the cemetery, where individuals find their place, often in close proximity to their larger family. Here in these texts is one element that connects them closely together, that of the Gatling gun; this brings a historical parallel with myself (as part of my larger family) and the larger culture. The texts act like gravestones, exposed to time and all the weathering elements, their original qualities becoming very worn. The lettering and design of the originals do show through, but my acts on them (along with previous translations through different mediums) are somewhat akin to the work of time.

I grew up walking in forests and in cemeteries, and these places continue to grow and contain my mind.

[self-surveillance]

Parallel to the Ghosts

In the months between starting to plan this show (in the middle of last year) and now, much has changed with how i've been looking at the work and how i've structured this exhibition. These changes had a lot to do with external resource considerations ($), but in the end this brought about a focus on some elemental parts of the work from my residency early last year at the Hambidge Center, along with the development of material from earlier on.

Early on i had a greater ambition with this show, but since re-focusing it, i came to look at the material a bit differently and this also helped me to think about my experience at Hambidge in a different way (in the frame of this exhibition). All this made me consider it in relation to my residency time at MASS MoCA in 2021, during which i had started working on new video ideas (shot there and subsequently manipulated with Signal Culture apps). These ideas carried forward to Hambidge, where i found myself in a very different environment from MASS MoCA, but considering some of the same ideas as i walked on the trails in the woods there.

Among the work for this show is a new video series, "Parallel to All Ghosts", which so far comprises a few different video parts with material from Hambidge and from a visit during the prior year to Crown Hill cemetery in Indianapolis. This work has developed directly from a piece i've been working on since MASS MoCA ("Always Returning"), which uses the same ideas, now appearing in a different (yet parallel) form in this show.

I'm still thinking through the ideas in this work, but the relationships i have been able to find and develop in this current show (particularly between myself, my "ghosts", and the repetitions of the gun in many different guises) have a lot of resonances which i want to continue exploring. I don't yet know where this is going but i'm sure there are more ghosts out there.