Jordan Crandall: “SHOWING”
Crandall, J. 2007 “SHOWING.” Nettime, 28 Jun 2007
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0706/msg00048.html
Overview
1. “Web 2.0” landscape: parading of individual lives. Ascendance of a new culture of self-exposure, erotic display. Presentational (impulse to obtain attention of others/ develop interconnectivity as condition of existence) vs. representational culture. Panopticism reversed. A surrender to panoptic gaze/ a shift in panoptic power as new forms of identity/subjectivity are performed and role-played.
2. A challenge to traditional film & media theory, to concepts of spectatorship/visual pleasure/scopic power. Apply instead concepts of performance/ affect/displays with a focus on intention/motivation (as opposed to reception). Analyse these media artefacts not only as texts (language theory) but as pleasures/ affective stimulations “solicitations embedded within networks of erotic exchange”, invested libidinaly by both the producer/displayer and the audience/watcher
3. Concepts of “attraction” on theories of exhibitionism allow shifting the voyeuristic predominance in film studies. Attractions disrupt/live outside linear narrative, engage the corporeal, are similar to affects in the creation of counter meanings.
4. In web 2.0 media artefacts, the pose functions as such attraction. It is exhibitionist spectacle and opposes conventional narrative linearity /coherency. It engages the senses and the affective. Crosses the sensational and the semiotic, developing connective intensity
5. Pose operates through identity formation and affect transmission. Associated with online profiles, amongst other artefacts, it is extensively performed through role playing of specific codes; whilst through internalised affects generates new social subjectivities.
6. Posing is a double process –psychic and material. The online players in these web 2.0 pose-games perform for the gazes of the other, subjectifying themselves in order to be validated by the unseen spectator. Showing=fulfilment. They also dissipate surplus energy/expend excess. Showing=sacrifice
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