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amphinomid committed Jul 2, 2024
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<p style="text-align: center; font-size: 0.8em;">
Alt: two men slow dance together in a kitchen (still from Wong Kar Wai's 1997 film
<i>Happy Together</i>). Overlaid bits, computed from each pixel's RGB representation, flicker
on and off.
on and off, representing the digitization and surveillance of love. The bits both erase and
obscure: a simultaneous warning (of how digital surveillance threatens love) and expression of
optimism (there remain deep personal truths such surveillance cannot capture).
I wanted the image to mirror <i>Giovanni's Room</i> and to be as visually arresting as the
images the novel evokes, but could not find any directly referencing the novel that made sense.
I chose a still from <i>Happy Together</i> because the film takes on a similar valence as
<i>Giovanni's Room</i>, telling a story of love and pain that unfolds across the globe from home.
</p>

<br><br>

<b>"If your countrymen think that privacy is a crime, so much the worse for your country,"</b>
says Giovanni to David, of America, in Baldwin's 1956 novel <i>Giovanni's Room</i>.
(pp. 286 in <i>Early Novels and Stories</i>.)
It is a declaration of his right to love David, free from the surveillance of the state.
<b>"If your countrymen think that privacy is a crime, so much the worse for your country."</b>

<br><br>

Privacy is essential to love.

Maybe this is because, as we drew from a number of Baldwin's works [1], to love somebody is to see
somebody — demanding the presence of something the lover can see that others cannot.
This is what Giovanni tells David in <i>Giovanni's Room</i>. It is a declaration of his right
to love David free from the surveillance of the state, as it comes after David tells Giovanni homosexuality
is criminalized in America.

But the present is shaped by a continual diminishing of privacy.
<br><br>

Communication, once done mostly in spaces in which we could reasonably assume no third party was
watching, is now laid bare and ossified in digital channels at least part of the time.
<b>Privacy is essential to love.</b> I had the luxury of indulging in James Baldwin in a quarter-long English class
dedicated to the writer, and this idea seemed to surface again and again. Maybe it's because, as we drew from a
number of his works, to love somebody is to see somebody — demanding the presence of something the lover can
see that others cannot.

The move to digitize love itself (in particular, romantic love) reduces love from a liberating act
of social responsibility to a highly choreographed and hypervisible performance defined by rules about,
e.g., when it is acceptable to tell somebody you love them; as if this should not be said as
soon as it is true.
<br><br>

These sorts of restrictions begin to deny us the great privilege of loving.
For example, in <i>Giovanni's Room</i> (which Baldwin calls a novel about "what happens to you if you're
afraid to love anybody" in a 1984
<i>Village Voice</i> <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/james-baldwin-on-being-gay-in-america/">interview</a>),
Giovanni sees David with a clarity David is unable to reciprocate. He sees that David will leave; that David
cannot really go home; that David is afraid to love him; that David does not really love Hella either.

<br><br>

Moreover, we are subject not just to the collection of private data by the state and the corporation
but also to its aggregation and evaluation: i.e., to attempts to visibilize us, often beyond what we have
consented to.

In the context of this moment, and of Baldwin's repeated expressions on the privacy of love [2], I aim to
use this project to ask: (how) does pervasive surveillance complicate love?
And in <i>The Fire Next Time</i>, Baldwin writes to his nephew of his brother (his nephew's father): "I don't
know if you've known anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long...you gain a strange perspective
on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for
behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his...I know what the world has done
to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it." Baldwin's love gives him a perspective others cannot access;
indeed, it gives him a view even his brother does not have.

<br><br>

<i>Process</i>
<br>
The background, depicting a queer romantic relationship, flickers with bits representing each pixel's
RGB values (and more broadly, the digitization and surveillance of love). The bits both erase and obscure:
a simultaneous warning (of how digital surveillance threatens love) and expression of optimism (there remain
deep personal truths that such surveillance cannot capture).
I wanted the background to mirror <i>GR</i> and to be as visually arresting as the images
<i>GR</i> evokes, but could not find any directly referencing the novel that made sense. I chose a still from
<i>Happy Together</i> because the work takes on a similar valence as <i>GR</i>, telling a story
of love and pain that unfolds across the globe from home.
<b>But the present is shaped by a continual diminishing of privacy.</b> Communication, once done in spaces in which we could
reasonably ensure no third party was watching, is now laid bare and ossified in digital channels at least part of the time.
Moves to digitize love itself (in particular, romantic love, through curious 21st-century inventions like algorithmic matchmaking)
reduce love from a liberating act of social responsibility to a highly choreographed and hypervisible performance defined by rules
(for example, rules about when it is acceptable to tell somebody you love them, as if this should not be said as soon as it is true).
These sorts of restrictions begin to deny us the privilege of loving.

<br><br>

<p style="font-size: 0.8em;">
[1] For example, in <i>GR</i> — which Baldwin calls a novel about "what happens to you if you're afraid to love anybody" in a 1984
Village Voice <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/james-baldwin-on-being-gay-in-america/">interview</a> —
Giovanni, who loves David, sees him with a clarity that he is unable to
reciprocate. And in <i>The Fire Next Time</i>, Baldwin writes to his nephew of his brother (his nephew's father): "I don't know if you've known
anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long...you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot
see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his...I
know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it." Baldwin's love gives him a perspective others cannot access.
(pp. 291-292 in <i>Collected Essays</i>.)
Moreover, we are subject not just to the collection of private data by the state and the corporation but also to its
aggregation and evaluation: in other words, attempts to visibilize us, often beyond what we have consented to. This reality
seems antithetical to the ones Baldwin may have envisioned as he repeatedly expressed the importance of privacy to love.

<br><br>

[2] In "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood," published in 1985 in <i>Playboy</i>,
Baldwin writes: "It is virtually impossible to trust one's human value without the
collaboration or corroboration of that eye — which is to say that no one can live without it. One can, of course, instruct that eye as to
what to see, but this effort, which is nothing less than ruthless intimidation, is wounding and exhausting: While it can keep humiliation
at bay, it confirms the fact that humiliation is the central danger of one's life. And since one cannot risk love without risking humiliation,
love becomes impossible." (pp. 817 in <i>Collected Essays</i>.)
In my close reading of this work, I argued that it comments on two dangers: (1) that of hiding a piece of one's identity one believes to be
shameful and (2) that of defining one's resistance to this shame in the "language of the oppressor" (as Baldwin puts it in the Village Voice
interview), conceding that the piece was something to
be humiliated of to begin with.
This applies to our discussion of pervasive surveillance too; we behave differently when we know we are being watched, and when we say we
"have nothing to hide," we confirm our fear of our own humiliation over our belief in our own freedom.
For example, in "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood," published in 1985 in <i>Playboy</i>, Baldwin writes: "It is
virtually impossible to trust one's human value without the collaboration or corroboration of that eye — which is to say that
no one can live without it. One can, of course, instruct that eye as to what to see, but this effort, which is nothing less than
ruthless intimidation, is wounding and exhausting: While it can keep humiliation at bay, it confirms the fact that humiliation
is the central danger of one's life. And since one cannot risk love without risking humiliation, love becomes impossible." This
eye includes those entities which surveil: we behave differently when we know we are being watched, and when we say we "have
nothing to hide," we confirm our fear of our own humiliation over our belief in our own freedom.

<br><br>

Baldwin makes even more direct a statement in the Village Voice interview, in which he calls his own sexuality, and his process
of learning it, an intensely private matter and eschews the label of "gay," describing it as a response to the "false accusation" that somebody
who might adopt it has "no right to be here." Both the interview and the essay comment on the effort to assign love some label that the oppressor
can easily understand, which Baldwin seems to argue not only wrongly defines love by who does it but also concedes that queer love and gender
nonconformity are shameful when, as he writes at the start of "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood": "there is a man in every woman and a woman
in every man." (pp. 814 in <i>Collected Essays</i>.)
(As I believe Baldwin alluded to in the Village Voice interview, this stifling of love with shame was a central tragedy of <i>GR</i>.)
Baldwin makes even more direct a statement in the <i>Village Voice</i> interview, in which he calls his own sexuality, and his process
of learning it, an intensely private matter and eschews the label of "gay," describing it as a response to the "false accusation"
somebody who might adopt it has "no right to be here." Both the interview and the essay comment on the effort to assign love
some label that not just defines it by who does it but concedes queer love is shameful when, as he writes at the start of
"Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood": "there is a man in every woman and a woman in every man." The stifling of such love with
such shame is a central tragedy of <i>Giovanni's Room</i>.

<br><br>

"I suppose what I am really saying is that one's sexual preference is a private matter," Baldwin says, in that same interview.
"I resent the interference of the State, or the Church, or any institution in my only journey to whatever it is we are journeying toward."
Our present moment continues to be punctuated by the lengthening of this list of institutions that intrude and interfere.
Yet our present moment is punctuated by the lengthening of this list of institutions that intrude and interfere.

<br><br>

<b>So what do we do?</b> TK.

</p>
</div>
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