Rethinking Privacy

Abstract

This essay explores the role of contemporary recording devices, such as smart phones, in the increasing rupture of the classroom and art school studio as private space. In calling to mind Benjamin’s observation of shifts in modes of human perception relative to humanity’s mode of existence, I have noted a growing (and troubling) generational disjuncture in conversations and interactions with my current students pertaining to their utilization of small multi-function recording devices producing images for immediate and large-scale distribution. As processes of documenting are increasingly not just geared towards recording artistic practice but also everyday life (often in terms of everyday life as artistic practice), perhaps this sense of seemingly boundless image proliferation as troubling recedes for those who have always been attuned to this cultural milieu. So with no trouble at all, the possibility for documentation expands, as does the number of documents produced. As a teacher of performance in a North American art school context, I am intrigued as to whether the formative experiences that my students have had with the much more expansive possibilities to record processes of performance necessarily leads to an expanded ability to process or gain some sort of purchase on one’s own documentation, and by extension, one’s artistic practice. This text highlights networks of distribution and exchange beyond the purview or control of the educational institution, from consensual sharing on social media to the growing phenomenon of students working with body-based practices finding their documentation being shared within online forums designed for the exchange of sexually explicit materials. As a means of exploring such collective repurposing of performance documentation produced by students, this text examines the relative roles of the educational institution, faculty and students in negotiating the subsequent online distribution of content produced within the school context.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Juanna Gutierrez, Tannaz Motevalli, Alan Rhodes, Ji Yang and Tongyu Zhao for images and insights.

Notes

1 It is a genuine shock when, after a section of film, Deacon’s fragile naked body enters, striding across the hall to stand in front of the microphone. A monologue by Deacon has been playing in his absence, but now that it is so dramatically embodied, the perceptual join is made difficult by his seconds-late lip-syncing. What Deacon presents in the The Argument Against the Body are a series of mind-body problem vignettes. Each section showcases (by his own description) ‘a miniature crisis of cognition’. Scenes in which fractured, out-of-sync manifestations of Deacon’s voice and body are distributed across audio-visual equipment, and are designed to fast track the audience to a state of self-conscious doubt. (Quaintance 2011: 38)