User:Pleun/rwrs/Essay II Text

This essay, like last one, has a small project connected to it. Last time it was a little webpage to connect different texts that followed the original of Walter Benjamin. Now it's a webpage that contains a project where I wanted to for one day really realise how it feels to live in a society of control. I did this by filming everything that filmed me for a day, and also the points I crossed where I checked in or out of a system. WARNING: The website is very heavy, as it has a lot of video's. Project website:WMWY

I had, to say the least, a very shitty April month. Which is no excuse, but my text might still be quite rough. I feel like I'm trying to compress a huge subject into one essay, so I see this more as a starting point to explore and unpack further in next texts.

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Introduction

My parents tell me a small anecdote of me as a child sometimes, where they portray me as the most happy and tractable child. My childless uncle also comically describes me as “a walking Have Children commercial.” It goes like this:

When my parents were building their modern white octagonal house, I was only two years old. I could walk, I could crawl and play in the sand on the building plot. One day, a concerned neighbour came by to ask my parents if they weren't afraid of me running away, as there were no fences or anything around the plot. But no way, they said. They only had to draw a line around me in the sand forming a circle around me and tell me not to cross it. And I wouldn't. And I never did.

The rest of my life I would continue to stay within the now imaginary lines in the sand. I would explore its borders and move from circle to circle, but I would never fully cross the lines. I was also afraid of grass apparently. But come on, grass is super scary.

To me this anecdote explains my fascination with control, borders and legislation. I try to be aware of where my and others' lines in the sand are and if, how and why we (need to) cross it. When is it necessary to make people cross a line?

One line forming a circle represents its own territory with its prescribed rules. Where there is a line there is always the conflict of how to deal with that border and the rules form it. In our current society the lines in the sand are fading. Which leaves us in a confused in-between state of figuring out how to deal with the new and old ways of governance both. The new system of control gives new opportunity with new found freedom, but also with a cost. How do we behave towards this system? Can we express ourselves within this system? And can we do that without crossing old lines or without escaping the current structure? The main question: “How do technologies of the self shape or manifest in current network culture / society of control?”

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