#1 SELF PORTRAIT

After I came back from Brazil I took a poo and transformed into my phone right after I realized my word and memory is worth nothing more than what’s on there.

NEXT ASSIGNMENTS ->
#2 & #3

#2 THE OTHER 

I fear (the idea of) you

#3 SPECTACLE SOCIETY

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Being human is being a failure. The sublime doesn’t exist..

Cortina D’Ampezzo ~ Italian Alps February 2020 / 16° degrees Celsius

PERSONAL ESSAY ON THE OTHER

The fictional other has played a very significant role in my life. From the moment that I
started to remember things there always was the other. The other is not static, but more so
dynamic, brief and ever changing. The other is close by and far away. The other is in
everything. The fictional other, to me, is what I do not know yet. The fictional other is what
meaning I give to the unknown. Unfortunately this means that the other is subordinate to
prejudice, gossip and rumours, stories, lies, opinions, phobias and power. In this small
personal essay I’ll write shortly about two forms of the fictional other that have had a big
impact on me.
I grew up in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, there were so many fictional others, too many to
name them all but I’ll start with the ones that I haven’t forgotten. The first others that I
remember are the Moroccan families in my neighborhood, Watergraafsmeer. They were
othered through our eyes because they were not in school with us, their mothers looked
different from ours and they often spoke in tones that were unfamiliar to me. When I got
older I realised that I had created a fictional other. Me and my surroundings had created a
narrative for people we didn’t know. We gave them character traits and assumed their ways
and behaviour. These narratives, in our eyes, were confirmed through experiences we had
and stories we heard from our friends and acquaintances. Little did I know that my
experiences and those of many around me had been shaped through a predetermined idea
of who these individuals were. I feel shame looking back at myself, my friends, my family, my
neighbours, my teachers and the rest of my surroundings. But looking back at all of this it
taught me something valuable. It taught me about internalisation, education and privilege.
Three things that play an enormous part in our life.
Especially education and privilege are things that we take for granted. We see it as
something static, as a truth, as something impartial, as something fair, as a reality. But
education and privilege are none of the above. Education and privilege are a point of view.
It’s a way. It’s changeable. My education as a young white middle class kid was lacking and
my privilege very present. It didn’t teach me how to connect with the other, it didn’t teach me
anything at all except for parts of my own story.
As you grow older you become more aware of your social position. Of how others view you
as a person. You get confronted with opinions and beliefs about you as an individual. You
realise that many people see you in a certain way because of how you act, how you move,
how you talk, how you look and what you say. Because of the interests that you show and
the way you assert yourself towards other people.
One of my first memories of this choice that we as people have; either to comply and
assimilate or to rebel, is the one of me two years before going to high school. As a little boy I
had long curly hair that reached my ass if it was wet. I told my mom that I was going to cut
off my hair before going to high school. She asked me why and I told her that I couldn’t stand
out like that anymore. At an age of 10 I was completely aware of the implications that
something like long hair had for a little boy like me. I was a given a choice, not a fair one, to
assimilate and comply or to stay unique and fight. Back then I chose to comply and
assimilate, a choice that I would make again and again and again until the age of 21. I’m
only 23 now. Only now I have found the strength to be a version of me I feel content with,
that I feel is fitting to me. To be the fictional me that was always in there but that I always
shrugged off as the other. As something that I wasn’t or that was less than me. Something

that was shameful to be. Something unattractive. Something undesirable. I now know that
this is not the fictional other, but it was actually me viewed through the internalized view of a
heteronormative society that put me aside as an other. I thought I knew what I was and
didn’t want to be because of the fictional stories that were told to me about people like me.
The other is always there. The other is in me, my mind, my ways of thinking. The other is a
tool of a society to keep people in check. It is something that slips into our minds and never
leaves anymore. It’s something that makes us control others and ourselves. It’s a structure,
heavily influenced and determined by our history as a people. It’s driven on fear and
ignorance. It’s build by a desire to belong.

PERSONAL ESSAY ON THE SPECTACLE SOCIETY

The spectacle society, to me, is a phenomena that is intrinsically connected to each and
every one of our lives. I’m not exactly sure if it is has come into existence because of our fast
expansion in the field of technology, especially technologies that concern social interactions.
I believe that many see the spectacle society connected to the use of smartphones and
social media, which I think is true of course, but I also think that the spectacle society
already existed before the existence of the smartphone.
I believe that the spectacle society is something that comes into existence because
of human nature. I think that it is coherent to human nature to compare the self to the other.
From the moment we are born we are being taught by our parents and the others that are
close by. They teach us how to execute certain acts, how to talk, how to behave, moral
standards and what to feel in what situation. All these factors are completely dependent on
culture, class, time and place. There has never been one universal way to do anything. Not
in marriage, not in loving, not in sex, not in governing, not in justice. But what becomes clear
because of this is that there has never been an authentic way of being, we’ve always been
taught from the moment we leave the womb of our parent. We look around us for examples
in order to know how to be.
I am not saying that this is the spectacle society, but I do believe that this is the foundation of
the spectacle society. The urge in human instinct to look around us for knowledge and
confirmation. If you think that anything that you do comes from yourself, I might think you’re
a fool. We are products of a structure we live in. It teaches us to what group of people we
belong and how to act towards others. It’s like playing the ‘Sims’ game when you were
younger. A ++ for wanted behaviour and a -- for the unwanted. Through this system we find
out what people we like to be around and to what group we belong, but even in these groups
there are rules and structures to play by. We have agency to a certain extent but in the end
you have a limited framework to move freely in. We are confined by a set of rules that is set
up wherever you might go in your life, it’s in the physical that limits the movement of our
bodies and the mental that lets us feel how to proceed.
But let me try to explain what the spectacle society means to me and how it has changed
drastically through the last decennia. The spectacle society comes into existence because
we look around us in order to find out how to do something. When we think of love we don’t
only see the feelings we have ourselves, we think of the love stories we’ve seen on TV, we
think of scandals we’ve read in the past in magazines and nowadays on the internet. We
think of instagram stories of our friends and articles on news apps on our phones. We think
of netflix series and dating shows and we think of the experiences our parents had. All of
these separate pieces together glue an image of what love is supposed to be. What love is
meant to be. It also gives us an idea of what it shouldn’t be. Because of vast expansion of
the technological realm the globalised nature of this image has intensified enormously and
the reach of this image becomes bigger and bigger. Creating a more and more homogenized
image. But this image is not the reality, even though we think it is. We apply this idea to our

own lives but we tend to forget that those netflix series and those dating shows are often not
based on reality, but more so interactions that stimulate our brain to react. In order to
capitalize on our needs. But unfortunately the process that starts because of this distortion of
reality is not only earning more money, the structures we live in are being changed as well.
So from the moment we are born we’re not just being taught what our parents teach us (and
don’t forget that they are also being taught by the spectacle society), but we are being taught
an image of a phenomena that is created through the experience of the spectacle.
Here comes the ugly part into play. Because we are measuring our own feelings,
experiences and lives through the images of the spectacle society we tend to feel alienated
from what is expected from us and how we actually feel. We tend to compare ourselves to
illusion stacked upon illusion stacked upon illusion. A harsh truth becomes more and more
apparent to us and that is that we feel estranged from the lives we think we’re supposed to
live. Loneliness grows while expression and authenticity disappears. We end up forgetting
what reality is and the spectacle takes the place of reality. Now our reality has transformed
into something we can never live up to.

LOVE IS BLIND. A new reality show on Netflix in which 30 individuals (15 women / 15 men) are looking to find heterosexual relationships.

This article shortly explains what the show is about:
https://www.vox.com/2020/2/27/21152664/love-is-blind-spoilers-finale

a quote from the article:
What drives the “experiment” of Love Is Blind is the belief that dating apps and social media have made everyone superficial, obsessed with the physical characteristics of a person rather than their emotional selves. By creating an atmosphere in which people are only able to become attracted to each other through conversations and then propelling couples into a hyperdrive timeline of a marriage in 38 days, the show wants to see if love is more than physical attraction.
This show is an example of the spectacle society in its most glorious way. This show goes as far as commenting on the reality we live in (see quote) that's created through the interaction between humans and mass media while being an embodiment of this mass media in itself. It is a meta view on our society from within the spectacle society. Recreating the illusion of senses while being covered underneath a veil/false pretence of a documentary perspective.
It is almost scary if you ask me. The existence of the phenomena 'love' as we know it is being recreated while this replica is falsely shown to be the phenomena 'love' as we know it, as it exists in our society. We are actually looking at an image that claims to be the reality we live in.
This image is the complete commodification of our experience of feelings and senses, rendering our reality to an obsolete empty nothingness of pixels.

At the end of the youtube video the mother is completely absorbed in this (virtual) reality, so if you don't want to watch the whole video please take a look at the end as well.
A mother from South-Korea has been given the chance to see her passed away child once again. Or is she given the chance to see a mere technological productional presentation of her child once again?
In this fragment of the documentary 'Met You' the lines between reality and a foreseeable future completely dominated by the visual production of technology become more and more blurred. It is almost scary to watch, is reality defined by the experience of an individual, no longer a unit that can be measured? What makes reality, experiences/the senses or measurable facts?

Femmephobia is an uncommon word for most people. Femmephobia is defined as the fear and/or hatred of anything feminine. Not to be confused with the hatred of women, or misogyny, femmephobia is the devaluation of the feminine ideal. Anything with regards to emotion, passivity, nurturance and sensitivity is deemed emasculate and unfit to be displayed by men.
Within minority groups there can also be forms of the other and prejudice towards people with certain appearance or personality traits. An example is in this personal essay about femmephobia within the male gay community:

https://depaul.digication.com/wrd_103_final13/
The_Fight_for_the_Straight_Gay_Femmephobia
_and_the

us vs us vs them
femininity is seen as the other of masculinity, she is not regarded as an autonomous being (connection to text; 'what is otherness?' that Shadman posted - under heading: gender)

How to perform the self when you are the other within a society? Leonard Suryajaya plays and investigates what it means to have the role of the other based on his own life experiences as you can read in the quote from his artist statement above.

http://www.leonardsuryajaya.com/bio