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distraction maneuvers

 

Mario G. Vélez y B. Geisselmann
 

Following the attacks of 9/11 and 11-M, an extremely intense surveillance system was set forth in main cities terrified of being in danger, including road, bridge, and airport controls. A weapon or tool of power aimed at protecting and observing me.

Pessoa reminds us that identity is basically a story, a transitory, malleable, and changing construction. And this capacity to become the Other allows us to place ourselves on the other side, in a creative voyage, denying the marking of a stable individuality.

The establishment of identity was one of the goals of the modern project with greater results, as substantiated by history. Facing the massification of individuals in the crowds of cities undergoing expansion, old-fashioned panoptism focused on the task of searching for more and more complex devices to observe individuals. In this sense, it is significant that the invention of photography took place in the full swing of industrial production, keeping in mind that what was actually invented with the daguerreotype was the chemical process that allowed capturing the image; the other components of photography were already known and had been used for a long time. Therefore, the value of clear identification, the marking of individuals as compact entities, seemingly prevented forgeries and deceits entailing fraudulent identities that were thereby dangerous.

Who seeks to conceal their identity unless he has hidden motives? Is it possible (as Galton endeavored) to establish dangerous physiognomies and positively identify those individuals who are potentially harmful to society?

Video, the image of electrons, allowed taking to extremely effective levels the lighting qualities of an instrumentalized all-seeing eye. It not only offers the certainty of optic devices, but it also allows us to capture – and irradiate – in real time any situation that is staged on screen. What better definition could be considered for the wonder of clairvoyance, as narrated by the oldest myths, but through the (now commonplace) television?

Pessoa warns us that the artist, an individual uncomfortable in the definition of his role, appeals to the mobility of the personality, to depersonalization, in a creative voyage to invent new types of “pretending, pretending that we understand the world”.