Tuesday, August 14, 2007

People, places, reproductions

I’ve been thinking about autobiography lately. Self-representation and people’s compulsion to record themselves – their thoughts, actions, images – for other people to witness. It's a global and fundamental process facilitated by diverse, evolving media. From Westerners busily constructing and marketing themselves on myspace and facebook - your distinctiveness, your ‘profile’, you in concentrate produced expressly for visibility – to Mozambicans owning photo albums devoted to their own image. Potted life histories are eagerly pressed into the hands of new acquaintances. People lean or shift into the camera frame and revel in seeing themselves instantaneously digitally reproduced.

The consumption of these representations casts the life-giving light of recognition. You are constituted, given significance, through being observed; ‘I am seen, therefore I am’. I suppose this it's just another form of interaction though - the exchanges that create society. People not only want recognition in the present, they want to leave some kind of tangible evidence of their existence: a mark, a ‘legacy’, however small. We’re hardwired not to be the tree that fell that nobody heard, since cave painting perhaps.

But there’s something particularly Modern (even in our post-post-modern age, or whatever we’re in now. Is Irony the new black?) about painstakingly recording your chronological development through life and self-consciously crafting it for public consumption. I’m afraid it’s the looming black hole of human transience. In the West at least, amidst this era of the Death of God and hyper-individualism, it would seem we avid representationalists seek to give substance to light-weight existences. Modern technology is just the vehicle for our insecurity epidemic then.

From this perspective, excessive public documentation of the self can be counter-productive. Being technicologically spoiled for choice, this is where the West infamously differs from developing countries: the pandemics of consumerism and celebrity. People become saccharine and insubstantial, losing coherence (and the plot) amidst myriad faxsimiles of self, as poor old Ms Spears continues to demonstrate.

That said, the urge to document extends to our stimuli, the places we go and people we meet. Many of us doggedly scan and pickle life. When I see exotic, unique scenes here in Mozambique I have a niggling sense of touristic urgency - as though if I don’t capture them for preservation they’ll be lost. Do I lack faith in my mind’s eye, do I feel an aesthetic duty, or do I need to show other people to affirm what I experienced? Either way it’s annoying as the urge to record often encroaches on the seeing and enjoying. Increasingly frequently I discipline myself to just soak up my surroundings.

Although there are definite up-sides to all this recording. Others get to enjoy interesting/attractive images or descriptions and indirectly experience somewhere or something new. I enjoy ‘re-experiencing’ them. Sending pictures to family and friends helps me bridge geographical locations which would otherwise be separate worlds. And of course, there’s Art for Art’s sake. Either way, I’m no doubt part-product of my insecure generation, though at least some Mozambican prettiness gets preserved along the way.

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Hi Elizabeth, I'm from Canada and will be leaving next week to Maputo for a couple of years. My husband will work in the capital and I didn't quite establish where I'll be volunteering yet. Perhaps before you leave and if you pass by Maputo, we can meet. I can use a few tricks!

7:28 pm  
Blogger Elizabeth Drew said...

Hi Sandra, I'd be glad to meet up only I'm not here for much longer and, not being based in Maputo, I think my remaining time there will be spent rushing around in transit. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you have, suggest places to go etc. You can email me if that's easier: elizabethdrew@hotmail.com

You'll like Maputo, it's a sunny, lively city, if a bit tumble-down!

3:07 pm  

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