+
Introduction
+Act 1.
+Scene 1.
+Internal. +A reader holds a book in their hands. The first page of the book is +opened, the reader holds it to their face and smells the paper, touches +it. The book touches them back.
+the book: (whispering in the reader’s ear) Being +vulnerable means being transparent, open and brave, trusting others to +handle stories with care. By publicly sharing and processing our +narratives, we take ownership of our experiences while contributing to a +collective voice. Even when we incorporate stories from others, our +names remain attached to this collective creation: Ada, Aglaia, Irmak, +Stephen. We have created interfaces highlighting the balance between +communal sharing, individual responsibility and awareness.
+the reader: Interfaces?
+the book: Interfaces are boundaries that
+connect and separate. They’re the spaces that fill the void between us.
+An interface can be an act, a story, a keyboard, a cake; It allows us to
+be vulnerable together, to share our stories with and through each
+other. I am a collection of these interfaces.
the reader: (confused) What do you mean a +collection, like a catalogue?
+the book: Yeah I guess. I weave the words and the +works we created during…
+the reader: we?
+the book: …I mean the four of us, the students of +Experimental Publishing at the Piet Zwart Institute. From 2022 until +today, June 2024, we published three special issues together. We wrote +four theses and made four graduation projects. We grew our hair out and +cut it and grew it again and dyed it. We cared and cried for each other, +we brewed muddy coffee and bootlegged books.
+(The book tears up).
+Finishing a Master’s is a bit of a heavy moment for us and this book +is a gentle archive, a memory of things that have been beautiful to +us.
+the reader: (sarcasm) do you have a tissue, im soooo +touched.
+the book: malaka, just read me.
++
+
+
+<?water bodies>
+divergent digital intimacies +
+
++Water, stories, the body,
+
+all the things we do, are
+mediums
+that hide and show what’s
+hidden.
+(Rumi, 1995 translation)
꙳for you
+All intimacy is about bodies. Is this true? Does it matter? I doubt +it. Do you know? Let’s find out, maybe.
+Once, I thought that everything in the world was either one or zero +and that there was a harsh straight line between them. Then I found out +you could step or hop across the line, back and forth, if others showed +you how. Today, I am no less binary, no less interested in dichotomies, +but I am willing to dance through them if you are too. Can we dance +these dichotomies together, embracing the contradictions of the virtual +and physical, the comfortable and uncomfortable, intimate and +non-intimate? I can’t do it alone, the subject is too heavy and the +binary is too 1011000. I won’t ask you to resolve these contradictions, +I have no desire to. Instead, I hope we can cultivate the tension and +tenderness inherent in holding together incompatible truths because both +prove necessary.
+To dance through these dichotomies I will start in a specific +position, growing from Donna Haraway’s in ’A Cyborg Manifesto”. In her +essay, Haraway explores the concept of a cyborg as a rejection of +boundaries between humans, animals, and machines. A symbol for a +feminist posthuman theory that embraces the plasticity of identity. +Before she does all this dancing, however, she takes a strong stance of +blasphemy. She engages seriously with traditional notions of feminism +and identity but with irony, not apostasy, which is to say without full +rejection—without unbelief. My position as I jump will be the same as +hers, ironic faith. My mocking is grave but caring and my primary aim is +for us only to spin fast enough not to see the line anymore, while still +being able to see the binaries. It won’t be an easy dance for us but I +will do my best to keep softening for you, I promise.
+I will show you a digital body, make it comfortable and then +uncomfortable, lightly intimate, and richly intimate. I have my own +story, my own digital body, of course. This is where I take my second +stance, however. This time, the position is Lauren Berlant’s, from ‘The +Female Complaint’. The book places individual stories as inescapable +autobiographies of a collective experience and uses the personal to +explain an intimate general experience. In our story, the difference +between my body and the collective digital body is unimportant, I hope +you see that. I will tell you my story if you know how to look, but I +will tell you through the stories of many others who shared them with +me. I have no other choice, every time I have tried to tell this story a +chorus of voices has come out.
+Some of the stories I will tell you will carry memories of pain; +physical and emotional. I will keep holding you while you hear this, but +your limbs may still feel too heavy to dance. In that case, I give you +my full permission to skip, jump, or lay down completely. This is not +choreographed and I care deeply for you.
+I love you and hope you see what I saw in these stories.
+Safe dreams now, I will talk to you soon.
+0. DIGITAL BODIES
+++“I think the worst must be finished.
+
+Whether I am right, don’t tell me.
+Don’t tell me.
+No ringlet of bruise,
+no animal face, the waters salt me
+and I leave it barefoot. I leave you, season
+of still tongues, of roses on nightstands
+beside crushed beer cans. I leave you
+white sand and scraped knees. I leave
+this myth in which I am pig, whose
+death is empty allegory. I leave, I leave—
+At the end of this story,
+I walk into the sea
+and it chooses
+not to drown me.”
+(Yun, 2020)
+
a. what is a digital body?
+A digital body is a body on the Internet. A body outside the internet +is simply a body. On the internet, discussions about corporeality +transcend the limitations of physicality, shaping and reshaping +narratives surrounding the self. This text explores the intricate +dynamics within these conversations, dancing at the interplay between +tangible bodies and their digital counterparts. The construction of a +digital body is intricately intertwined with these online dialogues, +necessitating engaged reconstructions of the narratives surrounding +physical existence. Yet, the resulting digital body is a complex and +contradictory entity, embodying the nuances of both its virtual and +tangible origins.
+There is a specific metaphor that would allow us to better carry +these contradictions as we further explore digital bodies. Do you +remember that dream you had about deep ocean pie? Allow me to remind +you.
+You were walking on the shore, slowly, during a summer that happened +a long time ago. Your skin was warm and you could feel the wet cool sand +sticking to your feet. The gentle lapping of the waves washed the sand +away as you walked towards the ocean. You stepped, stepped. Then dove. +Underwater, the sea unfolded deeper than you remembered. It was a +vibrant display of life: bright schools of small fish, and tall +colorful, waving corals. It looked like that aquarium you saw once as a +kid. Your arms moved confusingly through the water as if you were wading +through a soup or were terribly tired. On the sandy ocean floor, you saw +a dining table. It had a floating white tablecloth, one plate, a fork, +and a pie in the center of it, on a serving dish. You sat on a chair but +could not feel it underneath you. You ate a heaping slice of pie. It had +a buttery-cooked carrots filling. You woke up. In the world, the sun was +still timid and your bedroom thick with sleep. What a weird dream. You +rubbed your face, sat up on your bed, and drank the glass of water next +to you. You felt full, as if you just ate a plateful of carrot pie.
+There were two bodies in this story. An awake one and a dream one, an +ocean one. In dreams, bodies have their own set of rules, often blurring +the boundaries between waking and sleeping, wanting and fearing. Digital +bodies are very similar to dream bodies. They exhibit a similar fluidity +and abstraction, a defiance of traditional notions of physicality. They +share the blurring and inherent potential nature of dream bodies. They +are slower, stronger, and different. They switch and change and melt +into each other, they lose and regrow limbs, they run sluggishly and fly +smoothly. If we scream in our dreams, we sometimes wake up still +screaming. Our waking bodies react to our dream bodies, they have the +same tears, the same orgasms, the same drives.
+This is a story of two bodies, same but different, influenced but not +driven. A tangible body, full of fluids and organs, emotions and +feelings. Cartilage, bacteria, bones, and nerve endings. A digital body, +cable-veined and loud-vented, shiny and loading.
+The digital body is ethereal and abstracted, embarrassing, graphic, +and real but not physical.
+This is the beginning.
+b. body vs. computer
+Framing the discourse around bodies on the internet as a clear-cut +dichotomy feels clunky in today’s internet landscape. The web is today +available by body, cyborg dimensions of the internet of bodies, or +virtual and augmented realities, creating a complex interplay between +having a body and existing online.
+As intricate as this dance is now, it certainly did not begin that +way. It started with what felt like a very serious and tangible line +drawn by very serious tangible people; this is real life and this is +virtual life. Even people like Howard Rheingold, pioneers who approached +early virtual life with enthusiasm and care, couldn’t escape +characterizing it as a “bloodless technological ritual” (1993). +Rheingold was an early member of The Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link (Well), +a seminal virtual community built in the 1980s that was renowned for its +impact on digital culture and played a pivotal role in shaping what +would become the landscape of the Internet. Rheingold’s reflections on +his experience on this primordial soup of the Internet offer insight +into the initial conceptualizations of online life by those joyfully +participating.
+In “The Virtual Community”, Rheingold offers a heartfelt tribute to +intimacy and affection through web- based interactions which, at the +time, were unheard of. He struggles in his efforts to highlight the +legitimacy of his connections, finding no way to do so except by +emphasizing their tangible bodily experiences. The community’s claim to +authenticity thus had to lie in the physical experiences of its members— +the visible bodies and hearable voices, the weddings, births, and +funerals (1993).You’re dreaming again, +good. Would you feel closer to me if you could hear my voice? Is my +voice a sound? Could it be a feeling?
+Even then, and even by people with no interest in undermining the +value of the virtual, the distinction between physical and virtual was +confusing. Rheingold himself reinforces the boundary of body relations +and computer relations by referring to his family as a “flesh-and-blood +family’ and his close online friends as “unfamiliar faces” (1993). +Constantly interplaying digital connections with the physical +characteristics of the kind of connections people valued before the +internet.I will be honest with you, I +have little patience for this recurring line of thought that seeks to +distinguish people’s noses from their hearts, as if there was a physical +love that is the valuable one and a virtual imaginary one that is feeble +and unworthy.
+In any case, his primary interest seemed to be to emphasize computer +relations as valid forms of connection between bodies, not to talk of +any distinction quite yet. It’s the eighties, the internet is still +fresh and new and the possibility to form close relations with strangers +online seems fragile and concerning yet exciting. This is the clearest +the distinction between in-real-life and online has ever been and it’s +still fuzzy and unclear.
+At the same time and in the same digital space as Rheingold, there +was another man, a digital body being formed. This is our second story, +the ocean body we dreamt of earlier is now in a digital primordial soup, +questioning itself and stuck between staying and leaving. In this story, +its name is Tom Mandel and when he died, he did so on the Well.
+Mandel was a controversial and popular figure in this pioneering +virtual community. According to many other members, Tom Mandel embodied +the essence of the Well—its history, its voice, its attitude. Mandel’s +snarky and verbose provocations started heated discussions, earning him +warnings such as “Don’t Feed The Mandel!” (Leonard, 1995). His sharp +comments often stirred emotions that reminded people of family +arguments, fuelling an intimacy that was characteristic of the Well: +both public and solitary (Hafner, 1997).
+Until 1995, Mandel had done a quite rigorous job of keeping his body +separate from The Well and had never attended any of the physical +in-person meetings from the community. His only references to being a +body had been on the “health” online conference, where he often talked +about his illnesses. One day, after nearly a decade of daily +interaction, he posted he had got the flu and that he felt quite ill. +When people wished for him to get well soon, he replied he had gone to +get tested and was waiting for a diagnosis. This way, when cancer was +found in his lungs, the community was first to know. In the following +six months, as his illness progressed, the community followed closely +(Hafner, 1997). They were first to know when Nana, a community member +with whom he had had a publicly turbulent relationship, flew to +California to marry him. The community was a witness and is now an +archive of his declining wit as cancer spread to his brain and his +famously articulate and scathing comments got shorter, fearful, and more +tender.Initially, when a member he often +argued with offered to pray for him Mandel had replied: “You can shovel +your self-aggrandizing sentiments up you wide ass sideways for the +duration as far as I’m concerned.” Later, as the cancer progressed: “I +ain’t nearly as brave as you all think. I am scared silly of the pain of +dying this way. I am not very good at playing saint. Pray for me, +please.
+Before he posted his final goodbye, he chose to do one last thing. +Together with another member, they programmed a bot that posted randomly +characteristic comments from Mandel on The Well—the Mandelbot. In the +topic he had opened to say goodbye, he posted this message about the +bot:
+++“I had another motive in opening this topic to tell the truth, one +that winds its way through almost everything I’ve done online in the +five months since my cancer was diagnosed. I figured that, like everyone +else, my physical self wasn’t going to survive forever and I guess I was +going to have less time than actuarials allocateus [actually allocated]. +But if I could reach out and touch everyone I knew on-line… I could toss +out bits and pieces of my virtual self and the memes that make up Tom +Mandel, and then when my body died, I wouldn’t really have to leave… +Large chunks of me would also be here, part of this new space.” (Hafner, +1997)
+
With the Mandelbot, Mandel found a way to deal with what he later +called his grieving for the community, with which he could not play +anymore once his own body died. By doing so, he was starting to blend +the boundaries of intimacy through computers and bodies, driven by his +love and grief.It’s out of care and not +lack of relevance that I am not showing you Mandel’s goodbye message. +It’s enough to know he was deep in the grief of having to leave a +community he loved and cared for and that pain was felt in every +word.
+When he talked about the bot in previous messages, it sounded almost +like a joke. A caring haunting of the platform, to keep his persona +alive for the community in a way that could be quite horrific for those +grieving. In his admission though it becomes clear that this was closer +to an attempt to deal with his grief around losing the community, his +unreadiness to let go of a place he loved so dearly. A place just as +real in emotion, that was built in part by Mandel’s digital body and its +persona.
+In a tribute posted after his death, fellow Well member and +journalist Andrew Leonard tried to convey his own sense of blended +physicality and emotion.
+++“Sneer all you want at the fleshlessness of online community, but on +this night, as tears stream down my face for the third straight evening, +it feels all too real.” (Andrew Leonard, 1995)
+
c. bot-feelings
+An internet body has bot-feelings if allowed to. Let me explain.
+A bot functions as a different entity from a cyborg, as it does not +attempt to emulate a human body but rather human action and readiness. +Its role is to mirror human behavior online, simulating how a physical +body might act, what it would click on, and what would it say. On social +media, bots engage in a kind of interpretative dance of human +interaction, performing based on instructions provided by +humans.The first bot communities on the +internet are now born, half- mistakenly. They are always spiritual +communities posting religious images created by artificial intelligence, +all the comments echoing choirs of bots praising. Amen, amen, amen. I am +not naive, I know they are built by humans but it is this performance of +religiosity that I am interested in, and how little humanity is shown in +it. It is something else.
+Unlike an internet body, which represents the virtual embodiment of a +person, a bot doesn’t seek to be a person. It comments under posts +alongside many other bots, all under a fake name and photo but nothing +else to give the illusion of humanity. When an internet body has +bot-feelings, it is a disruptive performance. They are feelings that do +not attempt to be human body feelings, they exist as their own genuine +virtual expression.
+In “Virtual Intimacies”, McGlotten also incidentally argued that a +virtual body has bot-feelings (2013). He described the virtual as +potential, as a transcendent process of actualization, making it into, +generally, a description of bots. Internet bodies, as virtual, would be +by this understanding also charged with the constant immanent power to +act and to feel like a human body. It is a constant state of becoming, +of not- quite-pretending but never fully being anything either.
+Most of the time we can tell disembodied bots online from tangible +people and as such they have the potential to be bodies, without ever +trying to be.
+Of course, when McGlotten described the virtual as such he placed it +in a dichotomy, once again, against the “Intimacies” which are the other +side of his book. The emphasis here lies in intimacy being an embodied +feeling and sense and a carnal one at that. Virtual intimacies are, by +this definition, an inherent failed contradiction. However, McGlotten +plays with the real and non-real in new ways, using the text to +highlight how virtual intimacy is similar to physical intimacy and then, +even more, blurring as he shows the already virtual in physical +intimacies. Applying this to a body, rather than an affective +experience, works just the same.
+McGlotten uses a conceptualization of the virtual based on the +philosopher Deleuze’s,A step in a step in +a step, sorry. which can be used to refer to a virtual body +as well. The virtual is in this case a cluster of waiting, dreaming, and +remembering, embodying potential. Something that is constantly becoming, +an object and also the subject attributed to it (2001). An internet body +with its bot-feelings is a body in the process of being one, acting as +one, an ideal of one beyond what is physical but including its +possibility.
+Going a step further in McGlotten’s interpretation of Deleuze, this +also plays into how virtual intimacies mirror queer intimacies as they +approach normative ideals but “can never arrive at them”. Both queer and +virtual relations are imagined by a greater narrative as fantastical, +simulated, immaterial, and artificial—poor imitations and perversions of +a heterosexual, monogamous, and procreative marital partnership (2013). +A virtual body is similarly immanent, with both potential and corruption +at the same time. It carries all the neoliberal normative power of +freedom that a queer body can carry today but also reflects the unseemly +fleshly reality of having one.
+This is where the story continues. The body from the dream ocean +leaves the primordial soup of the internet to stage a disruptive +performance. It moves from potential creation to a wild spring river. A +fluid being, that exists simultaneously inside and outside normative +constructions. It channels deviant feelings and transcendental opinions +about the collective’s physical form genuinely as people use it to +navigate their physicality. Both virtual and queer intimacies highlight +the constructed nature of identity and desire. They disrupt the notion +of a fixed, essential self, instead embracing the multiplicity and +complexity inherent in human experience. This destabilization of +identity opens up possibilities for self-expression and connection, +creating spaces where individuals can redefine themselves beyond the +constraints of societal expectations while still technically under its +watchful eye. In essence, the parallels between virtual and queer +intimacies underscore the radical potential of both to disrupt and +reimagine the norms that govern our understanding of relationships, +bodies, and identity. They invite us to question the rigid binaries and +hierarchies that structure our society and to embrace the fluidity and +possibility inherent in the human experience.
+1.DIGITAL COMFORT
+++The only laws:
+
+Be radiant.
+Be heavy.
+Be green.
+
++Tonight, the dead light up your mind
+
+like an image of your mind on a scientist’s screen.
+‘The scientists don’t know – and too much.’
+
++“In the town square, in the heart of night (a delicacy like the heart +of an artichoke), a man dances cheek-to-cheek with the infinite +blue.
+
+(Schwartz, 2022)
+
a. comfort care
+Let’s care for this digital body. I’ll feed it virtual vegetables +while you wipe away the wear of battery fatigue. And why not encourage +it to take strolls through the network, it might be good for it.
+But what if it falls ill? What if its sickness is inherent, designed +to echo like the distorted reflection of rippling water a corrupted, +isolated, and repulsive physical form? Then we must comfort care for +it.
+Comfort care is a key concept in healthcare, described as an art. It +is the simple but not easy art of performing comforting actions by a +nurse for a patient (Kolcaba, 1995). The nurse is in this story an +artist full of intention, using the medium of comforting actions to +produce the artwork of comfort for the uncomfortable. Subtle, +subjective, and thorough. However, achieving comfort for another is far +from straightforward. It demands addressing not only the physical but +also the psychospiritual, environmental, and socio-cultural dimensions +of distress, each requiring its blend of relief, ease, and transcendence +(Kolcaba, 1995).
+In moments of need, digital comfort may become the only care certain +digressive bodies receive. When the distress a body is in becomes too +culturally uncomfortable, no nurse will come to check on it.
+If care is offered, it’s often only with a desire to assimilate the +divergent body back into expected standards of normalcy and ability. +This leaves those with non-conforming bodies isolated, ashamed, and +yearning for connection and acceptance.I +am talking here about the distress caused by mental health issues that +have direct connections to physicality—self- injuring in any direct +form; food, drugs, pain. The culturally uncomfortable diseases, the +it’s- personal- responsibility, and just-stop disorders. This is a +hidden topic of this text because I cared more about the pain +surrounding them and the reasons to hide rather than the grim +physicality of them all.
+In the depths of isolation and confusion, marginalized bodies often +look for belonging and understanding online. Gravitating towards one +another with a hunger born of desperation, forming intimate bonds +through shared pain. Through a shared sense of unwillingness, a lack of +desire, and a desperate need for physical assimilation with the +norm.
+The healthy body, the normal body, the loved body.
+On the internet, these digital bodies claw onto each other, holding +each other close and comfort-caring for one another. The spaces where +this happens are rooms, or corners of the internet that I’ll call back +places. Back places were initially defined by the sociologist Goffman as +symbolic spaces where stigmatized people did not need to hide their +stigma(1963). In our story, backplaces are small rooms online, tender +soft spaces reserved by those in terrible psychological pain themselves, +where they can find relief, ease, and transcendence.
+Of course, when we speak of digital bodies, their physicality is not +relevant. To comfort care for a digital body one would thus need to +provide relief, ease, and transcendence for the mental, emotional, and +spiritual; through the digital environment of the body and the +interpersonal cultural relations of the individual. As with any place of +healing, however, it is a transient place. It is an achy place, for the +last step of the journey will see them leave the community and +compassion that saw and sustained them.
+There is no other way for divergent people.
+b. uncomfortable comfort
+In the past and the present, social scientists have studied the +people in the corners of the internet, characterizing these spaces +between people as deviant. Like children lifting stones to look at the +bugs underneath— simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the coherence +discovered where once was separation. A partition that was then +reinforced by the scientists themselves as they began documenting the +bugs’ behavior. They eavesdropped on conversations, captured intimate +moments, and asked again and again what made them so different. The more +they probed, the more they made sure to separate their behavior from the +norm to place the deviants against (Adler and Adler, 2005, 2008; Smith, +Wickes & Underwood, 2013).
+The concept of deviance, particularly concerning what people do with +their bodies and how their bodies behave, I find inherently flawed. +Observing from an artificial external standpoint only serves to further +alienate those already marginalized. I like to approach my research into +the intimacy and comfort care expressed in marginalized digital +communities without the alienation of social science. There are many +approaches one can take if one wishes to avoid this, and the one I am +choosing to borrow is a mathematical approach to anthropology. I would +like to borrow from mathematician Jörn Dunkel’s work in pattern +formation. It’s a conscious choice to approach divergences in bodily +behavior through their similarities, not differences. This includes +specificities in atypicality, of course, but also the distinctions +between me as the writer and them as the writer. You as the reader and +you as the community. Me and you, as a whole. Both exist, both separate +but in what is not of such importance.
+++“Though many of these systems are different, fundamentally, we can +see similarities in the structure of their data. It’s very easy to find +differences. What’s more interesting is to find out what’s +similar.”
+
+(Chu & Dunkel, 2021)
Individuals who forge and inhabit these communities, fostering +tender, intimate connections amongst themselves, are not deviant but +rather divergent. Deviance involves bifurcation, a split estuary from +the river of appropriate cultural behavior.Of course, the river itself is not a river; it’s +many confused streams that believe themselves both the same and +separate. I don’t know where I’m going with this, I just don’t love the +river of normativity and I’d rather go swim in the ocean of dreams with +you.
+Divergence can be so much more than that. In mathematics, a divergent +series extends infinitely without converging to a finite limit. A +repetition of partial sums with no clear ending, never reaching zero. +Mathematician Niels Abel once said that “divergent series are in general +something fatal and it is a shame to base any proof on them. [..] The +most essential part of mathematics has no foundation”(1826). Drawing a +parallel to social relations would then imply that there is no end to +divergence, too many paradoxes in the foundation of normativeness to +base anything on it.
+Harmonic series are, on the other hand, also divergent series. They +are infinite series formed by the summation of all positive unit +fractions, named after music harmonics. The wavelengths of a vibrating +string are a harmonic series. These series also find application in +architecture, establishing harmonious relationships. Despite their +integral role in human aesthetics, all harmonic series diverge, +perpetually expanding without ever concluding. They embody a richness +that transcends conventional boundaries, blending into one another +infinitely.
+
+
+By likening digital bodies to divergent series, we embrace the +complexity and infinite possibilities arising from their +interconnectedness and deviation from the norm. However, it’s crucial to +note that the divergence I’m discussing here carries a halo of pain, +accompanied by the requirement of bodily discomfort. There are other +forms of divergence, ways to have different bodies that necessitate +creating spaciousness around normativity to allow them grace to +grow.
+The divergent digital bodies we are dancing with and caring for, +however, are of a particular type. If we were to go back to our water +stories, we’d see that the digital bodies we are following are painful +ones. Cold, deep streams, hard to follow, hard to swim in. Their +divergence from the norm makes them so.
+They have intricate relationships with themselves, existing in +unstainable forms devoid of comfort, nourishment, or thriving. What does +comfort mean for a body whose whole existence is uncomfortable? +Moreover, what if the comfort care performed for these divergent bodies +makes them too comfortable being in their pained state of self? Could +they be?I heard the idea of living +questions for the first time in “Letters to A Young Poet” by Rainer +Maria Rilke and then again on the podcast On Being with Krista Tippet. +It may be a bit transparent but this entire text is informed by the +concept of keeping the unsolved in your heart and learning to love it. +Not searching for the answers for we cannot live them yet. The point is +to live it all. It could be that at some point we will live our way to +an answer but it is feeling the questions alive within us that is +important. Do you?
+Caring for a digital body involves providing it with space to live, +giving its experimental bot-feelings tender attention, and revealing +your own vulnerable digital body in response. It’s about giving it an +audience, hands to hold, eyes that meet theirs in understanding. A +rehearsal room, a pillow, a mirror. These rooms, backplaces scattered +across the internet, are hidden enough to allow the divergent to +comfort- care for one another, sometimes to the point where it is only +the same type of divergent digital bodies reflecting back at each +other.
+So far I have talked fondly of divergence and the harmony of +divergent series, and the need to have no finite ending. I’d like to +tell you a different story now. Divergent digital bodies are, by this +point in our text, built and alive as they can be. They are many, they +are together and seeing each other, producing harmonic waves. They are +in backplaces on the internet, but they are less safe than they seem. +They are themselves resonant echo chambers, with an ongoing risk of +catastrophic acoustic resonance.
+Acoustic resonance is what happens when an acoustic system amplifies +sound waves whose frequency matches one of its natural frequencies of +vibration. The instrument of amplification is important for the harmonic +series, for the music must not match exactly. An exact match will break +it for the object seeks out its resonance. Resonating at the precise +resonant frequency of a glass will shatter it. Digital bodies meet in +these rooms, amplifying their own waves seeking resonance but the risk +of an exact match is that it may shatter them. These spaces full of +divergent digital bodies quickly grow unstable, tethering echo chambers. +Rooms full of reflections, transforming what was once individual pain +into a mirrored loop of anguish. Caring for your own and others’ bodies +becomes increasingly difficult, making permanent residence in the mirror +room unbearable. You all know you must leave before you meet your exact +resonance.
+c. unbearable intimacy
+This is the end of the story. Our digital bodies have a shape, a +sense of life and death, and someone to care for us and to care for. We +are alive and have found intimacy with each other.
+We live in the backplaces, hiding and being hidden online as we have +been for years. We used to be on invitation-only forums, +password-protected bulletin boards, or encrypted hashtags. Now we are +alive in the glitches between pixels, in a shared language of numbers +and acronyms and misdirection. Avoiding a content moderation algorithm, +always hunting the dashboards of social media websites for visible pain +it can cure by erasure. We cannot tell you where to find you or it might +too. We try to stay alive, to hold each other, hiding behind code words, +fake names, and photos. We care for each other as best we can, the blind +leading the blind, the sick caring for the sick. We have brought our +unseemliness, our gory gross bodies to each other and found tender +intimacy and understanding.
+On good days, dashboards are full of goodbyes and my heart swells +with hope, for those of us who make it and for the small bright light +telling us that we may be one of them. At the same time, some of us +leave only to come back ghosts of ourselves, hunting threads with the +empty hope of missionaries.
+Don’t give up, it’s worth it!
+Most of us scoff at this. The idea of leaving only to come back and +tell people you left is uncomfortable, the failed progress that washes +away hope. A healed patient who regularly comes back to the hospital to +encourage the sick, who wish to be anywhere but there. The genuine love +and care within these communities transpire better under goodbye posts. +When people do heal and shed their accounts’ skin, they often leave it +surrounded by all those who once cared for the digital body within +it.
+I’m so proud of you! Never come back, we love you so much.
+Recover, don’t come back. Recover, don’t come back. Recover, never +come back.
+I had a conversation with a friend who once lived in these spaces +between letters but has since moved outside them. When asked, he +mentioned he could only find recovery by leaving that community. His +body has changed since now it is the spitting image of a standard, +healthy body. I didn’t ask, but he knew I’d wonder. He told me he didn’t +like his new body and preferred the divergent one he once built himself. +Why leave then? Why did you stop?
+Because that was no life.
+Now life sparkles, everything feels brighter and more exciting. I got +my will to live back. Before, there was nothing but my body. I was +willing to die for it.
+He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt to show me his shoulder, where he +has tattooed a symbol for a community friend who died.
+I hope I never go back. I miss them every day.
+This is the last dichotomy. For the divergent digital body can’t stay +in a Backplace for very long, the intimacy of it is unbearable. It is an +intimacy that floods, and overruns. In their definition of intimacy in +the context of a public surrounding a cultural phenomenon, the author +Lauren Berlant denotes that intimacy itself always requires hopeful +imagination. It requires belief in the existence of an ideal other who +is emotionally attuned to one’s own experiences and fantasies, +conditioned by the same longings and with willing reciprocity +(2008).If we were to be honest, the +entire exercise of writing this for you requires this very +faith.
+In the context of the intimacy of a Backplace, where divergent +digital bodies have formed a community around existing outside the +healthy and standard, longing and hopeful intimacy becomes a heavy- +hearted and cardinal concept. Being in these rooms and finding care and +love for others like you can be so uncomfortable when the longings, +experiences, and fantasies you are sharing are centered around pain. The +shared cultural experience of existing as a collective divergent digital +body promises a fantasy of belonging, a collective hope, and commitment +that is extremely fragile.
+There is a duality then, if not a dichotomy. As a divergent body, +there is nothing you crave more than to be seen and to be loved in a +space where you are safe, where the faces looking at you are not +repulsed but warm with familiarity. Yet, it is this very warmth that +becomes unbearable and an inherently traumatic intimacy. Being loved at +your worst, at your most embarrassing, cultural borderline self is an +agonizing duality to deal with. McGlotten, who was referenced earlier +concerning the potential of bot-feelings of a digital body, now comes +back to remind us of their impossibility. In his book, he talks of a +digital intimacy that inundates us and is both a source of connection +and disconnection (McGlotten, 2013). We are looking at a smaller scale +than he does, but intimacy in the context of shared vulnerability can be +a need just as intolerable.
+Certain kinds of witnessing can become curses, shivers of resonance +so close to an explosion of glass if only you strike the cord that will +keep me going. Certain kinds of divergence can only end with leaving or +death, truth be told. People in these bodies know this, even if the +digital bodies behave as if there is hope in a future where the +divergence brings joy to one’s life consistently. The shared +vulnerability itself then, is unbearable. I need you to see me, I need +you, who are just like me at my worst, to love me. When you do, I can’t +stand it. It ruins both of us to be seen this way and we need it so +desperately. It has to exist and yet it can’t for long.
+I leave even though I love all of your digital bodies. I leave +because I love you, little digital body and you are me.
+2. A LIFE TO BE HAD11
+11 Was this the end of this story?
+In the epilogue, you sit your body down and enter your computer. The air
+coming in from the window smells wet and earthy, new. The sun shines low
+on the horizon.
+
You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a story.
+You start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to let
+it know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child holding a
+fallen bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.
+
I don’t know if I am touching you, to tell you the truth. Digital
+bodies are stories, like physical bodies are, like dreams are, and like
+water is.
+
Stories that are hard to tell and hard to hear and even more, maybe,
+hard to understand. I have loved these stories and I have loved telling
+them to you. I hope you understand that my goal was for you to live
+these questions, to feel these stories in their confusion. My digital
+body, my bot-feelings, my divergent communities. I have given them to
+you, so they may live longer, like an obsolete but beloved cyborg shown
+in a museum.
+
Look: I was here, Look: I was loved, Look: I was saved.
+
The digital bodies that kept me alive, kept me from becoming fully a
+machine are no longer around in these online rooms. They are in
+different places, being touched by tentative hands, being loved for more
+than their divergence.
+I am too.
+
The rooms, the backplaces, however, are still full of others,
+divergent digital bodies who did not leave, who keep caring for each
+other at the bottom of the whirlpool. There is no happy ending because
+there is no ending. They keep typing and hoping, writing their
+collective pain down on keyboards that transmit love letters to each
+other. I am not embarrassed by my care for you, but you may be so if it
+helps. I know how overwhelming intimacy can be.
+
Telling you these stories was important for me, so much so that I
+will tell you so many more in a different place if you wish to listen to
+me longer. With this story, I dreamt of a digital body for you. It came
+from an ocean of dreams, into a primordial soup that gave it enough
+shape to become wild rivers, deep streams, sound waves. It flooded and
+now, it leaves. A digital body that grew its own feelings, looked for
+others like it, and realized its divergence and the need to leave. A
+dream body, a primordial body, a disruptive body, a divergent body, and
+now, a leaving body. This last story, however, of the leaving and loving
+body, is yet to be told.
+
The sun is now almost up, and the birds are alive and awake, telling
+each other stories just outside the room. We don’t have so much time
+left. I have made you something, to tell your digital body the stories
+of the leaving and loving body. It is a webpage, the address is
+https://vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces/.
+
You open the page, and you are asked to write the characters you see
+in a captcha.
+E5qr7.
+eSq9p.
+8oc8y.
+Fuck.
+You try not to panic, but you know you have been detected.
+
THANK YOU
+Special thanks to Marloes de Valk, Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends,
+Joseph Knierzinger and Leslie Robbins.
+Extra thank you to Chae and Kamo from XPUB3 for the food and moral
+support in this trying time and to my other xpubini for being great and
+eating my snacks and gossiping.
+But most of all I’d like to thank the people in the online communities
+I’ve met and loved, you were of course who this thesis was about. Thank
+you for saving me, I will always remember you.
+
references
+Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (2008) ‘The Cyber Worlds of self-injurers: +Deviant communities, relationships, and selves’, Symbolic Interaction, +31(1), pp. 33–56. doi:10.1525/si.2008.31.1.33.
+Berlant, L.G. (2008) The female complaint the unfinished business of +sentimentality in American culture. Durham: Duke University Press.
+Chu, J. (2021) Looking for similarities across Complex Systems, MIT +News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at: +https://news.mit.edu/2021/jorn-dunkel-complex- systems-0627 (Accessed: +08 March 2024).
+Deleuze, G., Boyman, A. and Rajchman, J. (2001) Pure immanence: +Essays on a life. New York: Zone Books.
+Goffman, E. (2022) Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled +identity. London: Penguin Classics. Hafner, K. (1997) The epic saga of +the well, Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/1997/05/ff-well/ +(Accessed: 01 February 2024).
+Haraway, D.J. (2000) ‘A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and +socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century’, Posthumanism, +pp. 69–84. doi:10.1007/978- 1-137-05194-3_10.
+Hyacint (2017) Harmonic series to 32,
+https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
+Harmonic_series_to_32.svg.
Kolcaba, K.Y. and Kolcaba, R.J. (1991) ‘An analysis of the concept of +comfort’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 16(11), pp. 1301–1310. +doi:10.1111/j.1365- 2648.1991.tb01558.x.
+Leonard, A. (no date) All Too Real, https://people.well.com/. +Available at: https://people.well.com/user/cynsa/tom/tom14.html +(Accessed: 01 April 2024).
+McGlotten, S. (2013) Virtual intimacies: Media, affect, and queer +sociality [Preprint]. doi:10.1353 book27643.
+Rumi, J. al-Din and Barks, C. (1995) ‘Story Water’, in The Essential +Rumi. New
+Schwartz, C. (2022) Lecture on Loneliness, Granta. Available at: +https://granta.com/lecture-on-loneliness/ (Accessed: 08 March 2024).
+Smith, N., Wickes, R. and Underwood, M. (2013) ‘Managing a +marginalised identity in pro-anorexia and fat acceptance +cybercommunities’, Journal of Sociology, 51(4), pp. 950–967. +doi:10.1177/1440783313486220.
+Yun, J. (2020) ‘The Leaving Season’, in Some Are Always Hungry. +University of Nebraska Press.+ +
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Slipknot is widely
+used for catching small animals like rabbits and snares. It is also
+commonly used to tie packages.
Bowline is known to
+be used since 1627. Some believe it was used in Ancient Egypt because a
+knot resembling it was discovered in the tomb of pharaoh Cheops. Even
+after it’s used and very tight, bowline is still easy to untie, which
+makes it commonly used.
Square knot is one of
+the oldest knots. Romans knew it as Hercules knot. A roman scholar
+claimed that it speeds up healing when used to secure a bandage. It is
+often used to tie belts and shoe laces.
Broken
+knots are knots that aren’t tied well, done with a wrong material or was
+under more pressure than it could take.
Bends are joining
+knots. They attach two strings together. The bend above is a sheet bend
+and it works well when koining two different strings and can take
+stress.
Hitches are used to
+tie strings to a standing solid object.
{.image-95}
This is the elbow of
+our strings. Elbows are created when an additional twist is added to a
+loop. In this case, it represents the counter argument in the
+string.
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