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<h1><a href="../index.html" class="title">vulnerable <br>interfaces</a></h1>
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<div class="gummies">
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<div class="gummy">
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<a href="../ada/index.html"><img src="../img/purple.png" class="img2"></a>
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<div class="caption">ada</div>
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</div>
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<div class="gummy">
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<a href="../aglaia/index.html"><img src="../img/green.png" class="img2"></a>
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<div class="caption">aglaia</div>
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</div>
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<div class="gummy">
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<a href="../irmak/index.html"><img src="../img/yellow.png" class="img2"></a>
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<div class="caption">irmak</div>
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</div>
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<div class="gummy">
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<a href="../stephen/index.html"><img src="../img/red.png" class="img2"></a>
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<div class="caption">stephen</div>
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</nav>
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<div id="content"><h1 id="backplaces">Backplaces</h1>
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<p><a href="../backplaces">project website</a><br />
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</p>
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<p>Hi.<br />
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I made this play for you. It is a question, for us to hold together.</p>
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<p>Is all intimacy about bodies? What is it about our bodies that makes
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intimacy? What happens when our bodies distance intimacy from us? This
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small anthology of poems and short stories lives with these
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questions—about having a body without intimacy and intimacy without a
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body. This project is also a homage to everyone who has come before and
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alongside me, sharing their vulnerability and emotions on the Internet.
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I called the places where these things happen backplaces. They are
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small, tender online rooms where people experiencing societally
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uncomfortable pain can find relief, ease, and transcendence.<br />
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</p>
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<p>I made three backplaces for you to see, click, and feel: Solar
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Sibling, Hermit Fantasy, and Cake Intimacies. Each of these is the
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result of its own unique performance or project. Some of the stories I
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will share carry memories of pain—both physical and emotional. As you
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sit in the audience, know I am with you, holding your hand through each
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scene. If the performance feels overwhelming at any point, you have my
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full permission to step out, take a break, or leave. This is not
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choreographed, and I care deeply for you.<br />
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</p>
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<figure>
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<img src="index.png"
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alt="This is the Index, the stage of my play. Each felted item is an act." />
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<figcaption aria-hidden="true">This is the Index, the stage of my play.
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Each felted item is an act.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p>Solar Sibling is an online performance of shared loss about leaving
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and siblings. This project used comments people left on TikTok poetry. I
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extracted the emotions from these comments, mixed them with my own, and
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crafted them into poems. It is an ongoing performance, ending only when
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your feelings are secretly whispered to me. When you do, by typing into
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the comment box, your feelings are sent to me and the first act closes
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as the sun rises.<br />
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</p>
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<figure>
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<img src="solar-1.png"
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alt="The initial comment shaped poems and their sun count." />
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<figcaption aria-hidden="true">The initial comment shaped poems and
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their sun count.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<img src="solar-2.png"
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alt="The fillable comment where you can whisper your feelings to me." />
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<figcaption aria-hidden="true">The fillable comment where you can
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whisper your feelings to me.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p>Hermit Fantasy is a short story about a bot who wants to be a hermit.
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Inspired by an email response from a survey I conducted about receiving
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emotional support on the Internet, this story explores the contradiction
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of being online while wanting to disconnect. As an act it’s a series of
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letters, click by click.<br />
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</p>
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<figure>
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<img src="one.png" alt="The first letter." />
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<figcaption aria-hidden="true">The first letter.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<img src="two.png" alt="The second letter." />
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<figcaption aria-hidden="true">The second letter.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p>Cake Intimacies is a performance that took a year to bring together.
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It is a small selection of stories people told me and I held to memory
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and rewrote here. The stories come from two performances I hosted.
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First, I asked participants to eat cake, sitting facing or away from
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each other and sharing their stories about cake and the Internet. The
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second performance was hosted at the Art Meets Radical Openness
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Festival, as part of the Turning of the Internet workshop. For this
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performance, I predicted participants’ future lives on the Internet
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using felted archetypes and received stories from their Internet past in
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return. Now the stories are here, each of them a cake with a filling
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that tells a story, merging the bodily with the digital and making a
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mess of it all.<br />
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</p>
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<figure>
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<img src="pie.png"
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alt="The first two stories and their memory illustrations." />
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<figcaption aria-hidden="true">The first two stories and their memory
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illustrations.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<img src="phone-pie.png"
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alt="The second stories in the way they were meant to be experienced." />
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<figcaption aria-hidden="true">The second stories in the way they were
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meant to be experienced.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p>The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays
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but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you
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the stories. It’s one last game, one last joke to ask my question again.
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Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat.
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For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to
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eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with
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yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital
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intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the
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story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of
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intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.<br />
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</p>
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<figure>
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<img src="biscuit.png"
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alt="Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the performance." />
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<figcaption aria-hidden="true">Accept My Cookies, biscuits and bows for
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the performance.</figcaption>
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</figure>
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</div>
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