Obsessed - Introduction
What is the difference between love and desire? Desire and obsession?
You must be obsessed with an :object: for an :object: to work. Desire isn’t strong enough. Love is of no consequence. There must exist then a metamorphosis from desire to obsession. The desire as “before” and the obsession as “after”. I ask, where does this space exist, and what phenomena occur within it?
Internet culture, which is ultimately the focus here, is dependent upon voyeuristic and exhibitionist desires. Within this digital spectacle, the conditions of being are mangled and disfigured, and the subconscious mind grasps for revelation. In a Debordian sense, network society has reduced us from a state of “being and having” to a state of “being and appearing”, and the commodification of network society has colonized the social life.
Technology in itself is not alone implicated in this deterioration of self-perception, and I find the general demonization of network society rather reductive and banal. Instead, I seek to examine how we, in a state of hyperconnectivity, attempt to make sense of the nonsensical, to render images and symbols for the unimaginable. The digital and physical realms are distorted, and perhaps even indistinguishable from each other. This is what now precludes circumstances, this is what we must now face.
