001: THE INDIGNITY OF BEING EXPLAINED
I have been thinking about what happens to nuance when everything needs to be immediately understood.
Having spent much of my life being understood in pieces, I'm not frustrated that nobody sees the whole of me; I'm frustrated that one accurate piece is so often mistaken for the complete explanation.
Online, we are encouraged to be highly specific versions of ourselves. We are sorted by what we watch, save, buy, believe and pause over for slightly too long.
The system notices a preference and gives us more of it. Repetition creates familiarity. Familiarity begins to feel like recognition.
Then recognition quietly becomes identity.
Because you liked this, you are this kind of person. Because you are this kind of person, here is more of the same.
Algorithms did not invent reductive thinking, but they have given it extremely efficient distribution.
The strange result is that, as we become more precisely categorized, our perspectives become less complex.
Hyper-niched, strangely identical. Because contradiction makes the system nervous and, in turn, makes for terrible content.
Nuance requires context, patience and the possibility that we may change our minds. None of these are platform strengths, because a simple position travels farther. Certainty performs better. You can understand anger without opening the caption.
This is not an argument for neutrality or endless fence-sitting. Some positions are indefensible. Some moments require clarity.
Nuance does not mean pretending every perspective is equally valid. It means recognizing more than one thing at once.
Integrative complexity: the ability to distinguish between different perspectives, recognize that more than one may contain truth, and understand the relationships between them without forcing everything into immediate agreement.
I can believe something strongly and still examine where it fails.
I can criticize a system while recognizing that I participate in it.
I can hold conflicting responses without deciding that one must be my secret authentic self.
That last part feels increasingly important.
We are often asked to become legible by becoming consistent. But we are not consistent systems. We contain incompatible needs, changing values, old beliefs and new information.
The unfinished position has become difficult to admit. I believe this, but I also recognize this. I am implicated in the thing I criticize.
Our complicity is fascinating to me.
We criticize algorithms while feeding them. We reject categorization while using categories to understand ourselves. We say we want complexity, then reward whoever states the simplest position most confidently.
We are not standing cleanly outside the systems flattening us.
How wildly inconvenient.
That tension sits at the centre of Strange Companions.
The project uses categories because categories help us recognize patterns. It distrusts what happens when recognition hardens into identity.
A SYSTEM THAT REFUSES ONE ANSWER
300+ visual elements for the dreadling universe
For the past four years, I have been building Strange Companions, a durational project about how humans use objects, rituals, systems and stories to live with uncertainty.
It looks like a classification system. In many ways, it is one. But it is not intended to tell someone who they are.
A Dreadling offers a perspective, not a personality. Someone may recognize themselves in several figures whose responses contradict one another. A Condition asks what environment is acting upon the situation. An Unresolved force prevents the reading from closing too neatly around one explanation.
It offers recognition without assignment.
Structure without a final verdict.
That is the conversation I want to open up during our upcoming residency.
suggested viewing
Every functioning universe requires a film syllabus.
I have assembled a STRANGE COMPANIONS required-viewing list on Letterboxd. These films consider uncertain worlds, strange systems, transformation, isolation, ritual, endurance and the general indignity of remaining conscious during wild freaking times.
(Some directly influenced the project. Others have been transmitting on a nearby frequency) If you don’t have Letterboxd and want the list, reply to this email, and I will send it to you.
our upcoming residency
Burn bright, crash spectacularly,
B
