Films, Desire & Digital Spaces

It seems almost unreal to engage in conversations about desire at a 15th Century fort in India, but that’s exactly what Cheekay Cinco and I did from 7 – 10 March. APC WNSP organised a panel and workshop at Films of Desire, an event that brought together activists, human rights advocates, film makers and academics to engage in dialogue around the socio-political dimensions of representation. The focus of the event was around sexualities, and how their mis/non/positive representations on screen is related to real life negotiations on this difficult and shifting terrain.

Apart from having the chance to watch lots of cool (and some not so cool) movies made in South and Southeast Asia, organising the panel also gave us a chance to push our thinking around representations in digital spaces a little farther. Called "Representing Women in Digital Spaces: A Question of Violence?", the panel attempted to cover three perspectives: 1) pragmatic and strategic use of emerging ICT tools under the web 2.0 paradigm; 2) lived experience of using video technology as a tool of activism; and 3) conceptual explorations on what it means to re-present sexualities in digital spaces.

The session was more of an interactive discussion than a panel. Working together with Mien Lor from KOMAS, a partner of Take Back The Tech in Malaysia, she injected the perfect amount of humour, openness and irreverence to get everyone comfortable with each other, while Angela Kuga Thas moderated the session with her usual sharp observations and thoughtful considerations.

Cheekay started by her presentation called, "Women Take Back The Tech! Rupturing Online Spaces through Web 2.0", and talked about some of the principles that underpin a range of applications under what is known as web version 2.0: collaborative spaces, community building for content creation, RSS, folksonomy and more. Lots of questions came in as she went along, which led towards an interesting discussion on FOSS development and practical application.

Mien, in her “Lens of Change” session, shared her work in KOMAS with communities of young people in Kuala Lumpur by using video technology as a tool to interrogate racial segregation and discrimination issues. She also led a discussion about the lack of space for independent film and documentary film makers in the country, and how as part of an ad-hoc collective called Filmmakers Anonymous, started carving their own spaces by showing collections of video shorts and documentaries in different spots around the city. In the process, Mien spoke frankly about the politics of curated indie films, and what it means to be a young woman film maker in this scene.

I’m completely summarising their sessions here, and completely not doing it justice, but think will leave Cheekay to blog about it herself.

For me, it was a real challenge trying to prepare for this presentation. For one, we’re not talking about films or movies, but about representations happening on the internet and other squidgy digital spaces (mobile phones?). After a long conversation with Cheekay that lasted till 4am, I decided to pose questions instead of stuff that I think I have somehow figured out.

Starting from thinking about what representation means in this space, where the audience is not only a ‘spectator’, but an active agitator/re-creator of content, representation effectively means re-presenting realities as it is lived in different contexts. In this sense, the internet is a both ‘fantasy’ space where the user is deliberately and consciously engaging their imagination to insert layers of meaning into what texts/visuals/audio signify, as well as a ‘real’ space that is located in the user’s temporal and real existence as a person. At the same time, digital spaces enable simultaneous and multiple occupation of space (e.g. communicating with or receiving information from different geographical locations), time (e.g. zones) and identities (e.g. different nicks and handles to one person).

So then, what happens to the body? And what happens to the body that desires? Part of the pleasure of technology is the potential to enable users to transgress certain boundaries and limitations, such as gender, or the body, and so on. Which makes me wonder, where does the machine end and the body begin? Or even if such a distinction should or could be made. Then we explored around the different ways that ‘sex’ happens in digital spaces, through text, visuals and audio, and how this raises questions around what we ‘normally’ think about intimacy (does a conversation over IM constitute sexual intercourse?), privacy (what does it mean when a web cam transmits my personal bedroom space to the worldwideweb?), monogamy (does cybersex or pornography constitute cheating?), reproductive sexuality (where sexual encounters necessarily does not result in procreation in the normative sense) and so on.

But bringing the conversation back to incidences of violence against women that happens in and through digital spaces, the body is present and real. Then we examined the discourse around pornography and censorship, and how they present female sexuality in uncannily similar ways; e.g. straight, passive, objectified, absent. In other words, how does the re-presentation of ideas and assumptions around sexuality in and around these ‘sexual encounters’ effect in real incidences of violence against women’s bodies?

We ran out of time towards the end, but managed to quickly interrogate the producers of these re-presentations, which led to the unequal power relations that flow from physical spaces to the digital; such as issues of access, engagement and participation. The session ended by asking, “whose desires are re-presented through transgressive capacity of internet technology? And whose desires are disrupted through re-presentative capacity of internet technology?”

The good news is, the conversation continued from after the session into lunch time, spare moments in between panels and films, and even until the bus journey back. Some came back for our workshop session on blogging for beginners, where we had a great discussion around the feminist and political arguments for and against blogging, and some of the practical concerns and strategies. What was evident for me, was that enthusiasm and curiosity in ICTs was very present and sustained in many of the participants. I’m glad we went. It’s given me a lot of new stuff to think about, and new exciting places to go with these conversations and questions.

We also helped set up a blog on the event, for a space for these discussions to continue. Check it out if you’re interested in more reflections around representations, culture and sexualities :)

Films of Desire
Films of Desire Blog

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