the erotic impulse to get closer,

the technological impulse to see better.

the impulse to reveal,

the impulse to probe.

The project has six structural/thematic axes, which emphasize ecologies of display (in contrast to observational or voyeuristic orientations) and those of affective resonance (in contrast to semiotic-based analyses). 

Stagings.  Psychologies of desire suggest that we are driven by a primary absence at the core of the psychic apparatus, which compels us to seek fulfillment through the gaze of the other -- an unseen watching presence.  Thus the elementary fantasmatic scene of being looked at (validated) by an unseen presence:  the imagined gaze observing us becomes a form of validation, a kind of ontological guarantee of our being. It serves to put us in our place -- to subject us. In this way subjectivity is built on an anguished interrogation of the other's desire, often repressed as a "hidden" psychic logic to be uncovered.  As such these new erotic cultures of exposure and display can be seen as driven by the need to perform for the gaze of the other, and therefore to write themselves into existence -- installed in the symbolic order of things. "Stagings" constitute differential, reflective stopping-points -- glimpses of the self in the flow that enable the self to see where it stands, from its own perspective as well from exterior perspectives.  They are extracted moments as positioning devices, produced for the gaze of the other, or for the self by way of the other -- helping to shore up one's intended persona and/or destabilize it.

Extensions.  While "stagings" is based in a logic of psychology and its focus on (reductive) identity, with "extensions" we shift to a logic of spatial dissemination and a focus on (excessive) presencing:  there is no longer a hidden psychic logic to be revealed and analyzed but an extensibility to be traced (Bersani).  The dynamic of desire is constituted less a dance between bodies than a network path that can reveal new geometries of intimacy.  We can apprehend less through difference and lack than through correspondences, synchronizations, extensions, contacts, channels -- formal and affective alliances or affinities.  Here one can think less of apparatuses than of ecologies; less of repressive than emergent structures:  active, unstable, emergent systems and strata of the body as distributed in nature, as nature.  The basis of ethics shifts from a self-contained subject to a distributed subjectivity (Butler).  From such a viewpoint, the connective intensities that drive these new forms of self-exposure and display are those of expending excess -- the extension of the self is a way of channeling or dissipating surplus energy -- and the allure of showing could parallel that of sacrificing (Bataille) (and here the pose, as event-portal, becomes a double-edged solicitor).  To extend the self is to cultivate a loss of self:  a self-surrender or exposure. One does not look from afar, fortifying the self, but rather enters into the fray, exposing the self.  They manifest the drive to "give in" to something: a sense of being/feeling connected, present, absorbed:  an intimacy by way of the blurring of positions and distinctions.

Attractions.  In film theory, concepts of "attraction" have provided useful tools in thinking forms of exhibitionistic address that counter the voyeuristic orientation of media analysis. In contrast to the mechanisms of maintaining a coherent narrative world, transporting the viewer into another time and space, attractions are those phenomena that directly solicit the viewer's attention in the here-and-now. They can take the form of spoken asides, addressed in confidence to the viewer outside of the diegetic space; as spectacles for their own sake; or as shots which exist purely to titillate the viewer, having no function in the advancement of the story.  They are not about narrative time but experiential immediacy:  they prompt modes of apprehension that rely less on discursive flow than on direct transmissions that arouse or tease the viewer, engaging the immediacy of the bodily sensorium -- with the aim of contact and/or extension.  While attractions open up an erotic and experiential dimension that sometimes works at odds with the narrational, they assume power precisely through their negotiation with the diegetic world, generating a productive tension between spectacle and narration, voyeurism and exhibitionism, availability and withdraw.  The erotic power of attractions courses beneath the scrims of diegetic absorption as affects course beneath meanings -- however, attractions always work through the representational. They are not just about intensities but about language: they conduct transversal operations at the level of both the semiotic and the sensational, the reflective and the transmissive -- soliciting attention (understood broadly).  They do not just conduct affective flows but generate arousals for contact and expenditure:  they are all about conductivesolicitation.

Intensities.  Concepts of affect and intensity have the potential of countering emphases on the visual and the semiotic:  we apprehend the world not only through language but through registers of sensation and intimacy.  Rather than building upon fixed positions, these vocabularies instead privilege movement, rhythm, transition, and proximity.  Through "self-affectation," a sense of self is constructed through its multiple registers of sensation and its affective resonances with others. 

Impersonations.  Ultimately, the self is a role.  One is always called upon to play roles in order to assume symbolic mandates, to the extent that "impersonation" becomes a core act of self-identification.  Yet self-identification arises not only through language but through the internalized transmission of affects: flows of affective resonance that are themselves a powerful social and subjectifying force.  Further, contemporary identities are not only imposed through language but arise as dynamical systems -- forms of emergent presence -- where the self is constructed less in the context of an apparatus than that of an assemblage.  Certainly, technologies of the self jostle with technologies of control -- and yet, in cultures understood as emergent systems, if "control" exists, it is understood in terms of  forces and forms of standardization that are both emergent and imposed.  Seen in this way, impersonations are masquerades (understood in modern discourses on identity) as well as standardizations of presence (understood in contemporary network discourses).