Ahead of her performative lecture asMBJ Wetware at Korzo on Saturday, we sit down with Marija Bozinovska Jones to selfhood.
It seems particularly timely to sift through the ideas of Marija Bozinovska Jones’ alongside the ongoing news around Cambridge Analytica; I’m thinking particularly about the intimacy of Facebook as a ‘personal space’ and this constant nonconsensual collection of our private and emotional data. As an artist, Jones’ work revolves around the formation of identity in an era of technocapitalist amplification and perpetual online presence. She positions herself in the centre of her work, often through her MBJ Wetware proxy, using her practice as a means of exploring questions on subjectivity and the self, and discovering how, in fact, they might not really be there.
Let’s start with the self, and your interest in it.
I’ve been reading and writing on the topic of going beyond the self, the layers and overlaps of cosmological questions, neurosciences, Buddhism, how all these are connected with subjectivity and how this gets fabricated in subtle ways – which isn’t necessarily anything new, but with consumerism, well, what is subjectivity now? I would say there isn’t any.
Your work often points at this being a reality within technocapitalism, but how do we find ourselves here, and how is technology having such an affect on us?
Take AI. The disembodied AI becomes embodied through Hollywood and media, it (too often) becomes a white, female, femme fatale who outsmarts her creator, it’s a story told over and over again by middle aged white men, Silicon Valley programmers, the ones behind Siri and Cortana – these obedient female voices, and it’s not only that these are the voices taken up by AI, but it’s the way they work to form an emotional bond between us an inanimate device.
We are genetically predisposed to react to a voice that mimics our primary caregiver – our mother. Technical devices, technology, interfaces they commodify these emotions. In technocapitalism subjectivity is formed. And, I ask, how do we find ourselves in this entire matrix? It’s how we overcome ourselves. We turn technology into a condition. We cling onto everything – we need our phone to exist, we need the internet, well… not everyone of course!
How does this change our social fabric?
Well I look at coping mechanisms, such as how we commodify Eastern practical sciences like yoga, meditation, mindfulness… Places like Silicon Valley and Google organise mindfulness sessions, but in a nature that’s commodified: we don’t do it to be okay with ourselves, to keep a check, but we do it to do more, produce more, consume more. It’s a self perpetuating evil. It’s like being locked in a hamster wheel or feedback wheel that just speeds faster and faster. It’s like Zizek says, it’s easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
How does this interest materialise in your work?
Quantified Self was a project where I uploaded imaged of myself on instagram, as uncomfortable as it was, I mean, really uncomfortable, in the vein of the yoga bunny movement/insta-celebrities. It was to quantify my breath, a very basic level of self regulation. Using wearable technology to track breathing pattern, aggregating data that, ultimately, leads to nowhere. It’s prosuming, this constant producing and consuming of data. We create a surplus of data that gets extrapolated for profiling.
Thinking about what the self even is, how we’ve been discussing it, the self emerges as a product, a sort of marketing tool, right?
Yes, which is exactly why I used instagram. Investigating our use of social media; the position between being a curator vs embracing it in absolute.
What does Buddhism propose as the ‘self’?
There’s no such thing as the self. Anattā is a term which describes there being no permanent self. So all the time we’re grasping rather than being. There’s different approaches to the self, though.
Do you think as a generation, we are realising more about ourselves/ the self?
We’re embracing this notion of self care more: in order to give to others we need to take care of ourselves, this isn’t selfishness. Yet, we are bombarded with messages of us not being good enough. I’m interested in asking, what is the message we are getting and how do we feel? It goes back to being overwhelmed. We know who we are through engagement with our environment, we aren’t isolated beings.
What was your response to the Cambridge Analytica whistleblowing?
Well, I see it as no surprise, and Zuckerberg, he only apologised after big names started to delete facebook. Then there was a financial threat. There’s always profit in the background, that’s the agency. I’m happy the whistleblowing happening but also very aware that Facebook is so embedded in our existence – it brings us back to the end of the world before the end of capitalism. We are so intertwined in it that it works against you if you don’t use it, so how do you disrupt it? I’m not even looking for practical solutions, I’m observing the attitudes, almost like an anthropological study: how people relate to each other, to themselves, to nature, to nurture…
Do you think this raising of consciousness will encourage change?
Change starts from one self, but we are so willingly overwhelmed with information at the moment. Everything is based on instant gratification, the scrolling interface always has more information… what are the implications for this endless scrolling? There are negative implications on our mood, our anxiety, we are just so overwhelmed with choice, data, information. You don’t ‘disengage,’ but you numb out. It becomes easier to continue with whatever is loudest and easiest because it becomes hard to make sense, to navigate and to orientate ourselves.
How do you try and navigate it?
I use my practice to explore these personal questions. I meditate, I do retreats, I do social work, I’m very self aware of what I use, which search engines, I don’t have a google account, I always buy a refurbished phone.
If we’re a matrix of many things, I wonder, do you think we’ll ever able to really escape our bodies and become this single curated identity that social media seems to point towards?
Wait until we can upload consciousness and super intelligence, then maybe. I’m really curious about how we overcome our humanity and this endless productivity drive.
Are you in anyway hopeful for an end of capitalism?
Only if the world ends. I agree with Zizek, it’s so embedded everywhere. And people really embrace it – this consumerist society.
It’s overwhelming, right? I often struggle thinking about it because I just feel powerless.
Definitely. The more conscious you become, the more problems you face. You feel powerless and vulnerable. It’s this vulnerability, you get (sighs and shrugs), there’s this rawness, but you don’t fight fire with fire. I don’t believe in violence or aggression. You can’t change the world like that, it’s a slow process, it’s not going against, but I would say going in parallel. Not following the mainstream. This isn’t something I preach, it’s just how I see dealing with it. A divergent path doesn’t mean going against it.
What are your coping mechanisms?
There’s only so much you can do. You also need to live how you propose, else what’s the point? I go on retreats, I’ve practiced yoga for 20 years… Anything to come closer to the self, just to realise that there is no such thing.
Catch Marija Bozinovska Jones’s performative lecture ‘On Selfhood’ at Rewire 2018 on Saturday, 7 April at 13:15 at Korzo. This programme is open to the public and free of charge.