Identical Identities
What connects us rather than differentiates us?
Identity is like clothing. We all wear it . (I guess some don’t — by choice or by circumstance- what would that mean for identity?) We layer it when it’s cold, shed it when it’s warm. We change it as per ocassion, season and fashion- driven by necessity and trend originating from within and without. Some we borrow, some we buy, some are hand-me-downs, some are gifts, perhaps some we even steal.
We wear to express. We wear to impress. We wear to possess.
We wear to distinguish, we wear to unify.
We brand ourselves much like the labels do to our clothing, what is the motivation behind this? What are we selling? Who are we even selling to?
I wonder, have we always worn these clothes? When we were born? The beginning of time? What has changed and what has remained? What is it that truly makes identity?
Through an uninformed attempt to pinpoint certain significant changes over time with respect to identity we as a group ended up with a rough timeline. The shift to the post digital brought with it a greater number of eyeballs, globalisation, encroachment of privacy and geographical liberation. This initial timeline only grazed the tip of the iceberg.
While we found ourselves circling around rather global online/offline identities, Chen, a classmate brought up something significant, something none of us had been thinking about. What did identity look like before the advent of the digital? He spoke of ceremony and local community identity — of ancient clans and their tattoos that once had and pehaps still is a mark of identity. It was all too similar to the act of branding oneself — quite literally might I add. Maybe this would be a good way to approach the timeline we had come up with.
Identity and Image. It is truly interesting. Is identity always visual- our physical self, DPs, photographs and avatars? What about usernames and chat room personas that lean more towards textual? Hearing someones voice over the phone, could that be a sonic component? Is it sensorial or is there something more to identity? Something that transcends representation? There’s defintiely something to unpack and unravel here.
In my practice, words come first. I perceive language as an entry point and a creative tool for lateral thinking. The word IDENTITY got me thinking of the word ‘IDENTICAL’. In a world where we are more connected than we have ever been, is “omigod same!”, “relatable AF”, “Literally me.” a way of identifying ourselves with people across the globe? Universal trends and challenges and hashtags have begun to influence cultures globally, so much so that at times it’s hard to tell anything apart. Do our “identical identities” offer us comfort? Or do they strip us of our uniqueness and personality? It is a funny time where our virtual selves constantly need to prove their human-ness “I’m not a robot” they scream while identifying fire hydrants from a photo grid. Perhaps this is the identity that unites the whole lot of us — our human identity — something that we are increasingly being made aware of.
Ultimately could identity be seen as a reflection — a combination of the real and the imagined — a vicariously curated persona, a product of influence, manipulation and belief?
It is indeed something to reflect upon.
