BACKLIGHT

BY RONNIE CLARKE

The sun still sets on FaceTime. First, the sun appears to me as a thousand pixels that allow its light to shine through. I turn up the brightness and remember what your sun feels like, and I remember where you are. I remember that we share a city and that if I move into the kitchen at 7:41 pm, I can have a sunset of my own. Now I have two sunsets. As the days begin to blend into each other, I watch the cast shadows on the walls. The sun helps me mark the passing of time. In March, my friend’s Zoom birthday party was a choir of friends laughing together. We gathered all our squares together and sang one song. As we all floated around next to one another, I tried to forget the amount of space between us. Now, in the fall, the days end much earlier. Once the sun sets, my friends log off one by one and my room is lit only by the faint glow of my desktop screen. I’m reflecting on the way my relationships have changed as they become more and more digital. Technology has played a vital role in our response to this pandemic, giving us new ways to connect with each other from a distance. Though the technology we use hasn’t changed, our heightened emphasis on needing to stay connected to everyone by screen, Zoom or other is something I still am not used to. In March, attaching ourselves to technology in order to combat loneliness felt like a solution. Now, even though our response to the pandemic has drastically shifted, I feel withdrawal from a virtual codependency that wasn’t as healthy as I originally thought. I now find myself spending a lot of time scrolling through social media as a means to feel connected to something or someone. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are the places where my search for connection frequently intersects with social and political digital activism. Technology has amplified movements like Black Lives Matter and other Black-led organizations more than ever and in a way we can’t ignore. Yesterday, a Black person’s image circulated every platform, Explore page and corner of my screen. Yesterday, it was shared by thousands calling for justice for Black lives. Today, that same image begins to fade, broken down by an algorithm. Every 24 hours, we expire. Waves of friends and strangers now join each other in sharing content related to Black struggle and protest. They fill my feed with small, black squares. I question what is genuine and what is real. It isn’t long before the squares begin to fade, too. If algorithms are meant to sort and prioritize key information, why do I feel so small? How are we supposed to feel about going on platforms known for their virtual apathy? Why do our stories get concealed? The pattern is exhausting. I am scared of disappearing altogether.

While technology has given us the tools to uplift and educate each other, forms of repetitive, shallow political engagement turn it into an echo chamber. Digital activism has made giant strides in amplifying voices in the community, but I wonder how these lazy interactions do it a disservice. Our fading images aren’t the only concern— it’s also worth paying attention to who is sharing which images. Too many times have I been scrolling on Twitter and been overwhelmed with very graphic images of people who look like me being targeted by police, in pain, or worse, dead. The Black community is repeatedly exposed to these images, which turns using social media into a deeply triggering experience. We do not have the luxury of replacing our in-person interactions with virtual ones when the platforms we rely on to do so cause us harm. As graphic videos of Black death go viral, entertainment Twitter is filled with Black memes, reaction gifs that portray Blackness at an opposite extreme. It becomes evident that some white audiences engage with us only at extremes; to shock people into activism or for entertainment value. Black celebrities are flattened into popular GIF’s and used by white people as reaction material for personal gain. White people want to go viral too. 

Our stories and our faces float in feeds that do not belong to us, and what’s disappearing is how multidimensional we are. We are more than viral depictions of suffering or comedic relief; letting us be complex and nuanced people outside of these depictions is a necessity. The Internet is rife with conflict: while comment sections blow up with debate, meaningful connections and stories can also be made there too. As a second wave of the pandemic approaches, how do we live with this conflict? If going digital is inevitable, how do we reclaim an Internet with spaces in which we are put up for debate? A lot of my work as an artist has considered how to exist in physical and digital spaces, and in the spaces in between. To me, the virtual asks how we might occupy, resist and exist in transience. In the face of digital structures that aim to reduce us to two-dimensional subjects, there is a clear need to take digital power into our own hands. By restructuring both new and existing digital spaces so that they work for us and keep us safe, and by re-centering our Blackness through technology, we cannot be compressed. When I feel like the world wants to break me down, I turn to Black existence. 

My being is Black. My being is resistance. Black lives are not up for debate. Our happiness, our peace, and our survival are not up for debate either. Every day we overcome the odds; on Black Twitter we go to reflect, support one another and laugh as hard as we can. When we hashtag our joy and our magic, we aren’t building trends, we are building movements. I am grateful for each online group I am part of that is built by us, for us. Every step we take to put ourselves first, we are reinvesting in the Internet as a deep healing tool. In doing this, we create, code and design the spaces where we want to flourish. Here we can build and connect with each other in virtual ways in which we are safe, seen and free to be ourselves. No matter how digital our surroundings become, it is essential that we continue to feel real. It is in these parts of the Internet where I feel real, and where virtual space can be the true authentic-synthetic experience I am searching for.

I want my art to make space for healing. Through performance and digital media, I have recently felt inspired to take up virtual space by focusing on gathering, movement and meditation. It is by creating an immersive virtual space, chatroom or other form in which we can move, laugh, share and dance together that I start to feel a genuine sense of both care and relief. It is through action and performance that I feel real. There is something real in how my voice can flood so many rooms through video conference. When I ask others to enter and engage in shared digital space, our exchanges are awkward, new and intimate in their own way. I feel warmth when I play a song and my partner can hear it too. I feel joy in moments of synchronization, where all of our worlds line up for a moment. I remember my power, and that with it, I can exist and take up many types of space. 

I know exactly what time the sun will set tomorrow. The sun exists in spite of any search engine or algorithm. I shift, moving its glare from my screen and onto my skin.