We live in troubling times, swamped by an incessant production of imagery with such high definition that it seems out of focus. The impact of the digital, in particular, while it has widened the ‘grip’ of the individual on his social and relationship surroundings, has also led to a loosening of the bond between the mental and the corporal dimensions. The digital extension of the self had led to a separation between awareness, heightened by the web, and the physical, sensorial immanence of human beings. A misalignment between mental locus and physical locus that undoubtedly multiplies the possibility of action and interaction, but at the same time triggers the perfect psychological conditions for the continuing formation of states of anxiety, which spring from the sensation of loss of direct control over the situation in which we live.
The self, ‘augmented’ to the point of uprooting, and refracted in a kaleidoscope of interfaces and remote actions, attempts to protect itself by swelling beyond its proportions, in the arduous effort to reconstruct a nucleus of subjectivity in the vortex of forces that pummel it from all sides, leading it toward nebulization and dispersal (note how the recent spate of oversized garments offers a paroxistic representation of this exaggerated ego, sinking into isolation in its own over-bloating).
The more feverish and invisible are these dynamics, the more the importance of a solid, stable, material counterpart grows, to anchor the new self to its existential context, offering relief from the permanent tempest of navigation in the cloud. This is the new role assumed by objects. The role of a fixed, sturdy, immobile background, not subject to the extreme plasticity of customized products.