Hello! I’m pleased to announce Crystal Paradise, a new weekly column for LA publication CRAVE Online. It runs every Tuesday from here on out. This is the first column. Stay tuned for more.
Internet Crystals
Art, Identity, And The Digital Gaze
From tech panels to Web-themed performance art, writer Alicia Eler reflects upon sexual identity across the digiverse.
It began with a selfie.
Two years ago I wrote an article for art blogazine Hyperallergic called “Is There a Queer Selfie?” In this piece, I question the idea of calling a selfie queer, arguing that the selfie itself(ie) is a queer taking back of the gaze — rather than allow someone else to photograph you, the selfie is already queer by the act of being an image that one takes of oneself.
Unbeknownst to me, a graduate student in Montreal used that article in a presentation he gave about the queer selfie. I learned about this through a Facebook message sent to me by a former lover from college who I hadn’t spoken to in almost 10 years. Last I recalled, she was living in New York, but apparently now she was in Montreal as well. It was a selfie coincidence.
Read the rest of my Crystal Paradise column on CRAVE here:
http://www.craveonline.com/art/columns/855659-art-identity-digital-gaze
