i-screens: Screen Performance and Screen Presence as the Currency of Contemporary Subjectivity

Abstract

This essay explores the pervasive influence of screen-based performances in the context of a world that envelops us with its mediations. The essay argues, firstly, that we have become so attuned to these external, image-based performances that we tend to conflate them with our own interior sense of self, and secondly, that as we become increasingly wedded to screen media - not just as consumers but also as "DIY" producer-performers - the phenomenon of having a screen/media presence for our own self-performances is becoming a significant means by which we authenticate ourselves as subjects. The essay proposes that our growing intimacy with cameras and screens, combined with an apparently intensifying imperative to perform ourselves to real or imagined audiences via various screen-based channels of mediation, could be said to be transforming us into postmodern "performing subjects".