2022-23 HTS4: Of Monsters [‘ Lairs] Tutor: Teresa Stoppani
In face of facelessness, by Sheer Gritzerstein
The face is a high density region of sensors in the body, allowing through sensation and expression, to relate and to belong. It is one’s most tangible address — it is the gateway of the self to reach out and soak in, and also a site where all inputs and outputs are obscured by attempts of comprehension. The face discloses one’s alignment towards another, presumably in a manner of an instinctive gesture. It is used and read as a signifier, presumably of the movements occurring in one’s soul1. This does not mean, however, that a face could not be deliberately worn or masked by its bearer; nor deliberately and indeliberately programmed from without. In order to read a face and pick up what is communicated, one can only try to decipher between the message and the noise. Above all, as repeatedly stressed by Mark Cousins — the face is fundamentally ambivalent.2 The faceless, therefore, is an entity unwilling or incapable of extending itself or reaching out to another through expression. It does not animate any appearance of a soul. If the face is a bearer of meanings — then the faceless bear none. And, while the face is ambivalent, the faceless is not. It does not leave room for (mis)reading. Although the face is a human issue, it very much concerns non-human entities — be them flora, fauna or inanimate objects, as well as sets of environments. As the face discloses the alignment of one object towards another, it is the essence of the manner in which humans relate to their perceived externalities, respond to them, and consequently (re)form them in return. It is not a matter of anthropomorphism, but one of legibility, relation and exchange. The faceless has no interest in mutual exchange nor relation. It prescribes scarce, flat, and non-negotiable protocols of addressing. It refuses to be reformed in response to being addressed. It is non-interpretative, non-compromising, stingy even; and, as part of a greater phenomenon — it imposes on its addressers a radical state of incapability to (re-)orient.
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