eye name you

dear you,

ok, say you take a photo of me, perhaps at a cafe in paris or in the mountains of saas-fee.

you post the photo.

i take the photo, crop it, and make it my profile pic.

the extension of your visual domain via camera (kino-eye) thus flips in moebius fashion to become the extension of my skin into the virtual — or what we have called kino-gait.

but we have also said that camera and web profile aren't extensions, per se, but literally parts of one's own body instead, albeit at some phenomenological remove.

hence, such an instance of creating a profile pic becomes a moment of singular plurality between the two bodies. in one sense they become a singular flesh: kino-eye meets kino-gait, eye meets moving skin.

(surveillance meets spectacle.)

(such an instance of creating a profile pic, then, also becomes the moment in which capital most heavily invests.)

at the same time there is a separation: an offer of the photo, on the one hand, and an acceptance but also an editing of the gifted offer. i accept, but on my terms.

how do we understand this particular politics of touch?

do i simply presume your permission to make your eye my skin? does posting the picture online imply freedom to re-use thusly? do i commit a violence in editing the photo? do i offer an injustice to you by assuming that you could and would want to name my skin with your eyes?

dear you, did i engage this particular politics of touch based on prior flesh relation?

or would i do the same thing to a stranger?