private lives, public spaces response

Alejandra Morante 

Arts, Culture, Media

Private Lives, Public Places

When I think of identity a lot comes to mind. Where I’m from, my age, my zodiac sign, my ancestry, my job, etc. Identity really is such a broad and unique concept. I’ll be honest, I try to not think of it too often so as to avoid falling down the rabbit hole of my inner psychology but when I visited the Private Lives, Public Places exhibit, and also because of this assignment, I was pretty compelled to dive into that rabbit hole for a bit. In that rabbit hole I realized we all technically have multiple identities and a lot of factors can influence them. For example, when we go to our jobs we behave much differently compared to other more relaxed locations. According to an old Japanese proverb, we all have three faces, which to me coincides with identities. One of the three is the face we show the world, the other is the face we show to our close friends and family, and the final one is the face we never show to anyone. 

From the films in the exhibit, I witnessed a lot of different identities. There were protestors, travelers, sightseers, and dancers. At least that’s some of the few that I’ve seen and can remember. This makes me think of how far the meaning and purpose of identity has come. According to Judith Howard, “At earlier historical moments, identity was not so much as issue; when societies were more stable, identity was to a great extent assigned, rather than selected or adopted.” Before we apparently didn’t really have much of a say in who we are, now there’s so many factors that contribute to our identity and we have so much room to establish who we are. Which is actually quite contrary to the dispotian society portrayed in Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem. For a mini synopsis, for the majority of the book the main character doesn’t even have a sense of identity. Instead of referring to himself as “I” he referred to himself as “we,” in his world his identity was collective and he had no sense of self. This book really helped put things into perspective just how important and powerful our identities are. 

To me, seeing all that footage of those people from the past was both cool but weird. I love history so to me it’s always interesting to learn about how different things were compared to now and all the long ways we’ve come to be the society we are now (yet we’ve still got a long way to go). However, some of the footage in the exhibit felt personal so it made me feel weird to be observing it. But that also made the name of the exhibit make so much sense because it’s literally private lives in a public place. It also reminded me of how private I am of my life and how that contributes to my identity in that I don’t like to give too much information away. This right now makes me think of the complete opposite which is totally public identities, such as the Kardashian family whose lives and occupation involves being completely public.  

Living in the golden age of technology has a major impact in one’s identity in that it can help you thrive while also simultaneously have you be incredibly vulnerable. By vulnerable I mean both to judgement from lingering eyes and actual identity theft. However the upside is that having an online profile in social media helps you meet new people, if you’re interested in that, have an online portfolio to showcase your work, and help expand your network. Yet for each of these separate purposes you’d likely showcase a different side of your identity or even an entirely different identity to befit the situation. That’s one of the most interesting parts about identity, how fluid it is. Relating back to the Japanese proverb, we have different faces/identities that we show to people. Yet there is only one that we don’t show to anyone.