Maisa Imamović

FACEBOOK, FACE BOOK, FAC EBOOK

So how do I pick it up from here, after forming a text and breaking it down, just to put it all back
together in a different way? Basically, after researching about Peter Einsenman and Derrida, what I
came up is an idea that both their ideas could be represented, in a way, through Facebook, which serves
to question my being since 2009. After listening to a few thoughts of Peter through recorded video
footage, I kept thinking of Facebook in a strange way, in a way of using it as a tool for something yet
undefined. And then Derrida came along and helped me break its structure down, making Facebook into
a bridge between Peter and Derrida, which was hardly noticable before. It made me realize that, in a
way, Facebook is a language, using language, but going beyond the language at the same time. Although
it is hard to clearly structure my thoughts, I will try by writing about three main points in relation to
Derrida and Peter, that being the architecture, deconstruction, and language of Facebook.

During one of Peters lectures, he mentioned the lateness in this time, there is no newness
anymore, avant-garde is hard to make. This is what first made me think of Facebook, and it must be
because of internet that such things are happening. It is making new instantly old and our surprise levels
are decreasing. Facebook is a specific example, because it uses the same notion of time to create its own
architecture, a place where it is safe to perform a private act of exposing oneself to the world which is
enormous, yet easily within reach. The world is doing the same thing like you are, experiencing its
privacy on a public platform while still remaining private. Private in a sense that it remains without
physical form, the one you cannot touch or feel or see even. In that sense, not only the enjoyment of
one¨s own nest is experienced, but also the nests of other people, which are categorized as your
family,friends,lovers, strangers yet still friends. There is something very vulnerable in this, firstly in a way
that we start comparing our nests to others, layer by layer, deconstructing each category or detail about
this nest; and secondly, in a way that we get attached to these layers of ours, and layers of others which
make time look infinite, while making us more passive and less aware of time in real.

So when does the deconstruction come into being? Although the idea is to dismantle concepts,
the link with facebook is quite metaphorical. Deconstructivist Facebook statement is that things or
information that fall out of ones profile or virtual life may be vital but invisible to it. For example, old
cover/profile pictures, albums, videos, etc., are rather hidden from the timeline than deleted
completely. They are virtual memories which should still be there to remind us of those times and they
are publicly private. Those past times are crucial to our facebook identities, just like memory is to human
mind. And I am only talking about a personal profile among billion others. Deconstruction of Facebook is
a constant act of combining, erasing, hiding all these layers, from cover to profile pictures, to posts,
tagged links, photos, check ins, etc etc, in order to shape our virtual identities. Virtual identities that we
can control and shape. It is about exposing prejudice and highlighting assumptions, and experiencing it
all with so many others who probably have the same thoughts which you may or may not be aware
about.

The book of faces, face book, one biography among all the others; how many biographies can
one indulge during a day, months, since 2009? I like to think of Facebook as an interactive literature,
where written languge ceases to be the most dominant and becomes only one way of communicating,
next to other ways such as visual expression through pictures or videos, link-sharing, „add what youre
doing and how youre feeling“ which can also be modified to exist at a certain time, and then you have all
the like buttons, recently extended into love, haha, angry, sad and wow. A part of this virtual
communication collection is the possibility to see who is „on air“ or active and when things have been
seen. It has become a natural way of thinking, and thinking out loud, on this platform where language
goes beyond itself and is not used as a communicative tool anymore, but rather a state of being. For
some, it may cause withdrawal, an act of anonimity expressed through fake names and profile pictures
of cats,bananas,knives which then gives a new language to anonimity as well. It allows staying
anonymous in a much exaggerated way where the anonymous have the ability to choose their audience
for anonimity. And depression, depression has its part in this ambivalence as well, information makes
people full and angry and next to their name you will see last time they were „on air“ and if its a close
friend, you will start worrying.

Through such understanding of Facebook, I can relate it to Chora L works in a very conceptual
way, in a way that all this speedy virtual traffic is a collaboration of all existing aspects, of locations and
language, of check-ins and visual proof. It is a repetitive process of history-making which, like Peters and
Derridas collaboration, has not been experienced in any other form due to its complexity and,should i
say, another sense. If architecture is an extension of the body, language extension of communication,
Facebook is an extension of living.