RL (Real Life)

—

Vídeo
PAL
14´30´´
Barcelona
2011

RL (Real Life) was part of the exhibition La internacional cuir curated by Beatriz Preciado
at Reina Sofia National Museum. Madrid 2011.

Still image from RL (Real Life)

Title: RL (Real Life)
Format: Video PAL
 Lenght: 14´30´ 
Location: Barcelona
Year: 2011

Directed by: María Llopis 
Assistant director: Lola Clavo 
Editing and post-production: Dani Villalba , Viuda de Gutiérrez
Editing assistant: Teresa Sáez 
 Still photography: Ismael Llopis 
Biohacking and psychoanalysis: Javier Toret
Music: Pauk, Discontinu Records
Language: Spanish with english subtitles.
Translation: Nu Rodríguez

Sinopsis:

Real Life is the term used to describe the physical life outside the metaverse (1) of Second Life. The protagonist of the documentary is a hikikomori (2) who creates an alternative reality through the internet where she can live, work, love and have a full and satisfying sex life.

Her body is now an avatar, enjoying a queer, lesbian and transgressive sexuality in cybersex.

In real life, the life of the protagonist is developed in the free software and technoactivism cultural center of Riereta, in Raval, Barcelona, with the help of biohacking (3) and schizoanalysis (4).

(1) Hikikomori is a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive people who have chosen to withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement because of various personal and social factors in their lives. The term hikikomori refers to both the sociological phenomenon in general as well as to people belonging to this societal group. In Western terminology this group may include individuals suffering from social phobia or social anxiety problems. This could also be due to agoraphobia, avoidant personality disorder or painful or extreme shyness.

(2) The Metaverse is our collective online shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space,[1] including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet. The word metaverse is a portmanteau of the prefix “meta” (meaning “beyond”) and “universe”.

The term was coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where humans, as avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional space that uses the metaphor of the real world. Stephenson coined the term to describe a virtual reality-based successor to the Internet. Concepts similar to the Metaverse have appeared under a variety of names in the cyberpunk genre of fiction as far back as 1981 (in the novella True Names).

(3) Biohaking: devices to reprogram the body weakened and precarious in the network society. The experimental biohacking is a practice that combines and refines a research-practice between body techniques, institutional analysis, schizoanalysis, pathology studies and digital surround metropolitan. Hack corpomentales existential knots which prevent the planes of consistency of desire. Find out about the pathologies and life inherent powers in the network society and becoming cyborg bodies.

(4) Schizoanalysis was first introduced in 1972 by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Oedipus. Its formulation was continued in their follow-up work, A Thousand Plateaus. Schizoanalysis acquires many different definitions during the course of its development in their collaborative work and individually in the work of Guattari.

Schizoanalysis was developed over a long period of time as a response to the perceived shortcomings in the basic premises of analytic practice. Guattari was directly confronted with such problems in the work of Sigmund Freud — namely, the use of the Oedipus Complex as a starting point for the analysis, and the authoritarian role of the psychoanalyst in relationship to the patient. Guattari was interested in a practice that could derive from given systems of enunciation and preexisting subjective structures new “assemblages [agencements] of enunciation” capable of forging new coordinates of analysis and to bring into existence unforeseen propositions and representations.

Still image of RL (Real Life)

Making-of, Riereta ´s techno activism center, Barcelona 2010

Photos by Ismael Llopis.

Caterpillar: Who… are… YOU? 
Alice: I… I hardly know, sir, just at present. A least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then. 
Caterpillar: What do you mean by that? Explain yourself! 
Alice: I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid Sir, because I’m not myself, you see.
 Caterpillar: I don’t see.
 Alice: I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly, for I can’t understand it myself to begin with.

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.