Stacy Skolnik
Stacy Skolnik is a poet and the cofounder of Montez Press Radio. In her work as online alter-ego mrsblueeyes123, she stages questions of privacy and self-commodification in a time when social networks mediate our tenderest desires.
What do you imagine has become of @mrsblueeyes123 now that Instagram deleted her profile? I’m thinking about the material traces here—lingering ghosts of data stored in some server farm in Utah, maybe, underlying what we now perceive as absence. Maybe she’s whispering sweet nothings to the datacenter employees?
A weird thing happened: I’d created a private backup account where I was storing all my posts and images to save them when they first started being taken down. I was curious about what was being caught by the robots and what was being reported by my followers, my readers, or anti-readers. I only followed one account (@mrsblueeyes123), and zero accounts followed me. But when I posted a masturbatory video of myself it got 10 views within a couple of minutes. I think there are men behind the walls.
Is there a genuine concern about censorship at the heart of your project, or is it more a polemical test of the boundaries of online expression?
The project started off being about freedom. As it was increasingly censored it became about freedom of expression.
There’s a tug-of-war between visibility and opacity in mrsblueeyes123’s current web incarnation—the full, almost aggressive presence of the deleted Instagram posts, which resurge back here despite their repression on the original platform, contrasted against the strategic redaction of certain names and phrases in one of the blurbs, to protect an author who expresses concern about publicly identifying with the project. It’s a delicate balance between exposure and secrecy—where and how is each one useful in its own way within the piece?
The premise that any correspondence or interaction we have online is “private” is kind of laughable, no? I don’t want to violate anyone’s trust, but as John Gotti said in wiretaps before being hoisted on his own petard, “don’t ever say anything you don't want played back to you.” Regardless of context, be it professional, personal, or otherwise, be ready to stand behind what you say.
You’ve mentioned that the work is about “self-commodification,” as so much of social media seems to be. How do you find Instagram particularly conducive to commodification, intentional or otherwise? Does mrsblueeyes123 function as a commodity in her new online home, or do you have other dreams for her value and circulation?
We are in a constant state of transaction. @mrsblueeyes123 capitalized on the commodity of my body to attract readers who would trade me language with which I could write poems. Right now, Google is offering me two definitions for the word ‘commodity’: 1. a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee and 2. a useful or valuable thing, such as water or time. I wanted blueeyes to be free in all definitions of the word, and so the current iteration of the work, mrsblueeyes123.com, circulates and can be read at no cost. I hope that its lack of monetary worth only adds to its potential use and value.
Reading your poems online, I’m initially struck by that strange clash that seems central to digital desire—the visceral sensuality of the content on the one hand, and the coldness of the interface on the other. But then, the more time I spend with it, the more I question whether this paradox actually holds up. I think we can have a really intimate relationship with our devices. There’s something so deep and tactile about the way we’re always stroking our phone screens; I spend more time in bed with my laptop than with my partner. What assumptions about the relationship between technology and intimacy does this work call into question?
The relationships in mrsblueeyes—between her/myself and the men and the technology and the digital and physical environments the poems inhabit—are all sincere, and I think pretty tender. Lines like “I feel safe when you’re loading me” or “I unlock worlds with my fingerprint” come from feelings of intimacy with the phone, the computer, voiceless sometimes faceless sort-of strangers, and of course with embodied men and women too. The digital world intersects with our physical lives (the rim of my laptop is cutting into my thighs as I write this), and the other way around. But we should also be mindful and cautious and speculative about the things we want and don’t want, online and irl, because algorithms and corporations obviously play a big part in dictating our desires.
What’s the connection between Instagram and poetry? Both draw their beauty, for me, from their partiality, from the fact that they’re fragmentary and easy to circulate without context. How did you settle onto the intersection of these two particular media?
There is as much a connection between Instagram and poetry as there is between poetry and any given thing. Which I suppose is me being romantic and saying that poetry is everywhere. But yes, ease of circulation was an impetus. I was tired of submitting to publishers and not getting “accepted” or being accepted and then having no way of knowing or interacting with whoever was reading, if anyone was reading. I was also interested in adding some diversity to the types of poetry I was typically seeing on the app. Conceptually, too, what I was writing made sense for Instagram’s frame; many of the poems, especially at the beginning of the collection, feel to me like word-selfies. And then once I started posting, all of those synapses started firing, the attention was cajoling, it took some of the pressure off poetry with a capital P, made writing a game with rewards such as feedback and compliments. I enjoyed the constraints of the project particularly because of the social and sexual interactions at its core, when normally for me writing is a very solitary act. It was fun to manipulate a kind of “bad” media, one associated with vanity and time-wasting, for generative purposes.
Do you have any current projects in the works that you’d like to share?
I’m deeply involved with Montez Press Radio, another project concerned in its own ways with communication, free access, and distribution. And Raw Meat Collective will be putting out a limited print edition of mrsblueeyes123 in the winter. It’ll be uncensored.
courtesy STACY SKOLNIK
interview ADINA GLICKSTEIN
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