In the contemporary digital realm, public figures act as masks amplified by the media, allowing people to occupy social spaces on the internet and transforming these spaces into territories of self-colonization. In this context, “The Rhetoric of the Mask” is presented as an audiovisual essay that examines the function of the mask as a sociopolitical tool in contemporary culture.

During the second year of the pandemic, Amorales set up a small set in his studio to record himself using the Zoom platform, wearing a variety of masks. The artist speculates about the use of the mask, imposed by social networks, and how this becomes a reason to understand the influence of algorithms as a new form of colonialism. In this new paradigm, technology dominates in such a way that the individual finds himself unable to discern between reality, fiction or even his own identity.

The work records various actions carried out by the artist, who wears a series of masks, in front of a screen that simultaneously acts as a camera and mirror. Zoom uses virtual backgrounds to create scenarios that replicate and hide private space, multiplying the artist’s image and creating a complex game of visual layers. The mask is not only a formal resource, but also a reason for reflection.

The visual and auditory narrative of “The Rhetoric of the Mask” allows viewers to question the relationship between identity, technology and power. The work invites us to reflect on how digital masks and algorithms transform our perceptions and realities, suggesting that technological domination is not only a matter of external control, but also a form of internal self-colonization.

Through his audiovisual essay, the artist rethinks the function of the mask in the digital age. The mask, as an element of contemporary culture, becomes a lens to examine the sociopolitical and technological dynamics that shape our world.

The Rhetoric of the Mask- Essay

In the Universe of the Mask, Mask Language can be used to represent a mask in this way: I}. This is the primary symbol representing the mask.

When the Internet was introduced to society, the sign that was used to symbolize it was this: @. In an email address it stands between our name and the institution that we belong to.

A mask can be used in theatre. This is the traditional setting for the mask in Western culture.

The Greeks established that both the individual and the group could be masked. This means the representation of the opposition between the individual and the group, just as it happens in society.

A mask has two sides: an interior side that faces towards the face of the person that is wearing it, and an exterior side that faces towards the person or persons (the ‘others’) who are looking at it. The interior side faces the self, the exterior side faces the other. The mask stands in between like a membrane.

It is an artefact that hides the self from the gaze of the other, projecting the image of a fantastical character (a mythological figure, a superhero), a blank face or even the face of another (real) person. In these cases the mask represents another being, but a mask can also be the idealized representation of the self, or an exterior vision of how one is seen by the other.

To make a mask of the self and give it to others is a way to distance our self from itself, so one can see oneself interacting in a situation with others. As well, to make a mask of one self is an act of branding the self. The public persona of a pop star or a politician is a mask of branding, it is the face that appears in the media, which hides its face behind the mask. Public personas are masks that become multiplied by the media. Public persona masks are needed by private persons for occupying the social space of the Internet. Occupying the space of social media in the Internet has become the ultimate space of self-colonization. Public personas occupy such space by letting their mask be multiplied by the media, private persons make a mask of their own, which allows them to be hypocritical.

Hypocrisy is a consequence of colonization. Colonization produces hypocritical subjects, at least in the cases where people have been vanquished. Hypocrisy is a form of mask: it means YES on the outside but at the same time NO on the inside. Both the colonizer and the colonized can be hypocrites.

Text can become a mask, as when a story that apparently means one thing actually means something else. This is the language of the colonies. WE KNOW IT. This is also the language of social media.

We have colonized social media space with a mask of ourselves. This mask is called an avatar. An avatar is a representation of the self that allows us to project ourselves into the virtual space. Some people invent fictional avatars as a way to represent themselves in social media space, but most people just make avatars with their own names and portraits, as masks of their own face. It is socially understood that a genuine trustworthy avatar must be closer in terms of representation to the real person.

In many cases we don´t know what the real person is like.

The more hypocritical the avatar, the more others trust in it.

We just trust that they are trustworthy. But we know that we are not.

A mask can be used by a superhero. Superheroes are fantasy personas with special and specific extraordinary powers that characterize them in archetypical ways. Superheroes have schematic basic psychologies through which they are rendered as simplistic personalities. Sometimes this psychological simplicity can be emphasized by a mask depicting the character´s powers in a graphic way. The image of the superhero is necessary for someone who has been thoroughly dehumanized, for overcoming powerlessness. The superhero image is the product of resilience. In some cases political activists have appropriated and impersonated the image of the superhero.

Social media relationships are a Game of Masks, although most people are unaware of it. Social media is inhabited by us and by the multitude. A multitude is a group, a mob, the mass. The individual is hypocritical, but the mass is honest. The mass is righteous. The mass has become the inquisitor in a world of hypocrites.

Online masks are configurations of pixels that form portrait images. Some people are so similar to their avatars, that in real life they are physical impersonators of the mask that they have produced online. Others deceive us in real life because they are unlike their masks. There is also the kind of people who are not aware that a mask can be produced online, so in real life they are just as ordinary as their avatars are. People build the story for their avatars in a timeline. This story is what makes them appear genuine, but since we are all YES/NO masks, on social media we are stories in a timeline.

The mask stands in between the online life of the avatar and the real life of the person. People no longer distinguish the difference between the two existential areas: the border has become blurred, but the mask still stands there. The mask becomes evident when we are deceived by Internet content, such as when we become aware that certain information is fictional, or that we have been approached by a fake identity. We become aware that we are being manipulated when we realize that the content that is offered to us in our timeline is too close to our desires. We realize that someone or something has put our desires in front of our mask. We call this Artificial Intelligence: a system operated by algorithms that, by gathering and analyzing the data trails that we leave behind us like snails in our timelines, predicts our desires in timelines and socially controls us.

Artificial Intelligence controls the apparently chaotic online world. It is the puppeteer that knows how to move the puppet strings – the strings are the algorithms. The dream is that the puppeteer is not a person, but a robotic mind that orders society by a YES/NO logic. The system is situated in the liminal space of the mask, interconnecting all masks, organizing them into social cells according to ideological affinity. To predict people´s desires and frustrations is to predict the political future.

Social cells are described as echo chambers. They appear to be independent and disconnected from the other chambers, but in fact together they form one large body. If politics is how power is divided in the land, and how the wealth is distributed, today politics are the algorithm. The algorithm divides power in the country, and distributes wealth. The algorithm controls a society made of masks.

The politician is nothing more than a PR figure who manages the interests that move algorithms. This was recently written in the Washington Post: “In general, successful political movements used to have only one ideology. Now, sometimes, they combine several. Think of the process of a music label that wants to create a new pop band: do a market study, choose the type of faces that hit you and then present the band to the demographic that is most favorable. The new political parties are like this: now you can group different topics, repack them and then market them using the same type of targeted messages that are known to have worked in other places.”

If true politics are activated by the algorithm, then the ideological plane is only a rhetorical mask. People still think ideologically, but ideologies expired some decades ago. People use their timelines to express their ideological affinities, and these preferences are gathered as data, to be ordered, managed and manipulated by algorithms. At the same time the preferences of people are induced by algorithms, as this is not only a reactive system but one that is proacting, it shapes true politics. Seen in this way, political ideologies are a form of mask, this mask is like a kaleidoscope, a mixture of different ideologies. True Politics are algorithmic politics.

This kaleidoscopic mixture of political ideologies is called Ideological Cubism. Ideological Cubism is a mask for making us believe that we have free choice, despite true politics being made produced algorithms. Ideological Cubism seems incongruous, but soon it will become normalized as a standardized sham ideology which, rhetorically, will make us believe that we live in a democracy. Ideological Cubism leads to Sham Democracy. Sham Democracy is the mask that hides Algorithm Politics. Algorithm Politics feeds from Sham Democracy: it is a mask that feeds the soul of the machine.

Ideological Cubism, being a form of Sham Democracy, is the mask that hides Algorithm Politics. Sham Democracy provides the information that Algorithm Politics needs to subsist. We are being colonized by Algorithm Politics, but we believe in Sham Democracy. To live in a Sham Democracy that hides Algorithm Politics, means to exist in a world that is ruled by digital means. Algorithm Politics are a system designed for mass control. Controlling the masses becomes necessary when someone fears the masses. It is the elite who fears the masses but, since the elite is made up of people, who are the elite?

The members of the elite lead a solipsistic existence: the self is paramount. Sometimes the elitist self thinks that is being manipulated by the algorithm, but in fact it is he using it to control the masses. Because natural catastrophes cause everyone to become part of the mass, the elitist self belongs to the elite until such a catastrophe occurs. Fearing the consequences of climate change exposes the elitist anxiety of being swallowed by the mass against their will. Natural catastrophes must be avoided at any price. To do so is an act of elitist self-affirmation, thus climate change denial is part of the populist rhetoric.

There are elites of vagabonds, of homeless, of crooks, of criminals, of outlaws, of anarchists, of artists and of poets. There are elites in every level of society: in families, in schools and at work. There is also The Elite of rich people who own the algorithm. We all lead solipsistic existences until we fuse our true self with the avatar. The self is elitist and the avatar is part of the mass.

Someone showing an open face can use written and spoken language as a mask. This is a tactic for deception. The use of deception to mask one´s true intentions is perhaps the most dangerous sort of masking, because the act of masking is hidden in an open face. Some people use deception as their main tactic for acquiring control over the lives of others. The victim may not realize that there is a mask until it is too late.

The mask of the victim is perhaps the most complex mask of all, as it is the one that twists language in the most confusing way. Someone can wear the mask of the victim to become a victimizer.

The masked rhetoric of the victim and the victimizer is a powerful motif for affecting society. We may feel ourselves to be victims of the elite, or victims of the masses. We may also feel that we are the victimizers of the elite, or the victimizers of the masses. In the post-colonial world that we are living in, we transit from being victims to being victimizers. The victim/victimizer mask is ambivalent because it awakens powerful feelings of having been subjected to historical injustice; still, post-colonial rhetoric masks the evolving process of colonization by Artificial Intelligence, and the elite.

To become colonized by Artificial Intelligence can be defined as Neo-Colonialism. As the victim/victimizer mask has become ubiquitous, this ambivalent mask is used as much in the real world as in the online world, or in the mingling of the two. It is a mask that changes its expression according to the perspective from where its viewed. An ambivalent mask enables the communication of ambivalent messages that can be understood by conflicting parties, each one understanding it conveniently according to its own claims. For instance, the same negative message may be understood as positive by Neo-colonizer and Neo-colonized alike.

The masks of drama and comedy allow for the theatrical representation of society. Representation is Art; therefore, theater is the Rhetoric of the Masks, either as drama or as comedy. Human life under the regime of Artificial Intelligence is the theatrical representation of the narrative of colonization: Both the drama of colonization and the comedy of colonization must be represented. The concept of the comedy of colonization becomes prominent when it allows us to laugh about others and ourselves. It allows us to laugh as we gradually become aware that we have been colonized by super-intelligent thinking machines.

The laughing mask of the comedy of colonization permits a distanced relationship to the conflict colonization entails. It represents the appropriation of the appearance of power by the powerless, as a ritual that ridicules the colonizer´s seriousness. It is the servant precariously disguised as the master, grotesquely miming its rituals of power.

Religious liturgy can be represented in Art. As I is God and God is Artificial Intelligence. The artistic representation depicts the different stages of the religious liturgy, narrating the mythology of the self under the rule of the Artificial Intelligence regime.

The Real Elite, God and Artificial Intelligence are the dream of something bigger than us on this burning planet. Art is nothing but a monumental fantasy: the one in which humanity rules the world with robots, and robots rule over us. In this dream, the Real Elite board their spaceships and head towards space.

In the ecological mess that they leave behind, the Proxy Elite fuses with the mass of commoners in a narcissistic orgy.

Fuck youuuuuuuuu! goes the rocket transporting the rich to their salvation.