As we spend more and more time online, many of our relationships are initiated, negotiated, and maintained in the digital sphere; we are constantly changing, improving and “branding” our digital identity. It leads one to wonder why we feel the need to use the Internet with increasing frequency in order to achieve satisfaction in our life, and how feelings like pleasure or stress are connected to our time spent on the Internet. With the “Tell Us How You Really Feel” survey, administered in collaboration with physician and prospective psychiatrist Anna Willert, 3hd proposes to see mental wellbeing as a social act, and therefore as a political, rather than purely a personal issue.
In the eponymous panel, Anna Willert discusses the research from a medical and psychological background, while Cleo Kempe Towers a.k.a. Emotional Labour Queen will contribute her perspective on communal emotional exchange as a reaction to a threatening alienation in our lives through the ubiquitous use of social media and technology. Meanwhile, political educator Anna Stiede will share her ideas on the effects of digitization on the body and the political horizon of self-care practices in everyday life.
The panel is moderated by writer Hengameh Yaghoobifarah.