The Story of a Single Blink

We live in a post-panoptic world. Bentham’s Panopticon has found its contemporary reflection both in urban space and in the networked realm of the internet. We alternate between the roles of supervisor and prisoner—we are simultaneously observers and objects of observation.

Open exhibitionism intertwines with profound scopophobia. Within this dichotomy the eyelid pulses, cutting us off in microsecond intervals from the oculocentric spectacle of the world. In this fraction of a second—seemingly trivial and insignificant—important facts slip out of our field of vision.

Our reality resembles a Panopticon: a system of constant surveillance. In the continuous blinking of the eye, in the repeated interruption of the line of sight by the eyelid, there is a certain dramaturgy. “Action” and “cut” follow one another in a stroboscopic rhythm, transmitting visual information that is often unclear and contradictory.

One must remain vigilant. In a world of ubiquitous transparency, anonymity becomes a strategy of survival. We are subjected to permanent control. We can be certain of one thing—while we see nothing, someone else is still looking.