Writing Like a Poet: Intimacy and the Instant Message

Foregrounding the Instant Message as its primary focus, this research project explores the production and expression of intimacy in the contemporary era of networked communication. This research frames the instant message as a dynamic tool for digital communication, situating it within histories of epistolary intimacy, while aspiring to position the instant message as a critical object within visual cultures. As a writing tool shaped by its instantaneity, its proximity to the body, and its variance from social media, the instant message offers meaningful encounters in digital intimacy. While exploring how intimacy emerges through digital writing, my mobile phone—which, like most people’s, goes everywhere with me—has been the object and document of my research, as well as a tool for art production across this project and in the several years preceding.