_"Re: The Fact That I Am Fiction": Mary-Anne Breeze, Her Avatars, and the Transformation of Identity_

__________

[Originally published in:]
Post Identity (4.1), an international, fully-refereed journal of the
humanities, publishes scholarship that examines the narratives underlying
individual, social, and cultural identity formations; that investigates the
relationship between identity formations and texts; and that argues how
such formations can be challenged.

In print since 1997, Post Identity has partnered with the University of
Michigan's Scholarly Publishing Office to transform itself into an audio-,
graphic-, and video-enhanced web-based journal that can make available the
new forms and subjects of contemporary critiques of identity, as well as
more traditional text-based scholarship. Issue 4.1 is our inaugural
publication in this new format.

The theme for this special issue, "Identifying New Media," recognizes the
opportunities and challenges that scholars face in mapping and theorizing
the rapidly changing contours of the new media landscape. In articles and
web projects contributors from a wide range of disciplines examine how new
media forms are changing cultural and academic understandings of identity
and authorship and how new media might provide models for new forms of
scholarship.
http://liberalarts.udmercy.edu/pi/
–

_"Re: The Fact That I Am Fiction": Mary-Anne Breeze, Her Avatars, and the
Transformation of Identity_
John Reep


In less than a decade, Australia's Mary-Anne Breeze has emerged as one of
the most innovative and influential poets working in the new artistic
spaces of the Internet. Along with Alan Sondheim, Ted Warnell, Ted Andrews,
Talan Memmott, Jodi, and others, Breeze is a member of an international
school commonly known as the codework poets: "writers and
programmer-artists . . . playing with the confusions and thresholds of
machine language and human language, and . . . reflecting the cultural
implications of these overlaps" (Cramer, par. 19). Several of the codework
poets' creations, such as Talan Memmott's "Lexia to Perplexia" or Ted
Warnell's "Poem by Nari IO," conflate ordinary written language and the
idiosyncratic elements of computer programming and visual design to
construct new poetic languages. But it is Mary-Anne Breeze's contribution
to this school which has attracted the most critical attention. Breeze is
the inventor of a paratactic hybrid of English and computer code which she
calls "mezangelle." Texts written in mezangelle break apart words by
inserting other words, letters, or non-alphanumeric symbols which multiply
the meanings and connotations that an utterance carries. For example, in a
collaboration with Talan Memmott titled "Sky Scratchez," Breeze takes the
lines "My neck contracts / and brow beats into tattoos" and "mezangelles"
them to read "[meye [kne]e.ck[ronic paine] con[ned].tract[ov teXt]z N
br.OW!! bee[hiVez]att:z N-2 tat[telletailz]2z." Mezangelle takes advantage
of the reader's ability to hold more than one thought (often a
contradictory thought) in mind at a time as he or she reads–an
intellectual skill that hypertext and online literature emphasize and often
require.

Most of the critical attention paid to Breeze has focused on her use of her
mezangelle communication mechanisms. N. Katherine Hayles argues that
Breeze's works are "not content to let code remain below the surface but
rather show it erupting through the surface of the screen to challenge the
hegemony of alphabetic language" (372). She likens the act of reading
mezangelle to experiencing "a world in which language is inextricably
in-mixed with code and code with language, creating a creolized discourse
in which the human subject is constituted through and by intelligent
machines" (378). Komninos Zervos explains mezangelle in terms of its
paratactical effects: "[Breeze's] parataxis of syllable and letter, within
words themselves, sets up a poetic experience where the words clash within
themselves, their internal workings in opposition, disrupting the way we
read as language and forcing a closer examination of the text, creating new
meanings with the text" (par. 43). Stephanie Strickland compares mezangelle
to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry with its "fluid spacing, bracketing, and
ambiguous punctuation to obtain a simultaneity of reference that tests
fixed neuronal patterns," and notes that mezangelle "also tests these,
simultaneously, through choreographed and random kinetic oscillations of
the Web environment, re-converting the process of reading to a process of
action, perhaps somewhat akin to what oral cultures undertook when print
first spread through them" (par. 14).

Breeze's code poems and website installations–her "net.wurks," as she
prefers to call them–represent a point at which codework praxis and
poetics meet, for not only has Breeze been extremely prolific in creating
and distributing her code poetry net.wurks, but her net.wurks have evolved
over the last few years to form an impressive collection of manifestos and
political-poetic theories demonstrating how the use of online environments
might re-shape the activity of interpersonal communication, especially in
terms of how we [de]construct authors, their messages, and their audiences,
redefining the roles of "author" and "reader" in such a way that has
important implications outside the domain of literature. In addition to her
invention of mezangelle, Breeze notes that her most important contribution
to codework poetry has been an examination of how "Identity swapping . . .
constantly shifting name-tags, ["n.vokes"] an avataristic & collaborative
approach [and] net.wurked formulation" leading online participants to
construct new identities and form communities based on an ambiguous and
fluid sense of self (Currents interview).

Breeze swaps identities through the use of avatars. Like mezangelle, which
simultaneously reveals and obscures the words that are mezangelled,
Breeze's avatars both obscure the author's offline self by concealing her
name, but also reveal and render more explicit the authorial position from
which Breeze is working. Breeze has invented a vast array of avatars since
she began posting her net.wurks online, so many that she rarely uses her
given name, "Mary-Anne Breeze," while online. Often when critics discuss
Breeze or her work, they refer to her most common avatar, "Mez," but this
might be placing too much significance on a single avatar of an author who
uses a great many avatars. In any case, in this paper, I want to examine
Breeze's relationship to her avatars and her use of avatars as a method of
literary and political expression, thus it makes sense to distinguish her
"[meat][m][body version]"–as she calls it–"Mary-Anne Breeze," from the
"[net.wurker ][wo][manifestation]," "Mez," or one of her many other avatars.

Breeze complicates identity by exploring how avatars can be used to
construct new means of interfacing with rapidly evolving–and sometimes
ephemeral–information technologies and then simultaneously exploiting this
use of avatars so that the author is free to explore new avenues of
literary creation. Because Breeze's net.wurks emphasize the importance of
community formation and function, this new form of poetic creation, in
turn, has political consequences. Mezangelled texts, like many forms of
code poetry, generally have been described as the "contamination" of human
language by computer code (Raley, par 18). Since technological and social
advances are placing people and information technology in closer and closer
interaction, this sort of contamination almost seems inevitable. But with
respect to Mary-Anne Breeze, we might reverse the course of this
contamination to read human language as the source of the contamination
rather than its recipient. Breeze contaminates the languages of information
technologies with human language, pressing programming languages into the
service and support of her own artistic and political agenda, an agenda
which does not always correspond with the objectives of the original
computer programs. Like a linguistic trojan horse, mezangelle disrupts and
destroys the efficacy of computer code by revealing its potential for
linguistic play, a kind of play which ultimately is fatal for the computer
program but which leads to enhanced creativity for the human interactor,
whose basic human need for creative expression through language cannot be
fulfilled by current information technology alone. Breeze's use of
mezangelle offers a strategy for engaging and protesting the offline
threats to human identity posed by sources such as bio-engineering,
cloning, and the increasing corporate and government control over
intellectual property rights and artistic freedom.

Breeze began her online career in 1995 with a net.wurk titled Cutting
Spaces . Cutting Spaces is a combination of prose and poetry littered with
hyperlinks and multi-colored text that chronicles a young female writer's
two obsessions: the search for a collaborative writing partner online and
the act of self-mutilation. Cutting Spaces announces several of the themes
and issues that Breeze develops in later net.wurks, especially the idea of
altering one's identity through the use of avatars in order to reflect the
attitudes and opinions that one adopts or expresses while participating in
online environments. Cutting Spaces begins with Breeze re-naming herself
through a series of avatars. Ostensibly, Breeze wears the avatar "Ms Post
Modemism" (as the subtitle of the net.wurk, "fleshwords by Ms Post
Modemism" suggests), but we learn that this avatar "has gestated inside
others" such as:

Passe Parvenu:
(a much more concrete past this one…old upstart…she had
blondebrown hair and wore small vinyl shorts with old nun shoes
and ate too much and made mad picture muzac through a
painted face and twice thrice thrushed her way with other girlies
sexstarved crazy whores and strains of other queerish boys and
girly girls/bi girls/bye gURLl)
____
Ms Corruption:
(a wolf in beauty's clothing decked out/in…who taunted/
stretched her b&w b&d S&M into a realm of words that saturated
life/wake/sleeping bytes and made the boy confused and open
to her tauntless taunting words/ he lingers still)
____
GoddessAeon:
(juices flowing and all bodies falling at her cybertouch
she wanted once then let her fingers drift her cyber/cipher/sniper soul
into a void white space they wait for her in static global lines caught up
within e-motionsand tight phone cord lines) (Cutting Spaces, part one)

These three avatars, as well as the avatar "Ms Post Modemism," obviously
rely on the connotations that these colorful names inspire in order to
construct each avatar's identity and communicate that identity to Breeze's
audience. However, only the new avatar, "Ms Post Modemism," seems to fit
the new online medium which Breeze was beginning to explore at this time
(in fact, it is difficult to imagine a writer with such a name working
offline).

Cutting Spaces illustrates how avatar construction is much more than the
innocent and effortless selection of a name. Changing identities in this
net.wurk is enacted through self-mutilation, implying an analogy between
the avatar and the physical self. A section in Cutting Spaces subtitled
"Incision down the left side of the face" describes Ms Post Modemism using
a knife to cut her skin along the liminal region of the hairline
surrounding her face–in effect, she is attempting to cut out her face as
the first step in exchanging her old identity for a new one. Naturally, it
is a bloody, painful act, which Ms Post Modemism describes for us in
detail, but when the pain becomes too much for her to handle and she stops,
she discovers that "she has her story control again." Altering her identity
generates a surge of creative inspiration that allows Ms Post Modemism to
write.

We witness this transformative activity in some of her more recent postings
to listservs. Breeze will sign her posts with a mezangelled avatar
construction, an identity which often foreshadows the title or subject
matter of the rest of the post. For example, in a post from December 2001,
Breeze adopts the avatar ".][depth][f.Unction" above a subject line which
reads, "][d.][…splay my…][opia][". Variations on the name of this
avatar are repeated like a refrain through the post: "function,"
"][d.][function," ".][deep][fun.ction," and finally ".][depth][function."
Sometimes Breeze will use mezangelle to fuse her identity with another's,
just as she uses mezangelle to sometimes fuse her words with other words.
In a post dated 11 June 2000, Breeze mezangelles a passage originally
written by Diane Ludin, and then inserts her own name into Ludin's by
signing the mezangelled work "Di[mary-]an[n]e Ludin"–an illustration of
how authorial identity may be transient and easily altered. Using avatars
is an essential part of Breeze's creative process, allowing her to
mezangelle her own self in order to find an authorial identity from which
she can create.

For Mary-Anne Breeze, the construction of an avatar is not strictly a
metaphoric or "virtual" donning of a mask, but often a physical act of
extreme intensity, for it violates and re-defines the ostensible borders
that keep us apart from the world around us and from other people. We tend
to assume that our physical bodies have boundaries that separate us from
the rest of the physical world, although we may disagree on exactly where
those boundaries lie (at the level of skin and hair? at the level of
clothing? at the level of scent or sound or sight?). When such boundaries
are penetrated–or in this case, cut–we "bleed" either figuratively or
literally, transgressing the pre-assigned boundaries and perhaps venturing
into new, previously forbidden or inaccessible territories. However, these
boundaries are further complicated in cyberspace, where the avatar or new
identity that one creates seems to be separated from one's human body and
confined in a body of metal and plastic and silicone (the computer's
hardware)–a body which seems far less vulnerable to the natural world than
one of clothing and skin, but which is still accessible to the minds and
thoughts and avatars of other online participants.

Breeze's major net.wurk from 2000, The Data][h!][bleeding Texts , continues
on the course set by Cutting Spaces. Many of the texts in this collection
express the desire to revel in the new possibilities for identity
construction that entry into an online virtual environment affords one. For
example, in part two of The Data][h!][bleeding Texts, a section titled
"Loggin On2 Netwurk," Breeze, now writing under her more familiar avatar of
"Mez," demonstrates how she can virtually transform her new cyber-body at will:

/me torques masculine, feminine traits n.stead of absolutes, jigsaws
instead of gen][re][ders

/me resets the Gender _Distinct.ion_ Button

/me wishes 4 a genderless ID, identic.caul twinned balances and life
n r gees . . . .

/me carves a sexless frame from jen's air, a sculpture of both faces,
act.u.all . . . .

/me molds a ivory stamp with the letters "Print Writers" backwards. mez
washes her browless face, her n.oh.sent code . . . .

/me confers, her body light and silicon bright . . .

An online avatar's body is not composed of flesh and bone, like our human
bodies, but, ultimately, it is composed of nothing more than language.
Since online interaction takes place in an environment that is, at its
core, a textual, coded environment, the avatars are not bound in flesh
bodies but are instead purely symbolic bodies consisting solely of language
and programming code. Wearing an avatar makes one much more aware of how
important a tool language is to the creation of one's offline identity and
one's sense of self. One quickly discovers how simple manipulations of
language have the power to transform one's identity into whatever one wants
it to be. Language is no longer perceived as a rigid set of rules, but a
fluid, highly connotative mass of possibilities. Ultimately, as this new
function of language is gradually taken for granted in online communities,
just as it is usually taken for granted in offline communities, the
transformative power that language has upon identity also is taken for
granted. When Breeze transformed herself into Ms Post Modemism, she felt
obligated to represent that with a description of a physical act of
self-mutilation: cutting out one's face so that it can be removed and
replaced. Today, when Breeze posts to listservs, she posts under avatars
that only exist for a few weeks or a few days, often reflecting a political
or social issue on her mind, before she finally discards that avatar for a
new one. The process of transforming her identity seems mundane and easy,
just as it seems to anyone else who participates in these online
environments long enough.

Breeze's own avatars are sometimes masculine and sometimes neutral in their
gender, but most remain feminine. Her feminine avatars such as "Ms
Corruption," "Miss User," and "tech.no.whore" entail feminist-oriented
themes and critiques of the traditionally male-dominated medium in which
she works. Her mezangelled writing itself is a means by which she may
assault the phallogocentrism from within, a deconstruction of the implicit
or inherent patriarchal allegiances that have formed between technology and
the written word. Breeze argues that, for women, the use of avatars in
cyberspace is almost a necessity if a woman wants to be taken seriously in
what still remains a male-dominated technology and environment. She has
stated, for example, that the avatar "Passe Parvenu" was "governed by the
way I wanted . . . [the] work perceived by a larger audience; I kept it
gender-nonspecific and conceptually geared so people would actually have no
pre-conceptions of the work they were about to see" ("Real Mez"). So
Breeze's avatars give her the ability to move freely across gender and
other socially-constructed boundaries. An article that Breeze wrote and
published in the spring 1997 issue of the e-journal Cybersociology
illustrates the difficulties that women face in gaining acceptance to
online communities. Breeze's article describes her participation in an
online gaming community in Australia. She writes,

My time using the online game environment in a continuous fashion lasted
approximately three weeks–after that, I have played sporadically and never
assumed a stable identity within the community because of various
factors–the primary one being the discovery of my gender. One of the sad
facts of being an online female gamer is that you tend to stand out like a
sore thumb, and after it got out that I was female the nature of the game
changed dramatically for me. . . . Being a female player relegates you to a
certain marginalized position. (par. 15)

While some of Breeze's avatars are obviously feminine, others, such as
"mezflesque.exe" or "e-mauler," are ambiguous in their gender. As Breeze
described to Helen Whitehead in a February 2000 online interview, she
prefers to play with the idea of gender so as to explore how gender
expectations shape the way that readers perceive texts:

Mi name changing [ore switching i suppose, as i tend 2 go back-N-forth
from/2 a series of namez] izz large.lee dependant on my need to
flu[x]ct.uate b-tween/with.inn s-tablished notions of regi[de]men.ted
authorship, N 2 x-plore/push the limitz ov traditional reader boundariez;
will a read.[h]er B more likelee 2 treat a new wurk bi me in non-D-plumage
[a new name state] with the same x-pectationz as previouslee?

In the case of her adventure into the world of online gaming, Breeze found
that avatars truly do either suspend or provoke regression towards
assumptions based on the stereotypes (in Breeze's case, gender stereotypes)
that online participants already possess upon entering the virtual
environment. So, despite the fact that choosing avatars can sometimes seem
mundane, avatar selection is a process that one should not take lightly,
for the connotations that it communicates and the identity it establishes
really does influence how others will respond to that avatar and the person
behind it.

As Breeze switches her avatars, the frequency with which she does so not
only allows her to experience many different identities, it also allows her
several authorial positions from which she can present a variety of texts
and points of view to her readers. Avatars grant their users a space in
which they may use their imaginations freely and creatively, without
worrying about facing judgments from other people, since the other people
that one encounters online are themselves wrapped up in avatars. But when
one's real-time identities do become known–when one is unmasked, so to
speak–one may be left vulnerable to the judgments of the other
participants. In a sense, one identity is exchanged for another, and these
identities not only represent our own opinions of ourselves, but they also
reflect others' opinions about who we are and what roles we should play in
both offline and online communities. Furthermore, while the communities
that we construct in the physical world are defined and limited by such
things as geography, economic status, career, religion, race, and political
affiliation, online communities have the potential–albeit limited by
issues of access to technology–to transcend these boundaries. Language,
and the ability to communicate effectively through language, becomes the
paramount factor in online community participation and formation.

Although the use of avatars is often a positive way of alleviating the lack
one feels in one's offline identity by being able to experience and assume
new identities, Breeze writes of how other technologies–not just
information technology, but medical and scientific technology–reveal a
potentially sinister form of identity transformation. When this powerful
idea of transformation leaves the purely symbolic realm of language or
programming code and enters the offline realm of flesh and bone, the
uneasiness and shock that we may have felt when reading about Ms Post
Modemism's mutilation of her face pales in comparison to the alarm that
these other forms of identity transformation can inspire. Breeze's online
installation, The Clone-Alpha Project offers an imaginative visual
demonstration of humanity's hubris with offline transformative
technologies. This net.wurk consists of a series of images of cherubs which
are replicated and distorted, ultimately resulting in the creation of
unrecognizable lumps of flesh with wings, cherubs with multiple heads, and
other grotesque imagery. In our desire to play god through the technology
of genetic engineering and cloning–to make supermen and angels out of
ourselves, and then narcissistically replicate that new creation–Breeze
shows how humans risk unleashing undreamed-of horrors. In a short text
piece collected in part four of The Data][h!][bleeding Texts titled
"Po[E].ST War[ning]," Breeze goes even further in her condemnation of
genetic engineering, likening it to the eugenics programs of Nazi Germany:

/Post Awe-ganic……….
[1 gets their teeth knocked bac + N-other buttered by baron wingz + n-other
victim of a chant resplendent in a nazi gooze[hop & bashe &]bumpish step]

[m-bedded in2 a schemata of hate = awareness lost N licked by the gell-mass
core.poor.8 = stitched uppe suitez & sue[t]ings commonplace::
IF ewe = suit s[l]ick, then + ———+ + + +====
Ignore::d-isplacement, d-evil.ution, d-esperation
M-brace::slick I-T regurgitation, eek[!].o[g]nomic augmentation

Such technologies offer a radical transformation of the physical body, a
transformation, one might argue, that resembles the notion of avatar
construction, except that it brings the construction of a new identity out
of the realm of the symbolic and into the realm of the physical. But Breeze
clearly demarcates an ethical line between the symbolic and the physical in
her endorsement of identity transformation, a line that she apparently is
unwilling to cross. One form of transformation is ethically taboo and the
other is not because the first instance represents a drive towards
homogenization, a drive encouraged by elements of culture which are
threatened by uncontrolled freedom of expression and assembly. The actual
transformation of our offline flesh-and-bone bodies is usually a result of
the desire to be like everyone else. Breeze's analogy of the Nazi eugenics
programs and the emerging technology of genetic engineering underscores
Breeze's suspicion of those who desire to normalize populations, making it
easier to rally them around programs and policies with as few dissenters as
possible. Cloning, genetic engineering, and similar technologies do not
simply resolve a lack in one's self-perception as avatar creation might,
but, instead, promote the resolution of a lack that capitalist institutions
try to persuade us exists. Encouraging people to transform
themselves–whether it be the clothes they wear, their hair, their weight,
skin color, etc.–in order to conform to a proposed standard of "normality"
can make it easier for corporations and governments to manipulate the wants
and desires of vast groups of people.

This examination of how Breeze uses information technology to serve as
either a literal or symbolic replacement for one's human body would seem to
prompt the age-old dichotomy of body versus mind. In the case of
information technology, this would imply that computer hardware may be
analogous to the body, and that software and programming is therefore
analogous to the mind. That one's body may be transformed into a compact,
solid, seemingly impenetrable assemblage of plastic, metal, and silicon is
an idea that might be reassuring to some and disturbing to
others–depending, perhaps, on the intensity of one's sense of lack with
respect to one's human body. The analogy has more promise when we think of
computer software as analogous to the human mind. With respect to the
mind-software analogy, Geoff Cox, Alex McLean, and Adrian Ward have
compared generative computer code and its effect on computer hardware to
the effect that poetry has on the mind:

By analogy, generative code has poetic qualities, as it does not operate in
a single moment in time and space but as a series of consecutive "actions"
that are repeatable, the outcome of which might be imagined in different
contexts. Code is a notation of an internal structure that the computer is
executing, expressing ideas, logic, and decisions that operate as an
extension of the author's intentions. The written form is merely a
computer-readable notation of logic, and is a representation of this
process. Yet the written code isn't what the computer really executes,
since there are many levels of interpreting and compiling and linking
taking place. Code is only really understandable with the context of its
overall structure - this is what makes it like a language . . . Form and
function should not be falsely separated. (par. 16)

To carry the analogy still further, we might say that linking hundreds or
thousands or even millions of computers together by way of the Internet
links hundreds or thousands or millions of minds together, forming a vast
community of intelligence unlike any other in human history–a community
that can transcend traditional boundaries, whether they be geographical,
political, racial, religious, or gendered.

But this analogy begins to break down when we consider that, although
computer hardware and software may symbolically represent one's body and
mind, electronic information technology and human beings are different in
far more ways than those which are at first obvious. Jean-Francois Lyotard
offers a more operable analogy that might better describe how some forms of
codework poetry, including Breeze's net.wurks, are intended to function.
Lyotard writes that while "The body might be considered the hardware of the
complex technical device that is human thought," the "software, human
language, is dependent on the condition of the hardware" (133). The "code"
of human thought is human language, but while human language may be altered
and new languages invented and learned, the language that is used to
operate computer hardware is very different–and has very different
objectives–than the language that operates human hardware. Computer
programming languages are heavily dependent on strict rules which direct
the way the software is received and read, but the operation of human
software (human language) upon human hardware is very different: "In what
we call thinking the mind isn't 'directed' but suspended. You don't give it
rules. You teach it to receive. You don't clear the ground to build
unobstructed: you make a little clearing where the penumbra of an
almost-given will be able to enter and modify its contour" (137).

Although Breeze's codework poems resemble programming code, mezangelle does
not actually function as a computer program. John Cayley argues that
codework poetry should not only function aesthetically, but it should also
function as a program as well, and that if "the code embedded in the
interface text has ceased to be operative or even potentially operative
[then] [t]he breakdown of its operations eliminates one aspect of its
proposed aesthetic value and allure, its native performative efficacy"
(par. 24). Some codework poets actually do try to create works that are
both aesthetically pleasing and which also can function as operable
computer programs. But for Breeze, mezangelle's lack of operability makes
an important statement about the relation of human beings to information
technology. Breeze's net.wurks "suspend" rather than "direct." They are
deliberately incomplete, open-ended, and flawed. The input of Breeze's
net.wurks does not determine a particular, predictable response that will
be universal when read by all of the readers of the text in the same way
that a computer program is expected to generate the same output in each
machine that runs the software. Breeze's mezangelled net.wurks are not
designed according to strict, logical rules, but are constructed
connotatively. Taking a word like "syntax" and mezangelling it to form
"s][onorous][y][n.ta][ct][x" requires that both the author and reader
share the necessary linguistic and cultural context that will allow them to
reconstruct the original word from clues in the mezangelled text, and then
deconstruct it by way of the bracketed extra letters and syllables, finding
connotations and associations within the rest of the text and piecing them
together to arrive at a similar but not necessarily identical
interpretation. As explorations of the interpretive process, Breeze's
net.wurks do not aspire to a single, intended "output." If Breeze's
net.wurks can be compared to programs at all, then they are programs
designed to operate the human mind, not a computer. Thus, as Rita Raley
argues, mezangelle is "precisely opposed to the value of functionality,"
conforming more to an "aesthetics of disruption and interference" (par. 26).

One of the paradoxes of Breeze's work is that even as mezangelle causes
"disruption and interference," Breeze nevertheless regards interactive
collaboration as an important part of creating her net.wurks. To return to
Cutting Spaces, once Ms Post Modemism regains her "story control" after
painfully mutilating herself–a metaphor for an author's need to set aside
a space in which she will be free to write and create–the new identity
formed in the self-mutilation (avatar establishment) has the freedom to act
without the constraints that the original identity experienced. The story
she writes is about a "Wounded Man," who, bleeding profusely, enters a bar
and orders a drink. Ms Post Modemism begins the story but leaves the rest
of it unfinished and posts it online, inviting other writers to contribute
and finish the story. Unfortunately, no one contributes, and Wounded Man is
left bleeding in the purgatory of the bar indefinitely. Without
collaboration, the story cannot be told.

Despite Ms Post Modemism's failure to attract a collaborative partner,
Breeze views the possibility of collaboration between online participants
as one of the most exciting avenues for creation that information
technology offers. The idea of an artist possessing exclusive control over
his or her work is an anachronism in cyberspace where the ideas and
products of human imagination may be held in common by a vast online
community. Ms Post Modemism describes her audience/collaborators as "we/
.she. + .he. + .me." and demands that they "explode the myth of
individualized artistic ownership and requirements of chronological
progression" (Cutting Spaces, part 3). Breeze reminds us that, even
offline, all human literary endeavors are nevertheless linked together;
every text is in real or potential correspondence with every other text,
creating an all-inclusive network of language and communication. The use of
hypertext may draw attention to observable collaboration, but the potential
for collaboration as an important tool in creative writing has always been
present. Online information technologies are simply better equipped to make
creative collaboration possible. Breeze explains that "'Deadtree media'
[e.g., paper-based communication] cannot m.brace the collaborative &
immediate rite-of-reply that email texts can" (Currents interview). The
illusion of individual literary creation is advanced by the conventions of
written and printed "deadtree" media.

In cyberspace, collaboration is easier because the traditional boundaries
of geography or nationality or even time are more easily transcended,
making texts more immediately available to readers. And because of the
interactive nature of online technologies, both the creation and reception
of texts emerge as events shared by a new, larger community. As we have
seen, the formation of these new communities also offers the chance for the
participants to adopt new identities through the use of avatars, giving
participants the confidence and freedom to express themselves and "2 adopt
a projective quality that both obscures and n.hances multilogue-authorship
& polyvocal ownership" (Currents interview). Breeze's mezangelled net.wurks
invite–even demand–that her audience participates actively with respect
to her texts, not only reading them but also assisting in their creation.
Breeze says that readers "can decide to re/deconstruct the work itself, or
interact via immediate feedback, or simply rewrite the work as they see
fit. The poetic boundaries are revamped substantially in terms of this type
of potentially 'active' readership" (Currents interview).

The act of mezangelling computer code amounts to hacking into a system of
language in order either benignly to explore previously inaccessible or
forbidden regions of networked systems, or to disrupt and destroy those
same systems from within. But the act of mezangelling carries a clear
ethical and political dimension, which, like the words and messages that
mezangelle seeks to reveal, lies just beneath the surface of her net.wurks.
Longstanding rules of grammar and punctuation are forced upon–and even
enforced by–online participants, so openly defying these rules by
mezangelling language is not simply an act of parody or deconstruction; it
is also be a political act, an act of resistance. Rebelling against these
rules threatens to overturn previously held notions of communication and
community, but such rebellion also clears a space for new and potentially
better forms of communication and community construction.

Breeze explains how this is possible in her "noncon" piece from her 2001
collection, ][ad][Dressed in a Skin C.ode . By donning an avatar online,
one is transformed into something that Breeze calls an "E-Mote" (as opposed
to a Flesh-Mote–one who lives entirely independent from the Internet, an
identity which is extinguished at the E-Mote's birth). The E-Mote works
within a very different set of communicative parameters than the
Flesh-Mote, such as "the abbreviated sp][g][eek, the nuanced sign][age][,
the un.ending.banter.torque, rewriting of geosyncratic platitudes." For
E-Motes, cyberspace is a site of mythic displacement in which one "can b
all, another not an .other." by re-inventing one's identity and altering it
to suit the fluctuating circumstances of online communication. However,
Breeze argues that the freedom and innovation that accompanies this
displacement is often in direct conflict with the representatives of
monologic institutions that seek to establish order and authority over "the
pri.mo][dem][r.dial][up][ soup" through a determination "2 swa][m][p the
limboesque with capital][ism][" ("noncon"). Avatar creation threatens the
usual methods of assigning pre-conceived identity constructions favored by
governments or corporations: permanent names, identification numbers, and
demographic information. These identities can then be used to manipulate
and control populations. A similar threat also comes from many ordinary
Internet users who

. . . grope 4 benchmarks.
.ill.lusionary grandeur.
.social more][& more][ p][ower][erpetuation
.a media PR codex.
.an author is n.ow][!!!][the key.
.primaeval play is out][boxed][. .establish.menti][ng is in. ("noncon")

As a result of these normalizing intrusions, ".the net.wurk is
undercurrented. undermined. understat][d.][metned. e][rased][choed in the
geophysical pull" ("noncon").

"Netorbit," the last item in ][ad][Dressed in a Skin C.ode, serves as a
sort of manifesto–a literary form in which Breeze occasionally
indulges–that makes the case both for linguistic freedom and, by
extension, the freedom for participants to use language to reconceive their
identities while participating in online communities. In "netorbit" Breeze
defends the imperfect nature of Internet communication as the very thing
that drew her to online communities in the first place:

when I ][*.][ ini.tially orbited this net.wurked reality . . . the
amnesiac-like newness & its fugue capabilities were so n.trinsically
seductive that @ 1nce, the resultant output was infernoesque, participants
all collaboratively floundering in this creative niche that allowed 4
x.tended x.ploration N wild rewritings of creative cod][a][es, or
established artistic & critique conventions.

Breeze celebrates the anarchic nature of those early days, which she now
believes are irretrievably consigned to the past as "others rushed to
quantify, anal.][e][y][e][se & rati][onalize][fy it……..smooth it in2
satis.Factory communication corners" ("netorbit"). In other words, a battle
between the advocates of linear, rational, monologic institutions and
thought and the advocates of artistic innovation and freedom is being
fought, and it is a battle Breeze wages every time she does something as
simple as send an e-mail or post to a listserv. Breeze fears that if
regulatory controls are established upon the use of language online, then
the consequence will be to shut "the door on a multi][log][tude of
prospective actualities, we are cutting off the avenues that make the
net.wurk a place worthy of creative x.pansion" ("netorbit"). These
regulatory controls are, in essence, an attack on Breeze's mezangelle itself.

Ironically, "netorbit" itself submits to the very hegemonic expectations it
criticizes. It consists of two texts combined into one: the first is
Breeze's mezangelled text, and the second is a plain English "translation"
of that mezangelled text, a translation that Breeze says is "drenched in
the very stench of this terror-vision of the concrete, the conflagration of
the predictable, the x.plainable, the acceptable, the
*ma][i][*n.if][then][est." Breeze's work celebrates the chaos of creation
and the misunderstandings that arise from imperfect communication. Near the
end of "netorbit," she writes with some nostalgia: "i weep 4 the
mis][b][gotten phrase, the typo, the flame-bait that isn't, the nudge that
is bypassed in terms of readability & community function."

Breeze has faced this normalizing impetus from even the most unlikely
sources. For example, in March 2001, Breeze was temporarily "unsubscribed"
from the *recode* listserv as punishment after the *recode* administrator,
Julianne Pierce, determined that Breeze's "latest collaborative and
interactively constructed work, [Col][Lab [C]Logging: Agency of The
N][arratively fractured][etwurk was inherently 'spam'" (Markoff). Breeze's
treatment sparked a debate among the other listserv subscribers about
censorship and freedom of expression in listserv communities. Breeze
herself, alternately using the avatars "Mez" and "Phonet][r][ix," defended
posting her net.wurks to the listserv by appealing to the interactive
nature of her work, that other *recode* subscribers "not only read & ][in
some cases][ enjoy this type of ][net.][text construction, but also
actively *produce* the work/*participate* in it via an open sourced mode
that actively n.courages ppl 2 respond…..the work is actually developed
via this process of n.gagement, rather than simply posted 2 the list as a
work in progress 4 persual..a very different thang ][oviously I would have
thought][." Breeze was banned because her mezangelled posts were judged to
be a violation of the rules of this particular listserv. Breeze attempted
to violate those rules, to use language in her own individual way, and was
punished for it.

To cite another example, one of Breeze's more controversial listserv posts
to date was a response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. In a
listserv post dated "12 Sep 2001" (evidence of just how quickly Breeze
works) with a subject line that reads "trauma networks vs bloodlust
demeanors," Breeze criticizes the television news media's coverage of the
event, coverage which unified many around the world, especially here in
America, in support of a dangerous policy of scapegoating and further
violence and war. Breeze, using the avatar, "pre.verse][1:chpt 2.1][",
writes, "x.tremist N d.ranged media outlets drown in personalized
life-loading" and "home videoed heros suck big bucked glory::war rhetoric
meets m][ilitary][elodrama::cliches ab][cessing][ounding on CNNesqued
TV::blank][et][ coverage][of war][" and she mezangelles President Bush's
line, "we will find these ppl and they will s][uffer][the tragic][". Her
post alienated some of her readers and attracted unfriendly criticism, but
it demonstrated Breeze's willingness to challenge the prevailing opinions
of the political moment in order to undermine the hegemonic forces that
stifle freedom of thought. For the most part, however, Breeze's crusade
against the slow suppression of freedom of speech and assembly online has
targeted more mundane, though no less pervasive, institutions. In
particular, Breeze has argued against an adherence to the rules of grammar
and punctuation, rules which define how one must write in deadtree media in
order to be accepted by the hegemonic institutions that still control much
of communication offline. Breeze's avatars make it possible for her to
communicate freely through the various information technologies at her
disposal.

Mary-Anne Breeze's political and ethical stance toward the different kinds
of identity transformation is primarily informed by the high value she
places on individual expression–and this individual expression is often
the result of the use of avatars which celebrate the idiosyncracies in
individuals. Wearing an avatar can give one a sense of freedom from a
cultural indoctrination that values the "standardization" of language and
thought mandated by hegemonic institutions in their attempts to control
communication and information dissemination. Breeze's resistance to the
standardization of language use in online communities reinforces the power
of avatars to effect intellectual innovation in individuals and communicate
those innovations to others. For Breeze, this resistance manifests itself
both in her avatars, which grant her permission to express herself and do
things that she might never do outside of online networks, and in her
mezangelled texts, which open up language to myriad subjective
possibilities, blasting the linear text apart into multiple, often
delightfully contradictory threads.



Works Cited
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—. "The Art of M[ez]ang.elle.ing: Constructing Polysemic & Neology
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<http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/incubation/level2/speakers/posters/mez/papa1.htm>.

—. The Clone Alpha Project. 1998. 26 July 2003.
<http://homepages.tig.com.au/~garu/calpha.htm>.

—. Cutting Spaces. 1995. 25 July 2003.
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—. The Data][h!][bleeding Texts. 2000. 26 July 2003.
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—. E-Mail Interview with Helen Whitehead. trAce. February 2000. 26 July 2003.

—. "E-Poets on the State of Their Electronic Art: Mez." Interview.
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—. "Quake-ing in My Boots: >Clan:Community< Construction in an Online
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—. "Will the Real Mez Please Stand Up?? . . . the net.Art & Cybertimes of
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Memmott, Talan. Lexia to Perplexia. 2001. 10 December 2003.
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.©[lick].
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http://www.hotkey.net.au/~netwurker
http://www.livejournal.com/users/netwurker/