DoubleBind is a wearable media project that examines the intersections between place, identity and activism through a hooded sweatshirt connected to Twitter. The piece is designed to be worn in two ways – with the hood covering your head, or zipped into a collar around your neck. The tweets are generated based on where and how it is used, affecting your social identity in both physical and online environments.
In psychology, a ‘double bind’ refers to a set of two conflicting demands, where neither demand can be met without sacrificing the other. Following the death of Trayvon Martin, the hooded sweatshirt gained a new social legibility. While thousands of people wore hooded sweatshirts as a form of protest, the duality of the garment suggests different meaning and context depending on the race of the wearer, and the area it is worn. This duality (where legibility is affected by identity, location and context) places users in a performative situation where the choice of how to wear the piece is complicated through the knowledge that your choice is visible to your social network.
The hotspots are based on the location of single home Airbnb rentals in each neighbourhood. The tweets are generated by running descriptive content from rental listings, restaurant reviews and historical and contemporary dialogues on race, place and systems of power through a natural language processing algorithm, which will combine the content into tweet-length sentences. In ‘hoodie mode, your tweets also include your location.
DoubleBind was produced through the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council and AS220. Technical assistance provided by Ranjit Bhatnagar and Annie Fraser Smith.