Shifting identities: new materialities of power and control

Abstract

Identities, as the materialities that produce them, are changing with the translation of analogue methods of individualization into digital ones. In 2020, with the mobility restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, private and public services moved online performing new forms of identities. From in-person interactions, we —users— were reduced to pixels and data objects which constituted our digital identities: a username, a password, and a profile picture. In Shifting identities, we analyse these changes in an iconic context in the history of identities: a court of justice. Traditionally, a courtroom was a space to perform the authority of the State—a theatre of power—, by performing the identities of those involved in a judicial process. From a case study in Chilean courts during COVID-19, the century old spaces of the courtrooms were replaced by the interface of a videoconferencing platform and the identities performed differently. We problematize that those identities are no longer an action of the State but given to third-party, privately owned digital platforms, producing a privatization of a public space and consequentially of a public function as the identification of individuals. Fellow design researchers and practitioners will find in this article novel approaches to identities, leveraging from a rich history of identities in criminal and judicial spaces, and the changes it has experienced with the recent large adoption of digital technologies. Moreover, this paper offers new avenues to enter into an understudied context in design research, such as courts of justice.