frustration, spit, the face (colour separation)

First things first-- the cover photo of Gonzalez’s Face and Public is disturbing. I was thinking of Silence of the Lambs until I reached her passage on Colour Separation, when two ideas emerged: first, the idea of frustration described by Hansen. Looking at the photo, I’m completely frustrated. My reaction is to look for the ‘actual person’ behind the photograph; is this two people? Do the eyes and ears belong to the same person? Are the separate stitched-on parts composites? I want to know how photoshopped the image is. I want the ‘payoff’ of seeing the original pictures. I think this is an extremely productive and successful frustration—it asks me which ‘face’ I want to/tend to identify with, and it indicates my need to situate the face at its origin in order to ‘interface’ with it. It's disturbing not only because it's a wounded face, but because that wound has been inflicted on a non-face with which I'm unable to identify--the photograph only depicts a wound.

Second, the spit. I think its fascinating that the spit becomes a ‘visual sign’ of ‘a personal narrative of everyday racial abuse.’ Doesn’t, in this scenario, the spit become a face? It’s personal, individual, micro, (in conjunction with the everyday experience of one person) and its also the public, social, macro—produced by a user who has either entered the gallery or downloaded the software, a user who has entered the social/community in order to spit on this face. In light of this unplace-able, stitched-together face, the spit is the most direct bridge between two individuals. Could this be a successful displacement of the face within technoculture?