This paper analyses three ‘Zoom’ performances that were included in the 2021 online conference of the Electronic Literature Organization: Perfect Movement Engineering for Better Everyday Zooming (Katie Schaag and Andrew Salyer), Corporate Poetry, Room#3 (Alexandra Saum-Pascual), and The Tenders (Judd, Morrisey, Mark Jeffrey, and Abraham Avnisan). Drawing on Marcel Mauss’ article “Techniques of the Body”, it argues that the three works articulate how the video conferencing face operates as a technical object. The technical management of the video conferencing face has become a familiar phenomenon to many during the pandemic (the attentive face (much too close), the face we pin, the face of a colleague glaring at the screen, the face we decorate with filters, and so on.), and the performances remind us of how the face, in all this, has become a site for struggles over power and control: the subtle changes in our facial gestures, in our facial performances, and in the filters that we apply reflect a much larger politics of the face.
