4

Book of the Night

The Night of Conflict

( August 2025- October 2025, January-July 2026)

Artist Statement

The Book of the Night is the final chapter of a four-part series examining how digital tools are used to quash dissent and free speech.Shaped by experiences of shadow-banning, account compromise, and the targeted harassment of activist voices within contemporary digital platforms, this work considers how fascist tendencies no longer operate solely through overt violence, but through what might be described as techno-fascist silence: algorithmic suppression, automated moderation, and corporate surveillance presented as safety, neutrality, or the correction of misinformation.

As we move through the post-pandemic space where it has become common practice for large online social media platforms to silence dissent at the behest of its key stakeholders— we can see our first amendment rights rapidly dissolving when we speak truth to power. The work situates surveillance not as an external constraint, but as an ambient condition—embedded in platforms, credentials, and interfaces that govern visibility, legitimacy, and participation. Speech is not prohibited outright; it is de-prioritized, throttled, or rendered invisible. Control is exercised less through censorship than through moderation.

The Book of the Night examines how one’s digital identity has become continuous, data-driven, and difficult to escape. All of our knee jerk conversations and comments now collected forever on servers housed in remote data centers. We are tracked through our phones that are assigned unique IMEI codes that can be used to log our every location. We are monitored without warrants under the guise of “National Security.” Access to social, economic, and cultural life is increasingly mediated through phone numbers, email addresses, biometric verification, and persistent digital id. To step outside these systems is not an act of freedom, but a form of exile. Without digital credentials, one is pushed to the margins of society—present, yet unrecognized. This work revisits Aldous Huxley’s notion of the Noble Savage. In a world of near-total digital adoption, the possibility of living off the grid collapses under the weight of digital dependency. What once appeared as voluntary participation and convenience is now a necessity to participate in modern life.

Ultimately, The Book of the Night asks whether freedom can exist beneath a digital net that is always watching and sorting. When surveillance is continuous, speech is governed by automated systems without appeal, and dissent is silenced through content removal, civil liberties erode. This work lives in this erosion, interrogating who is allowed to speak, who is rendered invisible, and how power operates silently from the shadows of technology.

-Macaulay Woods, January 2026/ updated July 2026