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Latest revision as of 09:54, 17 November 2024
⤢ a directory that gathers, stacks and links practices that work with, through and beyond (digital) fashion […]
LATEST UPDATE 20.11.2024
[001]
What even is Fashion Technology
Individual
autonomous
A podcast discussing the latest news, innovations and trends shaping the future of fashion.
22.11.24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[070]
Myth Magazine
Collaboration
commercial
Fashion
Myth Magazine is a shapeshifting online publication, that will not be found on the news stands.
MythMagazine is a digital-first editorial journal, created with digital affordances at its core, rather than as a print adaptation. The magazine takes a screen-first approach to its fashion editorials, incorporating a variety of visual elements such as still, moving, looping, glitching and collaged imagery, as well as sound. This approach differs from the post-human aesthetics commonly seen in digital-first fashion practices.. ,
“Being online means the possibilities are endless. It makes the edit different too, because a page count is irrelevant, but there’s still a permanence and a relevance”
15 11 24
[037]
Notes on Phygitality
Collaboration
speculative
Phygital, Fashion, Techno-social
Published in Issue#6 of NXS Magazine ‘Phygital Fashioning’, ‘Notes on Phygitality’ documents an asynchronous dialogue held in the spring of 2022.
The conversation delves into the concept of "phygitality," blending physical and digital realms. They explore its implications, noting, "It’s about how you can interface between the physical and the digital." Discussions encompass the fusion's impact on human interaction voicing that we have more freedom to express ourselves. Ethical dimensions are scrutinized: "We need to be careful about what that [digital footprint] means." The dialogue reflects on art, privacy concerns, and the intricate interplay shaping future socio-technological landscapes.
01 05 24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Fashion, Capitalism
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
30 10 24
,
[035]
Fashion Knowledge Podcast
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Technology
Fashion Knowledge is a podcast about inclusive, sustainable, and digital fashion futures. Beata Wilczek, founder and director at Unfolding Strategies, a fashion consultancy and edu lab for fashion in Web3, hosts new and brave voices in fashion innovation, design, research, and education, to learn more about digital fashion and sustainability.
23 04 24
[061]
Gossamer Press
Individual
autonomous
Feminism, Crafts, Technology
Gossamer Press by Lejla Vala Verheus
Gossamer Press, a micro-publishing platform, intertwines female-driven textile crafts with digital realms, adopting annon-linear approach akin to navigating a web. Exploring concepts like 'Warp,' 'Weft,' and 'Gap,' it connects physical and digital realms, uncovering hidden narratives and challenging historical erasure, presenting a dynamic view of interconnected webs.
GP is founded by Lejla Vala Verheus and is part of an ongoing research on open-source methodologies in textile craft and the digital realm, drawing upon her background as a critical fashion practitioner and graphic designer. By rediscovering overlooked codes and relationships, questioning traditional publishing methods, and blending fashion with printed media, Lejla aims to create new narratives in the fashion realm.
05 09 24
[064]
A Rant About “Technology”
Individual
critical
Technology
In A Rant About Technology, Ursula K. Le Guin explores society's near-obsession with technology, suggesting that we often glorify new gadgets and tools at the expense of deeper human values such as creativity, compassion and wisdom. She argues that while technology can be helpful, we should question its role and avoid making it a substitute for meaningful, humane experiences. Le Guin advocates a balanced perspective, encouraging us to value technology without allowing it to define or control us.
““Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn't “hi,” isn’t necessarily '“low” in any meaningful sense.”
29 10 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22.11.24
[007]
Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture
Individual
critical
Cybernetics, Feminism
Zeros and Ones is an investigation of the intersection between women, feminism, machines and in particular, information technology. Arguing that the computer is rewriting the old conceptions of man and his world, it suggests that the telecoms revolution is also a sexual revolution which undermines the fundamental assumptions crucial to patriarchal culture. Historical, contemporary and future developments in telecommunications and in IT are interwoven with the past, present and future of feminism, women and sexual difference, and a wealth of connections, parallels and affinities between machines and women are uncovered as a result. Challenging the belief that man was ever in control of either his own agency, the planet, or his machines, this book argues it is seriously undermined by the new scientific paradigms emergent from theories of chaos, complexity and connectionism, all of which suggest that the old distinctions between man, woman, nature and technology need to be radically reassessed.
01 05 24
,
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[024]
Our Bodies, Online
Individual
social
Feminism, Body, Photography
What are the qualifications of being a feminist artist today? This is an impossible question, which is, in many ways, the point. One of the defining doctrines of third-wave feminism (or fourth-wave feminism, or postfeminism, or whatever you call our current moment) is its persistent unwillingness to be defined. Whether you make abstract photograms or stag films, label your work feminist, and it is.
“An emerging guard of young, female photographers has carved out a new brand of feminism
with a new set of definitions.”
01 05 24
,
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[022]
Pirate Care, a syllabus
Collective
critical
Care, Digital culture, Techno-social
Pirate Care is a research process - primarily based in the transnational European space - that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”, which in new and interesting ways are trying to intervene in one of the most important challenges of our time, that is, the ‘crisis of care’ in all its multiple and interconnected dimensions.
These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges. Often they act disobediently in expressed non-compliance with laws, regulations and executive orders that ciriminalise the duty of care by imposing exclusions along the lines of class, gender, race or territory. They are not shying risk of persecution in providing unconditional solidarity to those who are the most exploited, discriminated against and condemned to the status of disposable populations.
The Pirate Care Syllabus presents here for the first time is a tool for supporting and activating collective processes of learning from these practices.“We live in a world where captains get arrested for saving people’s lives on the sea; where a person downloading scientific articles faces 35 years in jail; where people risk charges for bringing contraceptives to those who otherwise couldn’t get them. Folks are getting in trouble for giving food to the poor, medicine to the sick, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless. And yet our heroines care and disobey. They are pirates.”
01 05 24
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
[003]
The Cell for Digital Discomfort (CfDD)
Collective
critical
Formed as part of the 2021/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, the Cell for Digital Discomfort (CfDD)—composed of Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha—are the guest editors of this special Prospections focus “Digital Discomfort,” a compilation of newly commissioned and archival resources such as texts, interviews, and videos that allow for a collective exploration of sensibilities around an affirmative repoliticization and redefinition of compu-relational practice.
22.11.24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[037]
Notes on Phygitality
Collaboration
speculative
Phygital, Fashion, Techno-social
Published in Issue#6 of NXS Magazine ‘Phygital Fashioning’, ‘Notes on Phygitality’ documents an asynchronous dialogue held in the spring of 2022.
The conversation delves into the concept of "phygitality," blending physical and digital realms. They explore its implications, noting, "It’s about how you can interface between the physical and the digital." Discussions encompass the fusion's impact on human interaction voicing that we have more freedom to express ourselves. Ethical dimensions are scrutinized: "We need to be careful about what that [digital footprint] means." The dialogue reflects on art, privacy concerns, and the intricate interplay shaping future socio-technological landscapes.
01 05 24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
22.11.24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[018]
Figuring Things out Together
Individual
critical
Agency, Techno-social
This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities‘ resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships.Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance ‘teamwork’, ‘the commons’, or ‘cooperativism’, are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.
“This publication derives from an enthusiasm for the various ways collective learning environments take shape. It grew out of a curiosity for the ways that such practices are shared across different localities, timelines, and experiences.”
05 06 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
,
[039]
The SSENSE of Authenticity
Individual
critical
Authorship, Digital culture
In "the ssense of authenticity" writer Nabi Williams explores the concept of authenticity in the digital age, particularly through analyzing the canadian fashion e-tailer ssense and its popular Instagram account. posting daily on the social media platform, ssense draws from contemporary culture through its use of language, image layout, and cultural references to create promotional content that exists on the thin line between “authentic meme” and marketing material. by investigating this account and social media’s impact on how authenticity is manufactured, communicated, and perceived, this thesis traces how the concept of authenticity has evolved and argues that we now live in a “post-authentic” world, where storytelling and the “authentically inauthentic” reign supreme in place of sincerity and reality.
“The reality is that “authenticity” holds no value. But then again, who wants to engage in reality?”
04 09 24
[065]
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Individual
critical
Authorship
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, proposed by Ursula K. Le Guin, suggests that storytelling is akin to a "carrier bag"—a container for diverse narratives rather than a linear progression of events. This theory emphasizes inclusivity and multiplicity in storytelling, advocating for narratives that encompass various voices and experiences rather than focusing solely on traditional heroic plots. By framing fiction as a space for collecting and sharing rather than imposing structure, Le Guin encourages a more holistic understanding of literature's role in shaping human experience.
While acclaimed for its radical rethinking of narrative structures, challenging traditional linear storytelling and instead presenting fiction as a collection of diverse, interconnected experiences, Le Guin's perspective is primarily driven by the importance of inclusivity and multiplicity of voices. It considers how narratives can be used to facilitate understanding of complex human experiences, rather than merely serving as vehicles for plot-driven heroics. It takes special note on the act of 'gathering' and is therefore often referred to by collectives and practitioners that focus on gathering tools, people, experiences and non-conformist ways of doing. By advocating this more holistic, and more inclusive approach to storytelling, Le Guin critiques dominant cultural narratives and opens up space for alternative forms of expression.
“A story is like a carrier bag; it holds the experience of many people, not just one.”
29 10 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[059]
Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544887/autotheory-as-feminist-practice-in-art-writing-and-criticism/
Individual
critical
Feminism, Authorship
In the 2010s, the term “autotheory” began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.
Fournier argues that the autotheoretical turn signals the tenuousness of illusory separations between art and life, theory and practice, work and the self—divisions long blurred by feminist artists and scholars. Autotheory challenges dominant approaches to philosophizing and theorizing while enabling new ways for artists and writers to reflect on their lives. She argues that Kraus's 1997 I Love Dick marked the emergence of a newly performative, post-memoir “I”; recasts Piper's 1971 performance work Food for the Spirit as autotheory; considers autotheory as critique; examines practices of citation in autotheoretical work, including Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts; and looks at the aesthetics and ethics of disclosure and exposure, exploring the nuanced feminist politics around autotheoretical practices and such movements as #MeToo. Fournier formulates autotheory as a reflexive movement, connecting thinking, making art, living, and theorizing.
“Autotheory—the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography—as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism.”
04 09 24
[005]
⤴
An Evening With: Donna Haraway, Bruno Clarke and Rosi Braidotti
07.12.23
22.11.24
[006]
Extending Horizons: The Praxis of Experimental Publishing in the Age of Digital Networks
Individual
critical
This dissertation is focused on the practices of experimental publishing that are intertwined with digital and networked technology, and borrow strategies derived from the context of arts and design. In order to build a model of interpretation of such practices, Lorusso defined a theoretical framework, made an overview of influential perspectives within the field, and carried out an investigation of the ‘communities of practice’ in which experimental publishing takes place. Lorusso analyzes a phenomenology of projects that highlight the characteristics of an experimental approach in each specific stage of the publishing process. Finally, I developed an online archive for the purpose of categorizing and connecting the different case studies. The main question addressed is:
22.11.24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
,
[019]
Syntax Magazine
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture, Publishing, Authorship
Syntax is an online magazine using the grammar of the internet. The editors letter of Syntax's first edition reads:
"Digital media promised us new modes of reading. Instead, we got sound bites and “which One Direction member should you date” quizzes. Scrolling online became an experiment in self-defense: we’re bombarded by paywalls and pop-up ads, lured by A/B tested headlines and microtrend pieces. [...] But no one writes how we read. In chat rooms, comment sections, forums, personal blogs. The video essay, the playlist, Tumblr collage—these forms are as familiar to us as the novel, film, and album. Their words would never reach the true citizens of the internet.."
And so, Syntax provides a honest reflection of what pre-capitalist internet.“So we go back to the blog. Repurpose the zine. We’re sending our reply using the grammar of the internet.”
01 05 24
[043]
A Reparative Approach to Publishing
Collaboration
Publishing
The article "A Reparative Approach to Publishing" discusses Constant, a collective focusing on open-source, community-driven publications. Their projects include various forms of "executable texts" like manuals and codes, emphasizing collaborative creation and iterative processes. Platforms like Books With An Attitude and Constant Verlag host these works under open licenses. The piece highlights the importance of trust, collective authorship, and dynamic, editable content, advocating for a publishing practice that embraces change, diversity, and community involvement over individual genius and static texts.
It is part of MARCH's long term inquiry, "Publishing As Protocol", which aims to explore the relationship between self-organizational models and technological sovereignty. It gathers existing and speculative examples from both institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.
“A reparative, intersectional, and feminist approach to publishing means a networked approach, set up for working best when it is cared for by one or many communities.”
08 07 24
[007]
Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture
Individual
critical
Zeros and Ones is an investigation of the intersection between women, feminism, machines and in particular, information technology. Arguing that the computer is rewriting the old conceptions of man and his world, it suggests that the telecoms revolution is also a sexual revolution which undermines the fundamental assumptions crucial to patriarchal culture. Historical, contemporary and future developments in telecommunications and in IT are interwoven with the past, present and future of feminism, women and sexual difference, and a wealth of connections, parallels and affinities between machines and women are uncovered as a result. Challenging the belief that man was ever in control of either his own agency, the planet, or his machines, this book argues it is seriously undermined by the new scientific paradigms emergent from theories of chaos, complexity and connectionism, all of which suggest that the old distinctions between man, woman, nature and technology need to be radically reassessed.
22.11.24
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Feminism, Cybernetics, Techno-social
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22 03 24
,
[071]
Memestrilism
Individual
critical
Feminism, Digital culture, Diaspora
Memestrilism is a term made up of "meme" and "minstrelsy" used to describe minstrel-like behaviours, trends and creations in digital spaces. Produced by artist Ama Ogwo as part of the first Feminist Internet Residency, the film critically examines how racism persists in the digital age, paralleling contemporary online representations of blackness with historical racist imagery. Using found footage from social media and 20th-century minstrel shows, Ogwo collapses time to reveal how the ventriloquism of blackness online mirrors and reinvents what minstrelsy looks like today.
The concept of Memestrilism offers a critical lens on the current online zeitgeist, particularly in fashion, by highlighting how cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping continue to manifest in digital spaces. In fashion, the commodification of black culture often intersects with the 'meme economy' of social media, where trends are amplified, decontextualised and stripped of their origins for mass consumption.
The digital landscape thrives on 'hypervisibility', where cultural markers are presented as bold statements, but often lack the necessary cultural nuance. Often Black cultural expressions - hairstyles, clothing styles, linguistic expressions and aesthetics - are showcased through influencers or memes that gain widespread appeal, often without reference to their roots. This parallels historical minstrelsy, where black identity was caricatured and exploited for entertainment. The digital age exacerbates this by enabling the rapid dissemination and monetisation of these trends, further blurring the line between homage and exploitation.
Ogwo's exploration of memestrilism not only critiques, but also reflects the larger conversations taking place in digital fashion spaces about authenticity, representation and the ethics of appropriation in a globalised, meme-driven culture.
20 11 24
[059]
Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544887/autotheory-as-feminist-practice-in-art-writing-and-criticism/
Individual
critical
Feminism, Authorship
In the 2010s, the term “autotheory” began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.
Fournier argues that the autotheoretical turn signals the tenuousness of illusory separations between art and life, theory and practice, work and the self—divisions long blurred by feminist artists and scholars. Autotheory challenges dominant approaches to philosophizing and theorizing while enabling new ways for artists and writers to reflect on their lives. She argues that Kraus's 1997 I Love Dick marked the emergence of a newly performative, post-memoir “I”; recasts Piper's 1971 performance work Food for the Spirit as autotheory; considers autotheory as critique; examines practices of citation in autotheoretical work, including Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts; and looks at the aesthetics and ethics of disclosure and exposure, exploring the nuanced feminist politics around autotheoretical practices and such movements as #MeToo. Fournier formulates autotheory as a reflexive movement, connecting thinking, making art, living, and theorizing.
“Autotheory—the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography—as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism.”
04 09 24
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Feminism, Cybernetics, Techno-social
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22 03 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[008]
⤴
Varia will open its doors for the Counter Cloud Gathering
20.12.23
22.11.24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
22.11.24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[011]
Our aesthetic categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting
Individual
philosophy
Aesthetics
The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture. They dominate the look of its art and commodities as well as our discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of the aesthetic categories that most people use to process the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism, treating them with the same seriousness philosophers have reserved for analysis of the beautiful and the sublime.
Ngai explores how each of these aesthetic categories expresses conflicting feelings that connect to the ways in which postmodern subjects work, exchange, and consume. As a style of performing that takes the form of affective labor, the zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and our sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to the circulation of discourse and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute's involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At the deepest level, Ngai argues, these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities.
Through readings of Adorno, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts ranging from Bob Perelman's poetry to Ed Ruscha's photography books to the situation comedy of Lucille Ball, Ngai shows how these everyday aesthetic categories also provide traction to classic problems in aesthetic theory. The zany, cute, and interesting are not postmodernity's only meaningful aesthetic categories, Ngai argues, but the ones best suited for grasping the radical transformation of aesthetic experience and discourse under its conditions.
24 04 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
,
[015]
Interdependence FM
Collaboration
speculative
Artificial Intelligence, Techno-social, Virtual reality
In an age where global events, technologies, and cultures are increasingly intertwined, the Interdependence FM podcast explores the intricate web of connections shaping our world. While the hosts talk to artists and experts in the field of AI (and beyond) and are mainly positive about the 21st century, it becomes clear that understanding the concept of interdependence has never been more crucial.
01 05 24
,
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Feminism, Cybernetics, Techno-social
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22 03 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[010]
Leonardo Dellanoce, Amal Khalaf, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Nanjala Nyabola, Renée Roukens, Arthur Steiner, Mi You
Vertical Atlas
Collaboration
social
Climate, Techno-social
How to navigate the rapidly changing digital geopolitics of the world today? How do we make sense of digital transformation and its many social, political, cultural, and environmental implications at different locations around the world?
Vertical Atlas brings together the insights of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, scientists and technologists from different backgrounds and places. From an investigation into the lithium mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to maps of the fiber-optic submarine cables in the Atlantic and the ride-hailing platforms of China.
Vertical Atlas is not a classic atlas that depicts the world in a uniform manner and it is not a simple collection of traditional maps. This book is a tool that enables comparisons, connections and contradictions between different and diverse visions, realities and worlds – through newly commissioned diagrams, interviews, essays and works of art by leading experts from around the world.
30 04 24
[010]
Amal Khalaf, Arthur Steiner, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Leonardo Dellanoce, Mi You, Nanjala Nyabola, Renée Roukens
Vertical Atlas
Collaboration
social
How to navigate the rapidly changing digital geopolitics of the world today? How do we make sense of digital transformation and its many social, political, cultural, and environmental implications at different locations around the world?
Vertical Atlas brings together the insights of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, scientists and technologists from different backgrounds and places. From an investigation into the lithium mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to maps of the fiber-optic submarine cables in the Atlantic and the ride-hailing platforms of China.
Vertical Atlas is not a classic atlas that depicts the world in a uniform manner and it is not a simple collection of traditional maps. This book is a tool that enables comparisons, connections and contradictions between different and diverse visions, realities and worlds – through newly commissioned diagrams, interviews, essays and works of art by leading experts from around the world.
22.11.24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[036]
GIRLSTACK
Individual
speculative
Feminism, Techno-social, Identity
image by siir bicer
Building on the ideas of Tiqqun’s 1999 anti-neoliberal treatise Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females and Bogna Konior’s work on the girl and the inhuman vis-a-vis the machinic, Quicho has developed a concept she calls the “Girlstack,” which, to borrow her words, models the “ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the girl’s natural habitat.” Quicho articulates how the ‘girl’ inhabits no one person, body, or gender. She is a technology of subjectivity composed of symbolic, consumer, and inhuman elements and might be our only way out of the platform trap. Quicho's reformulation of 'the stack' was first published as an essay on Wired and expanded at BODYSTACK and Creamcake 3HD.
Quicho’s girl-stack is a speculative prototype models themany dimensions of the girl’s natural online habitat. To be clear: Quicho does not speak of actual girls or the experience of lived girlhood, but a socially constructed ideation of the girl. So, the girl as a vehicle for selling product, the girl as a tool for manipulating entrenched power, the girl as living currency, and the girl as desiring machine. The model is imperative for understanding the environment that produces the ‘girl as condition’.
30 04 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[011]
Our aesthetic categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting
Individual
philosophy
The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture. They dominate the look of its art and commodities as well as our discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of the aesthetic categories that most people use to process the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism, treating them with the same seriousness philosophers have reserved for analysis of the beautiful and the sublime.
Ngai explores how each of these aesthetic categories expresses conflicting feelings that connect to the ways in which postmodern subjects work, exchange, and consume. As a style of performing that takes the form of affective labor, the zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and our sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to the circulation of discourse and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute's involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At the deepest level, Ngai argues, these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities.
Through readings of Adorno, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts ranging from Bob Perelman's poetry to Ed Ruscha's photography books to the situation comedy of Lucille Ball, Ngai shows how these everyday aesthetic categories also provide traction to classic problems in aesthetic theory. The zany, cute, and interesting are not postmodernity's only meaningful aesthetic categories, Ngai argues, but the ones best suited for grasping the radical transformation of aesthetic experience and discourse under its conditions.22.11.24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[044]
Transactional Aesthetics
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Aesthetics
da Falck Øien explores the emotional relationships humans have with their garments and how acquisition methods influence these relationships. The research, conducted from 2017 to 2021, involves ethnographic studies, collaboration with a fashion label, public engagement through a physical space, and the creation of publications and products. Øien aims to address the environmental impact of the fashion industry by rethinking resource use and consumer behavior, emphasizing fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon beyond mere clothing items.
04 09 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[012]
Mission Accomplished: Belanciege
Collaboration
politics
Trafó Gallery, photo by Dávid Biró
Hito Steyerl "Mission Accomplished: BELANCIEGE" is part of the exhibition "… of bread, wine, cars, security and peace". The point of departure for the three-channel video installation is the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and how this historical event paved the way for commodification and privatization. The artists turn to the field of fashion, using the luxury brand Balenciaga as an example to reflect on political and cultural changes in the period of the last thirty years. The video installation MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE presented at Trafó Gallery reveals similar ’invasions’ of history and emphasizes their cyclical nature by turning towards the processes of economic and political realignment that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and by featuring examples that target our hyper-contemporary world armed with trend analysis, data mining, political advertising and audience targeting.
The video installation is co-created by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl and Miloš Trakilović and is based on their lecture in 2019 at n.b.k. - Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Almost 30 years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lecture reflects on post-1989 transformations and political rearrangements in the former Soviet territories, sheds light on the interconnections between culture and populism, and examines in a broader context the mechanisms of oligarchic-capitalist culture that emerged during the 'privatisation' of the former Eastern bloc.
22.11.24
[040]
Scroll, Skim, Stare
Individual
critical
Authorship, Critique
This essay critiques the static nature of artists' websites, proposing that they could be more dynamic and innovative. Gat argues for these sites to function as online exhibition spaces, offering unique and creative ways to present and control art, enhancing the digital art experience.
Orit Gat’s essay “Scroll, Skim, Stare” in *The White Review* explores the evolving role of artists' websites in the contemporary digital landscape. Gat argues that while the internet has transformed art consumption, the design of artists' websites often remains static and uninspired. She suggests that these sites could be more dynamic, serving as online exhibition spaces that challenge the traditional gallery format. Gat emphasizes the potential for artists to leverage their websites to present and control their work uniquely and creatively, thus reshaping the visual culture of the internet.
03 07 24
[051]
Towards A Minor Tech (Peer-reviewed newspaper)
Collaboration
critical
Digital culture, Techno-social, Critique
Following a process of open exchanges and a three-day research workshop in London, at London South Bank University and King’s College, London, this publication brings together researchers who address the problems of technological scale, thinking through the potentials of 'the minor'; or what we are referring to as minor (or minority) tech – small tech that operates at human scale (more peer to peer than server-client) and stutters in its expression and application. As Marloes de Valk puts it in the Damaged Earth Catalog: “Small technology, smallnet and smolnet are associated with communities using alternative network infrastructures, delinking from the commercial Internet.” As such, the publication sets out to question the universal ideals of technology and its problems of scale, extending it to follow the three main characteristics identified in Deleuze and Guattari's essay (Toward a Minor Literature), namely deterritorialization, political immediacy, and collective value.
“we're exploring how technological scale sets conditions for relations, feelings, democratic processes, and infrastructures.”
26 08 24
,
[001]
What even is Fashion Technology
Individual
autonomous
Fashion, Technology
A podcast discussing the latest news, innovations and trends shaping the future of fashion.
23 04 24
[044]
Transactional Aesthetics
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Aesthetics
da Falck Øien explores the emotional relationships humans have with their garments and how acquisition methods influence these relationships. The research, conducted from 2017 to 2021, involves ethnographic studies, collaboration with a fashion label, public engagement through a physical space, and the creation of publications and products. Øien aims to address the environmental impact of the fashion industry by rethinking resource use and consumer behavior, emphasizing fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon beyond mere clothing items.
04 09 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
22.11.24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[006]
Extending Horizons: The Praxis of Experimental Publishing in the Age of Digital Networks
Individual
critical
Publishing, Network(s), Community
This dissertation is focused on the practices of experimental publishing that are intertwined with digital and networked technology, and borrow strategies derived from the context of arts and design. In order to build a model of interpretation of such practices, Lorusso defined a theoretical framework, made an overview of influential perspectives within the field, and carried out an investigation of the ‘communities of practice’ in which experimental publishing takes place. Lorusso analyzes a phenomenology of projects that highlight the characteristics of an experimental approach in each specific stage of the publishing process. Finally, I developed an online archive for the purpose of categorizing and connecting the different case studies. The main question addressed is:
05 06 24
,
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
,
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
22.11.24
[058]
Whole Earth Index
Collaboration
social
Agency
Here lies a nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1968 and 2002. They are made available here for scholarship, education, and research purposes. The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, “do it yourself,” and holism, featuring the slogan “access to tools.”
Whole Earth published a number of singular publications throughout its run focused on topical themes, or containing content from aligned organizations. Often these volumes reprinted articles from prior Whole Earth perodical journals, supplemented with new content. And, while the entire archive is insightful and lives up to its “access to tools, ideas, and practices” byline, side projects like 'The Whole Earth Software Catalog' deserve special attention. Originally proposed by John Brockman as a magazine which “would do for computing what the original had done for the counterculture: identify and recommend the best tools as they emerged”, it seems to have been to ahead of its time. The first issue was released in the Fall of 1984. The Whole Earth Software Catalog was a business failure, however, and was only published twice, with only three of the Whole Earth Software Review supplements published. If we were to position this publication in the here and now, it would most likely belong to the niche digital networks that are sprouting from spaces such as are.na and the handmade web.
“Soft Tech is a term we’ve used and defended since the late sixties. Soft signifies that something is alive, resilient, adaptive, maybe even lovable.”
04 09 24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
Authorship, Agency
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
01 05 24
,
[035]
Fashion Knowledge Podcast
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Technology
Fashion Knowledge is a podcast about inclusive, sustainable, and digital fashion futures. Beata Wilczek, founder and director at Unfolding Strategies, a fashion consultancy and edu lab for fashion in Web3, hosts new and brave voices in fashion innovation, design, research, and education, to learn more about digital fashion and sustainability.
23 04 24
[061]
Gossamer Press
Individual
autonomous
Feminism, Crafts, Technology
Gossamer Press by Lejla Vala Verheus
Gossamer Press, a micro-publishing platform, intertwines female-driven textile crafts with digital realms, adopting annon-linear approach akin to navigating a web. Exploring concepts like 'Warp,' 'Weft,' and 'Gap,' it connects physical and digital realms, uncovering hidden narratives and challenging historical erasure, presenting a dynamic view of interconnected webs.
GP is founded by Lejla Vala Verheus and is part of an ongoing research on open-source methodologies in textile craft and the digital realm, drawing upon her background as a critical fashion practitioner and graphic designer. By rediscovering overlooked codes and relationships, questioning traditional publishing methods, and blending fashion with printed media, Lejla aims to create new narratives in the fashion realm.
05 09 24
[001]
What even is Fashion Technology
Individual
autonomous
Fashion, Technology
A podcast discussing the latest news, innovations and trends shaping the future of fashion.
23 04 24
[064]
A Rant About “Technology”
Individual
critical
Technology
In A Rant About Technology, Ursula K. Le Guin explores society's near-obsession with technology, suggesting that we often glorify new gadgets and tools at the expense of deeper human values such as creativity, compassion and wisdom. She argues that while technology can be helpful, we should question its role and avoid making it a substitute for meaningful, humane experiences. Le Guin advocates a balanced perspective, encouraging us to value technology without allowing it to define or control us.
““Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn't “hi,” isn’t necessarily '“low” in any meaningful sense.”
29 10 24
[015]
Interdependence FM
Collaboration
speculative
In an age where global events, technologies, and cultures are increasingly intertwined, the Interdependence FM podcast explores the intricate web of connections shaping our world. While the hosts talk to artists and experts in the field of AI (and beyond) and are mainly positive about the 21st century, it becomes clear that understanding the concept of interdependence has never been more crucial.
22.11.24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
,
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[022]
Pirate Care, a syllabus
Collective
critical
Care, Digital culture, Techno-social
Pirate Care is a research process - primarily based in the transnational European space - that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”, which in new and interesting ways are trying to intervene in one of the most important challenges of our time, that is, the ‘crisis of care’ in all its multiple and interconnected dimensions.
These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges. Often they act disobediently in expressed non-compliance with laws, regulations and executive orders that ciriminalise the duty of care by imposing exclusions along the lines of class, gender, race or territory. They are not shying risk of persecution in providing unconditional solidarity to those who are the most exploited, discriminated against and condemned to the status of disposable populations.
The Pirate Care Syllabus presents here for the first time is a tool for supporting and activating collective processes of learning from these practices.“We live in a world where captains get arrested for saving people’s lives on the sea; where a person downloading scientific articles faces 35 years in jail; where people risk charges for bringing contraceptives to those who otherwise couldn’t get them. Folks are getting in trouble for giving food to the poor, medicine to the sick, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless. And yet our heroines care and disobey. They are pirates.”
01 05 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
,
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
[016]
⤴
ArtBase Anthologies in conversation with Auriea Harvey
03.04.24
22.11.24
[017]
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies
Individual
pedagogy
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies presents the reader with a variety of digital methodologies to help build skills in searching for, analyzing, and discussing vintage design, photography, and writing on fashion, as well as historic and ethnographic dress and textile objects themselves. Each chapter focuses upon a different method, problem, or research site, including:
- Maximalism and mixed-methods approaches to research - Searching large databases effectively - Pattern recognition and visual searching. - Critical reading, use, and citation of social media texts - Digital ethnography and shopping as research - Data visualization and mapping - Images in the public domain
From advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students working on research projects to veteran professionals in fashion and textile history and beyond, everyone can benefit from a diverse set of fresh approaches to conducting and disseminating research. In the current age of instant gratification, with users snapping and posting images from runway shows long before the clothes will ever appear instores, the world of fashion is increasingly digital and fast-paced. Research on fashion is, too. Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies will help you keep up in this rapidly changing world.22.11.24
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
Fashion, New Media, Language
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
23 04 24
[044]
Transactional Aesthetics
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Aesthetics
da Falck Øien explores the emotional relationships humans have with their garments and how acquisition methods influence these relationships. The research, conducted from 2017 to 2021, involves ethnographic studies, collaboration with a fashion label, public engagement through a physical space, and the creation of publications and products. Øien aims to address the environmental impact of the fashion industry by rethinking resource use and consumer behavior, emphasizing fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon beyond mere clothing items.
04 09 24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Fashion, Capitalism
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
30 10 24
[070]
Myth Magazine
Collaboration
commercial
Fashion
Myth Magazine is a shapeshifting online publication, that will not be found on the news stands.
MythMagazine is a digital-first editorial journal, created with digital affordances at its core, rather than as a print adaptation. The magazine takes a screen-first approach to its fashion editorials, incorporating a variety of visual elements such as still, moving, looping, glitching and collaged imagery, as well as sound. This approach differs from the post-human aesthetics commonly seen in digital-first fashion practices.. ,
“Being online means the possibilities are endless. It makes the edit different too, because a page count is irrelevant, but there’s still a permanence and a relevance”
15 11 24
[018]
Figuring Things out Together
Individual
critical
This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities‘ resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships.Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance ‘teamwork’, ‘the commons’, or ‘cooperativism’, are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.
“This publication derives from an enthusiasm for the various ways collective learning environments take shape. It grew out of a curiosity for the ways that such practices are shared across different localities, timelines, and experiences.”
22.11.24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
Authorship, Agency
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
01 05 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[068]
ŠUM#22 Angel Mode
Collaboration
philosophy
Agency, Post-human, Techno-social
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
The journal ŠUM#22 – Angel Mode explores themes in contemporary art, theory, and speculative fiction. Key articles include topics such as online identities, accelerationist philosophy, the concept of "angelic sexuality," and reinterpretations of faith and love in the digital age. Contributors like Bogna Konior and Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix discuss theoretical frameworks connecting cyberculture and philosophy. The issue is edited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha.
The Angel Mode Issue explores the intersection of online aesthetics and identities, focusing on the "angel" as a symbol for transcendent, hyper-feminine personas. This ties into ongoing online discourse of femininity, vulnerability, and performance, often communicated through ethereal-esque aesthetics, cyberpunk references, and soft romanticism style write-ups. The "angel" metaphor also critiques our roles in cybernetic systems, where humans act as conduits for larger external forces. Embracing this mode reflects a shift from individuality toward alignment with overarching digital and 'transcendental' patterns.
“As human agency erodes, faced with singularity and extinction, the figure of “the girl (on the internet)” is on the rise. In the new issue of Šum we explore how this surrender of agency mediates (human) history itself.”
15 11 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
,
[015]
Interdependence FM
Collaboration
speculative
Artificial Intelligence, Techno-social, Virtual reality
In an age where global events, technologies, and cultures are increasingly intertwined, the Interdependence FM podcast explores the intricate web of connections shaping our world. While the hosts talk to artists and experts in the field of AI (and beyond) and are mainly positive about the 21st century, it becomes clear that understanding the concept of interdependence has never been more crucial.
01 05 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[010]
Leonardo Dellanoce, Amal Khalaf, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Nanjala Nyabola, Renée Roukens, Arthur Steiner, Mi You
Vertical Atlas
Collaboration
social
Climate, Techno-social
How to navigate the rapidly changing digital geopolitics of the world today? How do we make sense of digital transformation and its many social, political, cultural, and environmental implications at different locations around the world?
Vertical Atlas brings together the insights of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, scientists and technologists from different backgrounds and places. From an investigation into the lithium mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to maps of the fiber-optic submarine cables in the Atlantic and the ride-hailing platforms of China.
Vertical Atlas is not a classic atlas that depicts the world in a uniform manner and it is not a simple collection of traditional maps. This book is a tool that enables comparisons, connections and contradictions between different and diverse visions, realities and worlds – through newly commissioned diagrams, interviews, essays and works of art by leading experts from around the world.
30 04 24
[022]
Pirate Care, a syllabus
Collective
critical
Care, Digital culture, Techno-social
Pirate Care is a research process - primarily based in the transnational European space - that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”, which in new and interesting ways are trying to intervene in one of the most important challenges of our time, that is, the ‘crisis of care’ in all its multiple and interconnected dimensions.
These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges. Often they act disobediently in expressed non-compliance with laws, regulations and executive orders that ciriminalise the duty of care by imposing exclusions along the lines of class, gender, race or territory. They are not shying risk of persecution in providing unconditional solidarity to those who are the most exploited, discriminated against and condemned to the status of disposable populations.
The Pirate Care Syllabus presents here for the first time is a tool for supporting and activating collective processes of learning from these practices.“We live in a world where captains get arrested for saving people’s lives on the sea; where a person downloading scientific articles faces 35 years in jail; where people risk charges for bringing contraceptives to those who otherwise couldn’t get them. Folks are getting in trouble for giving food to the poor, medicine to the sick, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless. And yet our heroines care and disobey. They are pirates.”
01 05 24
[019]
Syntax Magazine
Collaboration
experimental
Syntax is an online magazine using the grammar of the internet. The editors letter of Syntax's first edition reads:
"Digital media promised us new modes of reading. Instead, we got sound bites and “which One Direction member should you date” quizzes. Scrolling online became an experiment in self-defense: we’re bombarded by paywalls and pop-up ads, lured by A/B tested headlines and microtrend pieces. [...] But no one writes how we read. In chat rooms, comment sections, forums, personal blogs. The video essay, the playlist, Tumblr collage—these forms are as familiar to us as the novel, film, and album. Their words would never reach the true citizens of the internet.."
And so, Syntax provides a honest reflection of what pre-capitalist internet.“So we go back to the blog. Repurpose the zine. We’re sending our reply using the grammar of the internet.”
22.11.24
[059]
Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544887/autotheory-as-feminist-practice-in-art-writing-and-criticism/
Individual
critical
Feminism, Authorship
In the 2010s, the term “autotheory” began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.
Fournier argues that the autotheoretical turn signals the tenuousness of illusory separations between art and life, theory and practice, work and the self—divisions long blurred by feminist artists and scholars. Autotheory challenges dominant approaches to philosophizing and theorizing while enabling new ways for artists and writers to reflect on their lives. She argues that Kraus's 1997 I Love Dick marked the emergence of a newly performative, post-memoir “I”; recasts Piper's 1971 performance work Food for the Spirit as autotheory; considers autotheory as critique; examines practices of citation in autotheoretical work, including Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts; and looks at the aesthetics and ethics of disclosure and exposure, exploring the nuanced feminist politics around autotheoretical practices and such movements as #MeToo. Fournier formulates autotheory as a reflexive movement, connecting thinking, making art, living, and theorizing.
“Autotheory—the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography—as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism.”
04 09 24
[039]
The SSENSE of Authenticity
Individual
critical
Authorship, Digital culture
In "the ssense of authenticity" writer Nabi Williams explores the concept of authenticity in the digital age, particularly through analyzing the canadian fashion e-tailer ssense and its popular Instagram account. posting daily on the social media platform, ssense draws from contemporary culture through its use of language, image layout, and cultural references to create promotional content that exists on the thin line between “authentic meme” and marketing material. by investigating this account and social media’s impact on how authenticity is manufactured, communicated, and perceived, this thesis traces how the concept of authenticity has evolved and argues that we now live in a “post-authentic” world, where storytelling and the “authentically inauthentic” reign supreme in place of sincerity and reality.
“The reality is that “authenticity” holds no value. But then again, who wants to engage in reality?”
04 09 24
[065]
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Individual
critical
Authorship
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, proposed by Ursula K. Le Guin, suggests that storytelling is akin to a "carrier bag"—a container for diverse narratives rather than a linear progression of events. This theory emphasizes inclusivity and multiplicity in storytelling, advocating for narratives that encompass various voices and experiences rather than focusing solely on traditional heroic plots. By framing fiction as a space for collecting and sharing rather than imposing structure, Le Guin encourages a more holistic understanding of literature's role in shaping human experience.
While acclaimed for its radical rethinking of narrative structures, challenging traditional linear storytelling and instead presenting fiction as a collection of diverse, interconnected experiences, Le Guin's perspective is primarily driven by the importance of inclusivity and multiplicity of voices. It considers how narratives can be used to facilitate understanding of complex human experiences, rather than merely serving as vehicles for plot-driven heroics. It takes special note on the act of 'gathering' and is therefore often referred to by collectives and practitioners that focus on gathering tools, people, experiences and non-conformist ways of doing. By advocating this more holistic, and more inclusive approach to storytelling, Le Guin critiques dominant cultural narratives and opens up space for alternative forms of expression.
“A story is like a carrier bag; it holds the experience of many people, not just one.”
29 10 24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
Authorship, Agency
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
01 05 24
,
[071]
Memestrilism
Individual
critical
Feminism, Digital culture, Diaspora
Memestrilism is a term made up of "meme" and "minstrelsy" used to describe minstrel-like behaviours, trends and creations in digital spaces. Produced by artist Ama Ogwo as part of the first Feminist Internet Residency, the film critically examines how racism persists in the digital age, paralleling contemporary online representations of blackness with historical racist imagery. Using found footage from social media and 20th-century minstrel shows, Ogwo collapses time to reveal how the ventriloquism of blackness online mirrors and reinvents what minstrelsy looks like today.
The concept of Memestrilism offers a critical lens on the current online zeitgeist, particularly in fashion, by highlighting how cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping continue to manifest in digital spaces. In fashion, the commodification of black culture often intersects with the 'meme economy' of social media, where trends are amplified, decontextualised and stripped of their origins for mass consumption.
The digital landscape thrives on 'hypervisibility', where cultural markers are presented as bold statements, but often lack the necessary cultural nuance. Often Black cultural expressions - hairstyles, clothing styles, linguistic expressions and aesthetics - are showcased through influencers or memes that gain widespread appeal, often without reference to their roots. This parallels historical minstrelsy, where black identity was caricatured and exploited for entertainment. The digital age exacerbates this by enabling the rapid dissemination and monetisation of these trends, further blurring the line between homage and exploitation.
Ogwo's exploration of memestrilism not only critiques, but also reflects the larger conversations taking place in digital fashion spaces about authenticity, representation and the ethics of appropriation in a globalised, meme-driven culture.
20 11 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[051]
Towards A Minor Tech (Peer-reviewed newspaper)
Collaboration
critical
Digital culture, Techno-social, Critique
Following a process of open exchanges and a three-day research workshop in London, at London South Bank University and King’s College, London, this publication brings together researchers who address the problems of technological scale, thinking through the potentials of 'the minor'; or what we are referring to as minor (or minority) tech – small tech that operates at human scale (more peer to peer than server-client) and stutters in its expression and application. As Marloes de Valk puts it in the Damaged Earth Catalog: “Small technology, smallnet and smolnet are associated with communities using alternative network infrastructures, delinking from the commercial Internet.” As such, the publication sets out to question the universal ideals of technology and its problems of scale, extending it to follow the three main characteristics identified in Deleuze and Guattari's essay (Toward a Minor Literature), namely deterritorialization, political immediacy, and collective value.
“we're exploring how technological scale sets conditions for relations, feelings, democratic processes, and infrastructures.”
26 08 24
,
[043]
A Reparative Approach to Publishing
Collaboration
Publishing
The article "A Reparative Approach to Publishing" discusses Constant, a collective focusing on open-source, community-driven publications. Their projects include various forms of "executable texts" like manuals and codes, emphasizing collaborative creation and iterative processes. Platforms like Books With An Attitude and Constant Verlag host these works under open licenses. The piece highlights the importance of trust, collective authorship, and dynamic, editable content, advocating for a publishing practice that embraces change, diversity, and community involvement over individual genius and static texts.
It is part of MARCH's long term inquiry, "Publishing As Protocol", which aims to explore the relationship between self-organizational models and technological sovereignty. It gathers existing and speculative examples from both institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.
“A reparative, intersectional, and feminist approach to publishing means a networked approach, set up for working best when it is cared for by one or many communities.”
08 07 24
[006]
Extending Horizons: The Praxis of Experimental Publishing in the Age of Digital Networks
Individual
critical
Publishing, Network(s), Community
This dissertation is focused on the practices of experimental publishing that are intertwined with digital and networked technology, and borrow strategies derived from the context of arts and design. In order to build a model of interpretation of such practices, Lorusso defined a theoretical framework, made an overview of influential perspectives within the field, and carried out an investigation of the ‘communities of practice’ in which experimental publishing takes place. Lorusso analyzes a phenomenology of projects that highlight the characteristics of an experimental approach in each specific stage of the publishing process. Finally, I developed an online archive for the purpose of categorizing and connecting the different case studies. The main question addressed is:
05 06 24
[020]
⤴
Softer Digital Futures: London Edition
16.03.24
22.11.24
[021]
Networked Worlds
Collaboration
experimental
‘Networked Worlds’ focuses on worlding as a creative strategy in the early 21st century. As a response to the multiple crises of our time – a crisis of reality, agency and traditional sensemaking structures – worlding is an emergent creative practice of re-imagining and prototyping alternative futures.
Hyper aware of the rules and power structures of dominant narratives and infrastructures, worlding has become a vital strategy for artists and creatives to experiment with alternative futures and render the conditions of the present visible in order to change them. Worlding as such is different from worldbuilding. While the latter has been established by writers, directors, set designers in creating believable imaginary worlds (think Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or the Marvel Universe), worlding signifies the continuous, ever-evolving, collaborative effort of making worlds emerge rather than creating a closed universe by an individual master creator.
Networked Worlds is the third part of Networked Culture, a series of publications that explore the effects of networked technologies on the creative process. The previous two memos of the series are Networked Counterculture (2023) and Networked Reality (2023).“Worldbuilding is a means to resist complacency and categorization; an affirmation that one can draw new borders (or ends) and declare new logics for life.”
22.11.24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[071]
Memestrilism
Individual
critical
Feminism, Digital culture, Diaspora
Memestrilism is a term made up of "meme" and "minstrelsy" used to describe minstrel-like behaviours, trends and creations in digital spaces. Produced by artist Ama Ogwo as part of the first Feminist Internet Residency, the film critically examines how racism persists in the digital age, paralleling contemporary online representations of blackness with historical racist imagery. Using found footage from social media and 20th-century minstrel shows, Ogwo collapses time to reveal how the ventriloquism of blackness online mirrors and reinvents what minstrelsy looks like today.
The concept of Memestrilism offers a critical lens on the current online zeitgeist, particularly in fashion, by highlighting how cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping continue to manifest in digital spaces. In fashion, the commodification of black culture often intersects with the 'meme economy' of social media, where trends are amplified, decontextualised and stripped of their origins for mass consumption.
The digital landscape thrives on 'hypervisibility', where cultural markers are presented as bold statements, but often lack the necessary cultural nuance. Often Black cultural expressions - hairstyles, clothing styles, linguistic expressions and aesthetics - are showcased through influencers or memes that gain widespread appeal, often without reference to their roots. This parallels historical minstrelsy, where black identity was caricatured and exploited for entertainment. The digital age exacerbates this by enabling the rapid dissemination and monetisation of these trends, further blurring the line between homage and exploitation.
Ogwo's exploration of memestrilism not only critiques, but also reflects the larger conversations taking place in digital fashion spaces about authenticity, representation and the ethics of appropriation in a globalised, meme-driven culture.
20 11 24
[022]
Pirate Care, a syllabus
Collective
critical
Pirate Care is a research process - primarily based in the transnational European space - that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”, which in new and interesting ways are trying to intervene in one of the most important challenges of our time, that is, the ‘crisis of care’ in all its multiple and interconnected dimensions.
These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges. Often they act disobediently in expressed non-compliance with laws, regulations and executive orders that ciriminalise the duty of care by imposing exclusions along the lines of class, gender, race or territory. They are not shying risk of persecution in providing unconditional solidarity to those who are the most exploited, discriminated against and condemned to the status of disposable populations.
The Pirate Care Syllabus presents here for the first time is a tool for supporting and activating collective processes of learning from these practices.“We live in a world where captains get arrested for saving people’s lives on the sea; where a person downloading scientific articles faces 35 years in jail; where people risk charges for bringing contraceptives to those who otherwise couldn’t get them. Folks are getting in trouble for giving food to the poor, medicine to the sick, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless. And yet our heroines care and disobey. They are pirates.”
22.11.24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
,
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Feminism, Cybernetics, Techno-social
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22 03 24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[015]
Interdependence FM
Collaboration
speculative
Artificial Intelligence, Techno-social, Virtual reality
In an age where global events, technologies, and cultures are increasingly intertwined, the Interdependence FM podcast explores the intricate web of connections shaping our world. While the hosts talk to artists and experts in the field of AI (and beyond) and are mainly positive about the 21st century, it becomes clear that understanding the concept of interdependence has never been more crucial.
01 05 24
[023]
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information
Individual
politics
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 - Cover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 Backcover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
The Superstorm is a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which culminated in the tempestuous Western political visual culture of today. Within this vortex, complex and unexpected events occur, where politics is mixed with entertainment and communication is hyper-mediated through algorithms, memes and alternative realities.
As politicians refine marketing techniques applied to the electorate and online users become political trendsetters, designers face an impasse. But not all is lost in the Superstorm. Surprisingly, it might precisely be this uncertain future that holds the key for designers to question and reformulate their role and purpose within the political sphere.
In her first book Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, Noemi Biasetton traces the development of the Superstorm from the 1960s to the present and proposes new coordinates that designers may consider on in order to, eventually, face its relentless evolution.22.11.24
[056]
Screen Walks
Collaboration
experimental
New Media, Visual culture
Screen Walks < website design by UNSTATED, Leonardo Angelucci >
In Screen Walks, a series of live-streamed explorations of digital spaces, selected artists and researchers investigate artistic strategies taking place online. The project gives an insight into practices using the screen as a medium. Artists, curators and researchers are invited to perform live-streamed explorations of the digital spaces where their core practice takes place. Every Screen Walk is different, as the guest artists of the programme share their screen and walk the viewers through their work, as a desktop performance of sorts. From re-contextualising imagery found on online marketplaces and uncovering data brokers’ invisible circulation of images to analysing in-game photography and the social, political and economic implications of games – Screen Walks examines various approaches, offers a behind-the-scenes look at artists' work and uncovers new, current and forgotten digital spaces.
Screen Walks is a collaborative project by Fotomuseum Winterthur and The Photographers' Gallery, investigating the changing role of the photographic image in its networked and digital forms.
“Fostering cultural exchange and institutional collaboration, Screen Walks aims to engage with discourses and practices generated by a wide range of practitioners. All live-streamed events are freely accessible, regularly archived and openly.”
04 09 24
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Fashion, Language, New Media
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
10 10 24
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
Fashion, New Media, Language
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
23 04 24
,
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
[056]
Screen Walks
Collaboration
experimental
New Media, Visual culture
Screen Walks < website design by UNSTATED, Leonardo Angelucci >
In Screen Walks, a series of live-streamed explorations of digital spaces, selected artists and researchers investigate artistic strategies taking place online. The project gives an insight into practices using the screen as a medium. Artists, curators and researchers are invited to perform live-streamed explorations of the digital spaces where their core practice takes place. Every Screen Walk is different, as the guest artists of the programme share their screen and walk the viewers through their work, as a desktop performance of sorts. From re-contextualising imagery found on online marketplaces and uncovering data brokers’ invisible circulation of images to analysing in-game photography and the social, political and economic implications of games – Screen Walks examines various approaches, offers a behind-the-scenes look at artists' work and uncovers new, current and forgotten digital spaces.
Screen Walks is a collaborative project by Fotomuseum Winterthur and The Photographers' Gallery, investigating the changing role of the photographic image in its networked and digital forms.
“Fostering cultural exchange and institutional collaboration, Screen Walks aims to engage with discourses and practices generated by a wide range of practitioners. All live-streamed events are freely accessible, regularly archived and openly.”
04 09 24
[024]
Our Bodies, Online
Individual
social
What are the qualifications of being a feminist artist today? This is an impossible question, which is, in many ways, the point. One of the defining doctrines of third-wave feminism (or fourth-wave feminism, or postfeminism, or whatever you call our current moment) is its persistent unwillingness to be defined. Whether you make abstract photograms or stag films, label your work feminist, and it is.
“An emerging guard of young, female photographers has carved out a new brand of feminism
with a new set of definitions.”
22.11.24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[007]
Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture
Individual
critical
Cybernetics, Feminism
Zeros and Ones is an investigation of the intersection between women, feminism, machines and in particular, information technology. Arguing that the computer is rewriting the old conceptions of man and his world, it suggests that the telecoms revolution is also a sexual revolution which undermines the fundamental assumptions crucial to patriarchal culture. Historical, contemporary and future developments in telecommunications and in IT are interwoven with the past, present and future of feminism, women and sexual difference, and a wealth of connections, parallels and affinities between machines and women are uncovered as a result. Challenging the belief that man was ever in control of either his own agency, the planet, or his machines, this book argues it is seriously undermined by the new scientific paradigms emergent from theories of chaos, complexity and connectionism, all of which suggest that the old distinctions between man, woman, nature and technology need to be radically reassessed.
01 05 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
[025]
⤴
HTTPoetics Showcase
13.04.24
22.11.24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
22.11.24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[044]
Transactional Aesthetics
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Aesthetics
da Falck Øien explores the emotional relationships humans have with their garments and how acquisition methods influence these relationships. The research, conducted from 2017 to 2021, involves ethnographic studies, collaboration with a fashion label, public engagement through a physical space, and the creation of publications and products. Øien aims to address the environmental impact of the fashion industry by rethinking resource use and consumer behavior, emphasizing fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon beyond mere clothing items.
04 09 24
,
[035]
Fashion Knowledge Podcast
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Technology
Fashion Knowledge is a podcast about inclusive, sustainable, and digital fashion futures. Beata Wilczek, founder and director at Unfolding Strategies, a fashion consultancy and edu lab for fashion in Web3, hosts new and brave voices in fashion innovation, design, research, and education, to learn more about digital fashion and sustainability.
23 04 24
[070]
Myth Magazine
Collaboration
commercial
Fashion
Myth Magazine is a shapeshifting online publication, that will not be found on the news stands.
MythMagazine is a digital-first editorial journal, created with digital affordances at its core, rather than as a print adaptation. The magazine takes a screen-first approach to its fashion editorials, incorporating a variety of visual elements such as still, moving, looping, glitching and collaged imagery, as well as sound. This approach differs from the post-human aesthetics commonly seen in digital-first fashion practices.. ,
“Being online means the possibilities are endless. It makes the edit different too, because a page count is irrelevant, but there’s still a permanence and a relevance”
15 11 24
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
Fashion, New Media, Language
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
23 04 24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Fashion, Capitalism
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
30 10 24
,
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[036]
GIRLSTACK
Individual
speculative
Feminism, Techno-social, Identity
image by siir bicer
Building on the ideas of Tiqqun’s 1999 anti-neoliberal treatise Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females and Bogna Konior’s work on the girl and the inhuman vis-a-vis the machinic, Quicho has developed a concept she calls the “Girlstack,” which, to borrow her words, models the “ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the girl’s natural habitat.” Quicho articulates how the ‘girl’ inhabits no one person, body, or gender. She is a technology of subjectivity composed of symbolic, consumer, and inhuman elements and might be our only way out of the platform trap. Quicho's reformulation of 'the stack' was first published as an essay on Wired and expanded at BODYSTACK and Creamcake 3HD.
Quicho’s girl-stack is a speculative prototype models themany dimensions of the girl’s natural online habitat. To be clear: Quicho does not speak of actual girls or the experience of lived girlhood, but a socially constructed ideation of the girl. So, the girl as a vehicle for selling product, the girl as a tool for manipulating entrenched power, the girl as living currency, and the girl as desiring machine. The model is imperative for understanding the environment that produces the ‘girl as condition’.
30 04 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[061]
Gossamer Press
Individual
autonomous
Feminism, Crafts, Technology
Gossamer Press by Lejla Vala Verheus
Gossamer Press, a micro-publishing platform, intertwines female-driven textile crafts with digital realms, adopting annon-linear approach akin to navigating a web. Exploring concepts like 'Warp,' 'Weft,' and 'Gap,' it connects physical and digital realms, uncovering hidden narratives and challenging historical erasure, presenting a dynamic view of interconnected webs.
GP is founded by Lejla Vala Verheus and is part of an ongoing research on open-source methodologies in textile craft and the digital realm, drawing upon her background as a critical fashion practitioner and graphic designer. By rediscovering overlooked codes and relationships, questioning traditional publishing methods, and blending fashion with printed media, Lejla aims to create new narratives in the fashion realm.
05 09 24
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
22.11.24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Fashion, Capitalism
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
30 10 24
[017]
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Artistic Research
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies presents the reader with a variety of digital methodologies to help build skills in searching for, analyzing, and discussing vintage design, photography, and writing on fashion, as well as historic and ethnographic dress and textile objects themselves. Each chapter focuses upon a different method, problem, or research site, including:
- Maximalism and mixed-methods approaches to research - Searching large databases effectively - Pattern recognition and visual searching. - Critical reading, use, and citation of social media texts - Digital ethnography and shopping as research - Data visualization and mapping - Images in the public domain
From advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students working on research projects to veteran professionals in fashion and textile history and beyond, everyone can benefit from a diverse set of fresh approaches to conducting and disseminating research. In the current age of instant gratification, with users snapping and posting images from runway shows long before the clothes will ever appear instores, the world of fashion is increasingly digital and fast-paced. Research on fashion is, too. Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies will help you keep up in this rapidly changing world.
22 04 24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Fashion, Language, New Media
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
10 10 24
,
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Fashion, Language, New Media
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
10 10 24
,
[023]
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information
Individual
politics
Algorithm, Visual culture, New Media
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 - Cover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 Backcover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
The Superstorm is a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which culminated in the tempestuous Western political visual culture of today. Within this vortex, complex and unexpected events occur, where politics is mixed with entertainment and communication is hyper-mediated through algorithms, memes and alternative realities.
As politicians refine marketing techniques applied to the electorate and online users become political trendsetters, designers face an impasse. But not all is lost in the Superstorm. Surprisingly, it might precisely be this uncertain future that holds the key for designers to question and reformulate their role and purpose within the political sphere.
In her first book Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, Noemi Biasetton traces the development of the Superstorm from the 1960s to the present and proposes new coordinates that designers may consider on in order to, eventually, face its relentless evolution.
22 04 24
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Fashion, Language, New Media
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
10 10 24
[056]
Screen Walks
Collaboration
experimental
New Media, Visual culture
Screen Walks < website design by UNSTATED, Leonardo Angelucci >
In Screen Walks, a series of live-streamed explorations of digital spaces, selected artists and researchers investigate artistic strategies taking place online. The project gives an insight into practices using the screen as a medium. Artists, curators and researchers are invited to perform live-streamed explorations of the digital spaces where their core practice takes place. Every Screen Walk is different, as the guest artists of the programme share their screen and walk the viewers through their work, as a desktop performance of sorts. From re-contextualising imagery found on online marketplaces and uncovering data brokers’ invisible circulation of images to analysing in-game photography and the social, political and economic implications of games – Screen Walks examines various approaches, offers a behind-the-scenes look at artists' work and uncovers new, current and forgotten digital spaces.
Screen Walks is a collaborative project by Fotomuseum Winterthur and The Photographers' Gallery, investigating the changing role of the photographic image in its networked and digital forms.
“Fostering cultural exchange and institutional collaboration, Screen Walks aims to engage with discourses and practices generated by a wide range of practitioners. All live-streamed events are freely accessible, regularly archived and openly.”
04 09 24
[028]
A Guide To Softer Ware
Collaboration
experimental
A Guide To Softer Ware is a collaborative exploration of contemporary and not-so-contemporary languages of instruction in the context of “womanhood”, calling out their binary notions of gender designation as a social construct. Through analysing their own behavior as socialised women, and simultaneously analysing guides by women addressing other women about how to be a woman, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp expose the idea of the manual as a (self-)imposed directive, trapped between the imperative to be unconditionally affirmed and the need to be in charge of one’s own narrative.
The format of the manual is used here as a rhetorical construct that explores how the social roles of women have been impacted by the rise of new technologies from the second half of the 20th century until now. With their shared background ranging from (type-)design to creative coding, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp (quite literally) deconstruct and reprogramme these languages of instruction: From the wording used in 1960s technical manuals for sewing machines, knitting machines and various domestic appliances addressing women as a new target group to Memes and YouTube tutorials as a phenomenon representing the contemporary internet culture of self-optimization.
With their Guide To Softer Ware the two artists reflect on the supposed need for guidance and the forms this guidance has historically taken and still takes. The exhibition at soft power presents new works by the two artists that may function as a manual for the spectators and simultaneously as type specimens. The use of tools and typography, soap and metal, software and code (and ultimately, the use of the body itself), invites us to question the „softness“ historically/conventionally/subconsciously assigned to certain materials and spaces, to gender and its construction.22.11.24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
,
[033]
A Collective Booklet for Computational Woman
Individual
social
Weaving
A Collective Booklet for Computational Women is an open document project on google sheets to share stories of women with their machines. Any woman can create their own sheet to share their photos and the stories they hold about their computers. It is created to protest against the stereotype and to empower our passion towards technology.
“Growing up, I was always curious about computers and technology, and I've often heard people say things like 'it's weird that you're good with computers as a girl'.”
30 04 24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.22.11.24
[058]
Whole Earth Index
Collaboration
social
Agency
Here lies a nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1968 and 2002. They are made available here for scholarship, education, and research purposes. The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, “do it yourself,” and holism, featuring the slogan “access to tools.”
Whole Earth published a number of singular publications throughout its run focused on topical themes, or containing content from aligned organizations. Often these volumes reprinted articles from prior Whole Earth perodical journals, supplemented with new content. And, while the entire archive is insightful and lives up to its “access to tools, ideas, and practices” byline, side projects like 'The Whole Earth Software Catalog' deserve special attention. Originally proposed by John Brockman as a magazine which “would do for computing what the original had done for the counterculture: identify and recommend the best tools as they emerged”, it seems to have been to ahead of its time. The first issue was released in the Fall of 1984. The Whole Earth Software Catalog was a business failure, however, and was only published twice, with only three of the Whole Earth Software Review supplements published. If we were to position this publication in the here and now, it would most likely belong to the niche digital networks that are sprouting from spaces such as are.na and the handmade web.
“Soft Tech is a term we’ve used and defended since the late sixties. Soft signifies that something is alive, resilient, adaptive, maybe even lovable.”
04 09 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[018]
Figuring Things out Together
Individual
critical
Agency, Techno-social
This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities‘ resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships.Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance ‘teamwork’, ‘the commons’, or ‘cooperativism’, are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.
“This publication derives from an enthusiasm for the various ways collective learning environments take shape. It grew out of a curiosity for the ways that such practices are shared across different localities, timelines, and experiences.”
05 06 24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
Authorship, Agency
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
01 05 24
,
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
,
[024]
Our Bodies, Online
Individual
social
Feminism, Body, Photography
What are the qualifications of being a feminist artist today? This is an impossible question, which is, in many ways, the point. One of the defining doctrines of third-wave feminism (or fourth-wave feminism, or postfeminism, or whatever you call our current moment) is its persistent unwillingness to be defined. Whether you make abstract photograms or stag films, label your work feminist, and it is.
“An emerging guard of young, female photographers has carved out a new brand of feminism
with a new set of definitions.”
01 05 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[061]
Gossamer Press
Individual
autonomous
Feminism, Crafts, Technology
Gossamer Press by Lejla Vala Verheus
Gossamer Press, a micro-publishing platform, intertwines female-driven textile crafts with digital realms, adopting annon-linear approach akin to navigating a web. Exploring concepts like 'Warp,' 'Weft,' and 'Gap,' it connects physical and digital realms, uncovering hidden narratives and challenging historical erasure, presenting a dynamic view of interconnected webs.
GP is founded by Lejla Vala Verheus and is part of an ongoing research on open-source methodologies in textile craft and the digital realm, drawing upon her background as a critical fashion practitioner and graphic designer. By rediscovering overlooked codes and relationships, questioning traditional publishing methods, and blending fashion with printed media, Lejla aims to create new narratives in the fashion realm.
05 09 24
[007]
Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture
Individual
critical
Cybernetics, Feminism
Zeros and Ones is an investigation of the intersection between women, feminism, machines and in particular, information technology. Arguing that the computer is rewriting the old conceptions of man and his world, it suggests that the telecoms revolution is also a sexual revolution which undermines the fundamental assumptions crucial to patriarchal culture. Historical, contemporary and future developments in telecommunications and in IT are interwoven with the past, present and future of feminism, women and sexual difference, and a wealth of connections, parallels and affinities between machines and women are uncovered as a result. Challenging the belief that man was ever in control of either his own agency, the planet, or his machines, this book argues it is seriously undermined by the new scientific paradigms emergent from theories of chaos, complexity and connectionism, all of which suggest that the old distinctions between man, woman, nature and technology need to be radically reassessed.
01 05 24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
22.11.24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Fashion, Capitalism
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
30 10 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[037]
Notes on Phygitality
Collaboration
speculative
Phygital, Fashion, Techno-social
Published in Issue#6 of NXS Magazine ‘Phygital Fashioning’, ‘Notes on Phygitality’ documents an asynchronous dialogue held in the spring of 2022.
The conversation delves into the concept of "phygitality," blending physical and digital realms. They explore its implications, noting, "It’s about how you can interface between the physical and the digital." Discussions encompass the fusion's impact on human interaction voicing that we have more freedom to express ourselves. Ethical dimensions are scrutinized: "We need to be careful about what that [digital footprint] means." The dialogue reflects on art, privacy concerns, and the intricate interplay shaping future socio-technological landscapes.
01 05 24
,
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Feminism, Cybernetics, Techno-social
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22 03 24
[018]
Figuring Things out Together
Individual
critical
Agency, Techno-social
This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities‘ resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships.Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance ‘teamwork’, ‘the commons’, or ‘cooperativism’, are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.
“This publication derives from an enthusiasm for the various ways collective learning environments take shape. It grew out of a curiosity for the ways that such practices are shared across different localities, timelines, and experiences.”
05 06 24
[036]
GIRLSTACK
Individual
speculative
Feminism, Techno-social, Identity
image by siir bicer
Building on the ideas of Tiqqun’s 1999 anti-neoliberal treatise Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females and Bogna Konior’s work on the girl and the inhuman vis-a-vis the machinic, Quicho has developed a concept she calls the “Girlstack,” which, to borrow her words, models the “ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the girl’s natural habitat.” Quicho articulates how the ‘girl’ inhabits no one person, body, or gender. She is a technology of subjectivity composed of symbolic, consumer, and inhuman elements and might be our only way out of the platform trap. Quicho's reformulation of 'the stack' was first published as an essay on Wired and expanded at BODYSTACK and Creamcake 3HD.
Quicho’s girl-stack is a speculative prototype models themany dimensions of the girl’s natural online habitat. To be clear: Quicho does not speak of actual girls or the experience of lived girlhood, but a socially constructed ideation of the girl. So, the girl as a vehicle for selling product, the girl as a tool for manipulating entrenched power, the girl as living currency, and the girl as desiring machine. The model is imperative for understanding the environment that produces the ‘girl as condition’.
30 04 24
,
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
[015]
Interdependence FM
Collaboration
speculative
Artificial Intelligence, Techno-social, Virtual reality
In an age where global events, technologies, and cultures are increasingly intertwined, the Interdependence FM podcast explores the intricate web of connections shaping our world. While the hosts talk to artists and experts in the field of AI (and beyond) and are mainly positive about the 21st century, it becomes clear that understanding the concept of interdependence has never been more crucial.
01 05 24
[031]
A Website is a Room
Individual
autonomous
A-website-is-a-room.net is a little handmade web space that features a live feed of urls of a similar sentiment, anonymously contributed by fellow internet travelers. This site is the distillation of extensive research, conversations, and experiments around alternative web practices, decentralized networks, and online gathering.
The goal was to make something communal, romantic, introspective, raw, and beautiful. I also really wanted to dive deep into the research, and in that process, discovered a whole world of like-minded people, learned about new and old tools, and drew unexpected connections between different artists, designers, and their works.
22.11.24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
22.11.24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
[021]
Networked Worlds
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture
‘Networked Worlds’ focuses on worlding as a creative strategy in the early 21st century. As a response to the multiple crises of our time – a crisis of reality, agency and traditional sensemaking structures – worlding is an emergent creative practice of re-imagining and prototyping alternative futures.
Hyper aware of the rules and power structures of dominant narratives and infrastructures, worlding has become a vital strategy for artists and creatives to experiment with alternative futures and render the conditions of the present visible in order to change them. Worlding as such is different from worldbuilding. While the latter has been established by writers, directors, set designers in creating believable imaginary worlds (think Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or the Marvel Universe), worlding signifies the continuous, ever-evolving, collaborative effort of making worlds emerge rather than creating a closed universe by an individual master creator.
Networked Worlds is the third part of Networked Culture, a series of publications that explore the effects of networked technologies on the creative process. The previous two memos of the series are Networked Counterculture (2023) and Networked Reality (2023).“Worldbuilding is a means to resist complacency and categorization; an affirmation that one can draw new borders (or ends) and declare new logics for life.”
02 04 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
,
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Feminism, Cybernetics, Techno-social
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22 03 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
,
[028]
A Guide To Softer Ware
Collaboration
experimental
Gender, Materiality, Weaving
A Guide To Softer Ware is a collaborative exploration of contemporary and not-so-contemporary languages of instruction in the context of “womanhood”, calling out their binary notions of gender designation as a social construct. Through analysing their own behavior as socialised women, and simultaneously analysing guides by women addressing other women about how to be a woman, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp expose the idea of the manual as a (self-)imposed directive, trapped between the imperative to be unconditionally affirmed and the need to be in charge of one’s own narrative.
The format of the manual is used here as a rhetorical construct that explores how the social roles of women have been impacted by the rise of new technologies from the second half of the 20th century until now. With their shared background ranging from (type-)design to creative coding, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp (quite literally) deconstruct and reprogramme these languages of instruction: From the wording used in 1960s technical manuals for sewing machines, knitting machines and various domestic appliances addressing women as a new target group to Memes and YouTube tutorials as a phenomenon representing the contemporary internet culture of self-optimization.
With their Guide To Softer Ware the two artists reflect on the supposed need for guidance and the forms this guidance has historically taken and still takes. The exhibition at soft power presents new works by the two artists that may function as a manual for the spectators and simultaneously as type specimens. The use of tools and typography, soap and metal, software and code (and ultimately, the use of the body itself), invites us to question the „softness“ historically/conventionally/subconsciously assigned to certain materials and spaces, to gender and its construction.
23 04 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[033]
A Collective Booklet for Computational Woman
Individual
social
A Collective Booklet for Computational Women is an open document project on google sheets to share stories of women with their machines. Any woman can create their own sheet to share their photos and the stories they hold about their computers. It is created to protest against the stereotype and to empower our passion towards technology.
“Growing up, I was always curious about computers and technology, and I've often heard people say things like 'it's weird that you're good with computers as a girl'.”
22.11.24
[028]
A Guide To Softer Ware
Collaboration
experimental
Gender, Materiality, Weaving
A Guide To Softer Ware is a collaborative exploration of contemporary and not-so-contemporary languages of instruction in the context of “womanhood”, calling out their binary notions of gender designation as a social construct. Through analysing their own behavior as socialised women, and simultaneously analysing guides by women addressing other women about how to be a woman, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp expose the idea of the manual as a (self-)imposed directive, trapped between the imperative to be unconditionally affirmed and the need to be in charge of one’s own narrative.
The format of the manual is used here as a rhetorical construct that explores how the social roles of women have been impacted by the rise of new technologies from the second half of the 20th century until now. With their shared background ranging from (type-)design to creative coding, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp (quite literally) deconstruct and reprogramme these languages of instruction: From the wording used in 1960s technical manuals for sewing machines, knitting machines and various domestic appliances addressing women as a new target group to Memes and YouTube tutorials as a phenomenon representing the contemporary internet culture of self-optimization.
With their Guide To Softer Ware the two artists reflect on the supposed need for guidance and the forms this guidance has historically taken and still takes. The exhibition at soft power presents new works by the two artists that may function as a manual for the spectators and simultaneously as type specimens. The use of tools and typography, soap and metal, software and code (and ultimately, the use of the body itself), invites us to question the „softness“ historically/conventionally/subconsciously assigned to certain materials and spaces, to gender and its construction.
23 04 24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
22.11.24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
[024]
Our Bodies, Online
Individual
social
Feminism, Body, Photography
What are the qualifications of being a feminist artist today? This is an impossible question, which is, in many ways, the point. One of the defining doctrines of third-wave feminism (or fourth-wave feminism, or postfeminism, or whatever you call our current moment) is its persistent unwillingness to be defined. Whether you make abstract photograms or stag films, label your work feminist, and it is.
“An emerging guard of young, female photographers has carved out a new brand of feminism
with a new set of definitions.”
01 05 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
,
[068]
ŠUM#22 Angel Mode
Collaboration
philosophy
Agency, Post-human, Techno-social
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
The journal ŠUM#22 – Angel Mode explores themes in contemporary art, theory, and speculative fiction. Key articles include topics such as online identities, accelerationist philosophy, the concept of "angelic sexuality," and reinterpretations of faith and love in the digital age. Contributors like Bogna Konior and Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix discuss theoretical frameworks connecting cyberculture and philosophy. The issue is edited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha.
The Angel Mode Issue explores the intersection of online aesthetics and identities, focusing on the "angel" as a symbol for transcendent, hyper-feminine personas. This ties into ongoing online discourse of femininity, vulnerability, and performance, often communicated through ethereal-esque aesthetics, cyberpunk references, and soft romanticism style write-ups. The "angel" metaphor also critiques our roles in cybernetic systems, where humans act as conduits for larger external forces. Embracing this mode reflects a shift from individuality toward alignment with overarching digital and 'transcendental' patterns.
“As human agency erodes, faced with singularity and extinction, the figure of “the girl (on the internet)” is on the rise. In the new issue of Šum we explore how this surrender of agency mediates (human) history itself.”
15 11 24
,
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Feminism, Cybernetics, Techno-social
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22 03 24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[035]
Fashion Knowledge Podcast
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion Knowledge is a podcast about inclusive, sustainable, and digital fashion futures. Beata Wilczek, founder and director at Unfolding Strategies, a fashion consultancy and edu lab for fashion in Web3, hosts new and brave voices in fashion innovation, design, research, and education, to learn more about digital fashion and sustainability.
22.11.24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
Fashion, New Media, Language
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
23 04 24
,
[064]
A Rant About “Technology”
Individual
critical
Technology
In A Rant About Technology, Ursula K. Le Guin explores society's near-obsession with technology, suggesting that we often glorify new gadgets and tools at the expense of deeper human values such as creativity, compassion and wisdom. She argues that while technology can be helpful, we should question its role and avoid making it a substitute for meaningful, humane experiences. Le Guin advocates a balanced perspective, encouraging us to value technology without allowing it to define or control us.
““Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn't “hi,” isn’t necessarily '“low” in any meaningful sense.”
29 10 24
[061]
Gossamer Press
Individual
autonomous
Feminism, Crafts, Technology
Gossamer Press by Lejla Vala Verheus
Gossamer Press, a micro-publishing platform, intertwines female-driven textile crafts with digital realms, adopting annon-linear approach akin to navigating a web. Exploring concepts like 'Warp,' 'Weft,' and 'Gap,' it connects physical and digital realms, uncovering hidden narratives and challenging historical erasure, presenting a dynamic view of interconnected webs.
GP is founded by Lejla Vala Verheus and is part of an ongoing research on open-source methodologies in textile craft and the digital realm, drawing upon her background as a critical fashion practitioner and graphic designer. By rediscovering overlooked codes and relationships, questioning traditional publishing methods, and blending fashion with printed media, Lejla aims to create new narratives in the fashion realm.
05 09 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[001]
What even is Fashion Technology
Individual
autonomous
Fashion, Technology
A podcast discussing the latest news, innovations and trends shaping the future of fashion.
23 04 24
[036]
GIRLSTACK
Individual
speculative
image by siir bicer
Building on the ideas of Tiqqun’s 1999 anti-neoliberal treatise Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females and Bogna Konior’s work on the girl and the inhuman vis-a-vis the machinic, Quicho has developed a concept she calls the “Girlstack,” which, to borrow her words, models the “ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the girl’s natural habitat.” Quicho articulates how the ‘girl’ inhabits no one person, body, or gender. She is a technology of subjectivity composed of symbolic, consumer, and inhuman elements and might be our only way out of the platform trap. Quicho's reformulation of 'the stack' was first published as an essay on Wired and expanded at BODYSTACK and Creamcake 3HD.
Quicho’s girl-stack is a speculative prototype models themany dimensions of the girl’s natural online habitat. To be clear: Quicho does not speak of actual girls or the experience of lived girlhood, but a socially constructed ideation of the girl. So, the girl as a vehicle for selling product, the girl as a tool for manipulating entrenched power, the girl as living currency, and the girl as desiring machine. The model is imperative for understanding the environment that produces the ‘girl as condition’.
22.11.24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
[071]
Memestrilism
Individual
critical
Feminism, Digital culture, Diaspora
Memestrilism is a term made up of "meme" and "minstrelsy" used to describe minstrel-like behaviours, trends and creations in digital spaces. Produced by artist Ama Ogwo as part of the first Feminist Internet Residency, the film critically examines how racism persists in the digital age, paralleling contemporary online representations of blackness with historical racist imagery. Using found footage from social media and 20th-century minstrel shows, Ogwo collapses time to reveal how the ventriloquism of blackness online mirrors and reinvents what minstrelsy looks like today.
The concept of Memestrilism offers a critical lens on the current online zeitgeist, particularly in fashion, by highlighting how cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping continue to manifest in digital spaces. In fashion, the commodification of black culture often intersects with the 'meme economy' of social media, where trends are amplified, decontextualised and stripped of their origins for mass consumption.
The digital landscape thrives on 'hypervisibility', where cultural markers are presented as bold statements, but often lack the necessary cultural nuance. Often Black cultural expressions - hairstyles, clothing styles, linguistic expressions and aesthetics - are showcased through influencers or memes that gain widespread appeal, often without reference to their roots. This parallels historical minstrelsy, where black identity was caricatured and exploited for entertainment. The digital age exacerbates this by enabling the rapid dissemination and monetisation of these trends, further blurring the line between homage and exploitation.
Ogwo's exploration of memestrilism not only critiques, but also reflects the larger conversations taking place in digital fashion spaces about authenticity, representation and the ethics of appropriation in a globalised, meme-driven culture.
20 11 24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
,
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[068]
ŠUM#22 Angel Mode
Collaboration
philosophy
Agency, Post-human, Techno-social
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
The journal ŠUM#22 – Angel Mode explores themes in contemporary art, theory, and speculative fiction. Key articles include topics such as online identities, accelerationist philosophy, the concept of "angelic sexuality," and reinterpretations of faith and love in the digital age. Contributors like Bogna Konior and Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix discuss theoretical frameworks connecting cyberculture and philosophy. The issue is edited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha.
The Angel Mode Issue explores the intersection of online aesthetics and identities, focusing on the "angel" as a symbol for transcendent, hyper-feminine personas. This ties into ongoing online discourse of femininity, vulnerability, and performance, often communicated through ethereal-esque aesthetics, cyberpunk references, and soft romanticism style write-ups. The "angel" metaphor also critiques our roles in cybernetic systems, where humans act as conduits for larger external forces. Embracing this mode reflects a shift from individuality toward alignment with overarching digital and 'transcendental' patterns.
“As human agency erodes, faced with singularity and extinction, the figure of “the girl (on the internet)” is on the rise. In the new issue of Šum we explore how this surrender of agency mediates (human) history itself.”
15 11 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[037]
Notes on Phygitality
Collaboration
speculative
Published in Issue#6 of NXS Magazine ‘Phygital Fashioning’, ‘Notes on Phygitality’ documents an asynchronous dialogue held in the spring of 2022.
The conversation delves into the concept of "phygitality," blending physical and digital realms. They explore its implications, noting, "It’s about how you can interface between the physical and the digital." Discussions encompass the fusion's impact on human interaction voicing that we have more freedom to express ourselves. Ethical dimensions are scrutinized: "We need to be careful about what that [digital footprint] means." The dialogue reflects on art, privacy concerns, and the intricate interplay shaping future socio-technological landscapes.
22.11.24
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Fashion, Language, New Media
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
10 10 24
[012]
Mission Accomplished: Belanciege
Collaboration
politics
Fashion, Critique
Trafó Gallery, photo by Dávid Biró
Hito Steyerl "Mission Accomplished: BELANCIEGE" is part of the exhibition "… of bread, wine, cars, security and peace". The point of departure for the three-channel video installation is the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and how this historical event paved the way for commodification and privatization. The artists turn to the field of fashion, using the luxury brand Balenciaga as an example to reflect on political and cultural changes in the period of the last thirty years. The video installation MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE presented at Trafó Gallery reveals similar ’invasions’ of history and emphasizes their cyclical nature by turning towards the processes of economic and political realignment that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and by featuring examples that target our hyper-contemporary world armed with trend analysis, data mining, political advertising and audience targeting.
The video installation is co-created by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl and Miloš Trakilović and is based on their lecture in 2019 at n.b.k. - Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Almost 30 years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lecture reflects on post-1989 transformations and political rearrangements in the former Soviet territories, sheds light on the interconnections between culture and populism, and examines in a broader context the mechanisms of oligarchic-capitalist culture that emerged during the 'privatisation' of the former Eastern bloc.
01 05 24
[070]
Myth Magazine
Collaboration
commercial
Fashion
Myth Magazine is a shapeshifting online publication, that will not be found on the news stands.
MythMagazine is a digital-first editorial journal, created with digital affordances at its core, rather than as a print adaptation. The magazine takes a screen-first approach to its fashion editorials, incorporating a variety of visual elements such as still, moving, looping, glitching and collaged imagery, as well as sound. This approach differs from the post-human aesthetics commonly seen in digital-first fashion practices.. ,
“Being online means the possibilities are endless. It makes the edit different too, because a page count is irrelevant, but there’s still a permanence and a relevance”
15 11 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
,
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[038]
⤴
Cyberwitches and Feminist Technologies seminars
17.09.24
22.11.24
[039]
The SSENSE of Authenticity
Individual
critical
In "the ssense of authenticity" writer Nabi Williams explores the concept of authenticity in the digital age, particularly through analyzing the canadian fashion e-tailer ssense and its popular Instagram account. posting daily on the social media platform, ssense draws from contemporary culture through its use of language, image layout, and cultural references to create promotional content that exists on the thin line between “authentic meme” and marketing material. by investigating this account and social media’s impact on how authenticity is manufactured, communicated, and perceived, this thesis traces how the concept of authenticity has evolved and argues that we now live in a “post-authentic” world, where storytelling and the “authentically inauthentic” reign supreme in place of sincerity and reality.
“The reality is that “authenticity” holds no value. But then again, who wants to engage in reality?”
22.11.24
[019]
Syntax Magazine
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture, Publishing, Authorship
Syntax is an online magazine using the grammar of the internet. The editors letter of Syntax's first edition reads:
"Digital media promised us new modes of reading. Instead, we got sound bites and “which One Direction member should you date” quizzes. Scrolling online became an experiment in self-defense: we’re bombarded by paywalls and pop-up ads, lured by A/B tested headlines and microtrend pieces. [...] But no one writes how we read. In chat rooms, comment sections, forums, personal blogs. The video essay, the playlist, Tumblr collage—these forms are as familiar to us as the novel, film, and album. Their words would never reach the true citizens of the internet.."
And so, Syntax provides a honest reflection of what pre-capitalist internet.“So we go back to the blog. Repurpose the zine. We’re sending our reply using the grammar of the internet.”
01 05 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[040]
Scroll, Skim, Stare
Individual
critical
Authorship, Critique
This essay critiques the static nature of artists' websites, proposing that they could be more dynamic and innovative. Gat argues for these sites to function as online exhibition spaces, offering unique and creative ways to present and control art, enhancing the digital art experience.
Orit Gat’s essay “Scroll, Skim, Stare” in *The White Review* explores the evolving role of artists' websites in the contemporary digital landscape. Gat argues that while the internet has transformed art consumption, the design of artists' websites often remains static and uninspired. She suggests that these sites could be more dynamic, serving as online exhibition spaces that challenge the traditional gallery format. Gat emphasizes the potential for artists to leverage their websites to present and control their work uniquely and creatively, thus reshaping the visual culture of the internet.
03 07 24
[065]
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Individual
critical
Authorship
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, proposed by Ursula K. Le Guin, suggests that storytelling is akin to a "carrier bag"—a container for diverse narratives rather than a linear progression of events. This theory emphasizes inclusivity and multiplicity in storytelling, advocating for narratives that encompass various voices and experiences rather than focusing solely on traditional heroic plots. By framing fiction as a space for collecting and sharing rather than imposing structure, Le Guin encourages a more holistic understanding of literature's role in shaping human experience.
While acclaimed for its radical rethinking of narrative structures, challenging traditional linear storytelling and instead presenting fiction as a collection of diverse, interconnected experiences, Le Guin's perspective is primarily driven by the importance of inclusivity and multiplicity of voices. It considers how narratives can be used to facilitate understanding of complex human experiences, rather than merely serving as vehicles for plot-driven heroics. It takes special note on the act of 'gathering' and is therefore often referred to by collectives and practitioners that focus on gathering tools, people, experiences and non-conformist ways of doing. By advocating this more holistic, and more inclusive approach to storytelling, Le Guin critiques dominant cultural narratives and opens up space for alternative forms of expression.
“A story is like a carrier bag; it holds the experience of many people, not just one.”
29 10 24
,
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[019]
Syntax Magazine
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture, Publishing, Authorship
Syntax is an online magazine using the grammar of the internet. The editors letter of Syntax's first edition reads:
"Digital media promised us new modes of reading. Instead, we got sound bites and “which One Direction member should you date” quizzes. Scrolling online became an experiment in self-defense: we’re bombarded by paywalls and pop-up ads, lured by A/B tested headlines and microtrend pieces. [...] But no one writes how we read. In chat rooms, comment sections, forums, personal blogs. The video essay, the playlist, Tumblr collage—these forms are as familiar to us as the novel, film, and album. Their words would never reach the true citizens of the internet.."
And so, Syntax provides a honest reflection of what pre-capitalist internet.“So we go back to the blog. Repurpose the zine. We’re sending our reply using the grammar of the internet.”
01 05 24
[040]
Scroll, Skim, Stare
Individual
critical
This essay critiques the static nature of artists' websites, proposing that they could be more dynamic and innovative. Gat argues for these sites to function as online exhibition spaces, offering unique and creative ways to present and control art, enhancing the digital art experience.
Orit Gat’s essay “Scroll, Skim, Stare” in *The White Review* explores the evolving role of artists' websites in the contemporary digital landscape. Gat argues that while the internet has transformed art consumption, the design of artists' websites often remains static and uninspired. She suggests that these sites could be more dynamic, serving as online exhibition spaces that challenge the traditional gallery format. Gat emphasizes the potential for artists to leverage their websites to present and control their work uniquely and creatively, thus reshaping the visual culture of the internet.
22.11.24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
Authorship, Agency
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
01 05 24
[019]
Syntax Magazine
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture, Publishing, Authorship
Syntax is an online magazine using the grammar of the internet. The editors letter of Syntax's first edition reads:
"Digital media promised us new modes of reading. Instead, we got sound bites and “which One Direction member should you date” quizzes. Scrolling online became an experiment in self-defense: we’re bombarded by paywalls and pop-up ads, lured by A/B tested headlines and microtrend pieces. [...] But no one writes how we read. In chat rooms, comment sections, forums, personal blogs. The video essay, the playlist, Tumblr collage—these forms are as familiar to us as the novel, film, and album. Their words would never reach the true citizens of the internet.."
And so, Syntax provides a honest reflection of what pre-capitalist internet.“So we go back to the blog. Repurpose the zine. We’re sending our reply using the grammar of the internet.”
01 05 24
[065]
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Individual
critical
Authorship
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, proposed by Ursula K. Le Guin, suggests that storytelling is akin to a "carrier bag"—a container for diverse narratives rather than a linear progression of events. This theory emphasizes inclusivity and multiplicity in storytelling, advocating for narratives that encompass various voices and experiences rather than focusing solely on traditional heroic plots. By framing fiction as a space for collecting and sharing rather than imposing structure, Le Guin encourages a more holistic understanding of literature's role in shaping human experience.
While acclaimed for its radical rethinking of narrative structures, challenging traditional linear storytelling and instead presenting fiction as a collection of diverse, interconnected experiences, Le Guin's perspective is primarily driven by the importance of inclusivity and multiplicity of voices. It considers how narratives can be used to facilitate understanding of complex human experiences, rather than merely serving as vehicles for plot-driven heroics. It takes special note on the act of 'gathering' and is therefore often referred to by collectives and practitioners that focus on gathering tools, people, experiences and non-conformist ways of doing. By advocating this more holistic, and more inclusive approach to storytelling, Le Guin critiques dominant cultural narratives and opens up space for alternative forms of expression.
“A story is like a carrier bag; it holds the experience of many people, not just one.”
29 10 24
,
[051]
Towards A Minor Tech (Peer-reviewed newspaper)
Collaboration
critical
Digital culture, Techno-social, Critique
Following a process of open exchanges and a three-day research workshop in London, at London South Bank University and King’s College, London, this publication brings together researchers who address the problems of technological scale, thinking through the potentials of 'the minor'; or what we are referring to as minor (or minority) tech – small tech that operates at human scale (more peer to peer than server-client) and stutters in its expression and application. As Marloes de Valk puts it in the Damaged Earth Catalog: “Small technology, smallnet and smolnet are associated with communities using alternative network infrastructures, delinking from the commercial Internet.” As such, the publication sets out to question the universal ideals of technology and its problems of scale, extending it to follow the three main characteristics identified in Deleuze and Guattari's essay (Toward a Minor Literature), namely deterritorialization, political immediacy, and collective value.
“we're exploring how technological scale sets conditions for relations, feelings, democratic processes, and infrastructures.”
26 08 24
[012]
Mission Accomplished: Belanciege
Collaboration
politics
Fashion, Critique
Trafó Gallery, photo by Dávid Biró
Hito Steyerl "Mission Accomplished: BELANCIEGE" is part of the exhibition "… of bread, wine, cars, security and peace". The point of departure for the three-channel video installation is the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and how this historical event paved the way for commodification and privatization. The artists turn to the field of fashion, using the luxury brand Balenciaga as an example to reflect on political and cultural changes in the period of the last thirty years. The video installation MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE presented at Trafó Gallery reveals similar ’invasions’ of history and emphasizes their cyclical nature by turning towards the processes of economic and political realignment that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and by featuring examples that target our hyper-contemporary world armed with trend analysis, data mining, political advertising and audience targeting.
The video installation is co-created by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl and Miloš Trakilović and is based on their lecture in 2019 at n.b.k. - Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Almost 30 years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lecture reflects on post-1989 transformations and political rearrangements in the former Soviet territories, sheds light on the interconnections between culture and populism, and examines in a broader context the mechanisms of oligarchic-capitalist culture that emerged during the 'privatisation' of the former Eastern bloc.
01 05 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
22.11.24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
,
[036]
GIRLSTACK
Individual
speculative
Feminism, Techno-social, Identity
image by siir bicer
Building on the ideas of Tiqqun’s 1999 anti-neoliberal treatise Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females and Bogna Konior’s work on the girl and the inhuman vis-a-vis the machinic, Quicho has developed a concept she calls the “Girlstack,” which, to borrow her words, models the “ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the girl’s natural habitat.” Quicho articulates how the ‘girl’ inhabits no one person, body, or gender. She is a technology of subjectivity composed of symbolic, consumer, and inhuman elements and might be our only way out of the platform trap. Quicho's reformulation of 'the stack' was first published as an essay on Wired and expanded at BODYSTACK and Creamcake 3HD.
Quicho’s girl-stack is a speculative prototype models themany dimensions of the girl’s natural online habitat. To be clear: Quicho does not speak of actual girls or the experience of lived girlhood, but a socially constructed ideation of the girl. So, the girl as a vehicle for selling product, the girl as a tool for manipulating entrenched power, the girl as living currency, and the girl as desiring machine. The model is imperative for understanding the environment that produces the ‘girl as condition’.
30 04 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[007]
Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture
Individual
critical
Cybernetics, Feminism
Zeros and Ones is an investigation of the intersection between women, feminism, machines and in particular, information technology. Arguing that the computer is rewriting the old conceptions of man and his world, it suggests that the telecoms revolution is also a sexual revolution which undermines the fundamental assumptions crucial to patriarchal culture. Historical, contemporary and future developments in telecommunications and in IT are interwoven with the past, present and future of feminism, women and sexual difference, and a wealth of connections, parallels and affinities between machines and women are uncovered as a result. Challenging the belief that man was ever in control of either his own agency, the planet, or his machines, this book argues it is seriously undermined by the new scientific paradigms emergent from theories of chaos, complexity and connectionism, all of which suggest that the old distinctions between man, woman, nature and technology need to be radically reassessed.
01 05 24
,
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
22.11.24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
Authorship, Agency
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
01 05 24
[040]
Scroll, Skim, Stare
Individual
critical
Authorship, Critique
This essay critiques the static nature of artists' websites, proposing that they could be more dynamic and innovative. Gat argues for these sites to function as online exhibition spaces, offering unique and creative ways to present and control art, enhancing the digital art experience.
Orit Gat’s essay “Scroll, Skim, Stare” in *The White Review* explores the evolving role of artists' websites in the contemporary digital landscape. Gat argues that while the internet has transformed art consumption, the design of artists' websites often remains static and uninspired. She suggests that these sites could be more dynamic, serving as online exhibition spaces that challenge the traditional gallery format. Gat emphasizes the potential for artists to leverage their websites to present and control their work uniquely and creatively, thus reshaping the visual culture of the internet.
03 07 24
[059]
Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544887/autotheory-as-feminist-practice-in-art-writing-and-criticism/
Individual
critical
Feminism, Authorship
In the 2010s, the term “autotheory” began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.
Fournier argues that the autotheoretical turn signals the tenuousness of illusory separations between art and life, theory and practice, work and the self—divisions long blurred by feminist artists and scholars. Autotheory challenges dominant approaches to philosophizing and theorizing while enabling new ways for artists and writers to reflect on their lives. She argues that Kraus's 1997 I Love Dick marked the emergence of a newly performative, post-memoir “I”; recasts Piper's 1971 performance work Food for the Spirit as autotheory; considers autotheory as critique; examines practices of citation in autotheoretical work, including Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts; and looks at the aesthetics and ethics of disclosure and exposure, exploring the nuanced feminist politics around autotheoretical practices and such movements as #MeToo. Fournier formulates autotheory as a reflexive movement, connecting thinking, making art, living, and theorizing.
“Autotheory—the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography—as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism.”
04 09 24
[065]
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Individual
critical
Authorship
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, proposed by Ursula K. Le Guin, suggests that storytelling is akin to a "carrier bag"—a container for diverse narratives rather than a linear progression of events. This theory emphasizes inclusivity and multiplicity in storytelling, advocating for narratives that encompass various voices and experiences rather than focusing solely on traditional heroic plots. By framing fiction as a space for collecting and sharing rather than imposing structure, Le Guin encourages a more holistic understanding of literature's role in shaping human experience.
While acclaimed for its radical rethinking of narrative structures, challenging traditional linear storytelling and instead presenting fiction as a collection of diverse, interconnected experiences, Le Guin's perspective is primarily driven by the importance of inclusivity and multiplicity of voices. It considers how narratives can be used to facilitate understanding of complex human experiences, rather than merely serving as vehicles for plot-driven heroics. It takes special note on the act of 'gathering' and is therefore often referred to by collectives and practitioners that focus on gathering tools, people, experiences and non-conformist ways of doing. By advocating this more holistic, and more inclusive approach to storytelling, Le Guin critiques dominant cultural narratives and opens up space for alternative forms of expression.
“A story is like a carrier bag; it holds the experience of many people, not just one.”
29 10 24
,
[017]
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Artistic Research
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies presents the reader with a variety of digital methodologies to help build skills in searching for, analyzing, and discussing vintage design, photography, and writing on fashion, as well as historic and ethnographic dress and textile objects themselves. Each chapter focuses upon a different method, problem, or research site, including:
- Maximalism and mixed-methods approaches to research - Searching large databases effectively - Pattern recognition and visual searching. - Critical reading, use, and citation of social media texts - Digital ethnography and shopping as research - Data visualization and mapping - Images in the public domain
From advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students working on research projects to veteran professionals in fashion and textile history and beyond, everyone can benefit from a diverse set of fresh approaches to conducting and disseminating research. In the current age of instant gratification, with users snapping and posting images from runway shows long before the clothes will ever appear instores, the world of fashion is increasingly digital and fast-paced. Research on fashion is, too. Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies will help you keep up in this rapidly changing world.
22 04 24
[044]
Transactional Aesthetics
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Aesthetics
da Falck Øien explores the emotional relationships humans have with their garments and how acquisition methods influence these relationships. The research, conducted from 2017 to 2021, involves ethnographic studies, collaboration with a fashion label, public engagement through a physical space, and the creation of publications and products. Øien aims to address the environmental impact of the fashion industry by rethinking resource use and consumer behavior, emphasizing fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon beyond mere clothing items.
04 09 24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
,
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[037]
Notes on Phygitality
Collaboration
speculative
Phygital, Fashion, Techno-social
Published in Issue#6 of NXS Magazine ‘Phygital Fashioning’, ‘Notes on Phygitality’ documents an asynchronous dialogue held in the spring of 2022.
The conversation delves into the concept of "phygitality," blending physical and digital realms. They explore its implications, noting, "It’s about how you can interface between the physical and the digital." Discussions encompass the fusion's impact on human interaction voicing that we have more freedom to express ourselves. Ethical dimensions are scrutinized: "We need to be careful about what that [digital footprint] means." The dialogue reflects on art, privacy concerns, and the intricate interplay shaping future socio-technological landscapes.
01 05 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[043]
A Reparative Approach to Publishing
Collaboration
The article "A Reparative Approach to Publishing" discusses Constant, a collective focusing on open-source, community-driven publications. Their projects include various forms of "executable texts" like manuals and codes, emphasizing collaborative creation and iterative processes. Platforms like Books With An Attitude and Constant Verlag host these works under open licenses. The piece highlights the importance of trust, collective authorship, and dynamic, editable content, advocating for a publishing practice that embraces change, diversity, and community involvement over individual genius and static texts.
It is part of MARCH's long term inquiry, "Publishing As Protocol", which aims to explore the relationship between self-organizational models and technological sovereignty. It gathers existing and speculative examples from both institutional (cultural) and technological (hacktivist) practices to reflect on how we publish, gather and organize under (and around) platform capitalism.
“A reparative, intersectional, and feminist approach to publishing means a networked approach, set up for working best when it is cared for by one or many communities.”
22.11.24
[006]
Extending Horizons: The Praxis of Experimental Publishing in the Age of Digital Networks
Individual
critical
Publishing, Network(s), Community
This dissertation is focused on the practices of experimental publishing that are intertwined with digital and networked technology, and borrow strategies derived from the context of arts and design. In order to build a model of interpretation of such practices, Lorusso defined a theoretical framework, made an overview of influential perspectives within the field, and carried out an investigation of the ‘communities of practice’ in which experimental publishing takes place. Lorusso analyzes a phenomenology of projects that highlight the characteristics of an experimental approach in each specific stage of the publishing process. Finally, I developed an online archive for the purpose of categorizing and connecting the different case studies. The main question addressed is:
05 06 24
[019]
Syntax Magazine
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture, Publishing, Authorship
Syntax is an online magazine using the grammar of the internet. The editors letter of Syntax's first edition reads:
"Digital media promised us new modes of reading. Instead, we got sound bites and “which One Direction member should you date” quizzes. Scrolling online became an experiment in self-defense: we’re bombarded by paywalls and pop-up ads, lured by A/B tested headlines and microtrend pieces. [...] But no one writes how we read. In chat rooms, comment sections, forums, personal blogs. The video essay, the playlist, Tumblr collage—these forms are as familiar to us as the novel, film, and album. Their words would never reach the true citizens of the internet.."
And so, Syntax provides a honest reflection of what pre-capitalist internet.“So we go back to the blog. Repurpose the zine. We’re sending our reply using the grammar of the internet.”
01 05 24
[044]
Transactional Aesthetics
Individual
pedagogy
da Falck Øien explores the emotional relationships humans have with their garments and how acquisition methods influence these relationships. The research, conducted from 2017 to 2021, involves ethnographic studies, collaboration with a fashion label, public engagement through a physical space, and the creation of publications and products. Øien aims to address the environmental impact of the fashion industry by rethinking resource use and consumer behavior, emphasizing fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon beyond mere clothing items.
22.11.24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[011]
Our aesthetic categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting
Individual
philosophy
Aesthetics
The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture. They dominate the look of its art and commodities as well as our discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of the aesthetic categories that most people use to process the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism, treating them with the same seriousness philosophers have reserved for analysis of the beautiful and the sublime.
Ngai explores how each of these aesthetic categories expresses conflicting feelings that connect to the ways in which postmodern subjects work, exchange, and consume. As a style of performing that takes the form of affective labor, the zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and our sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to the circulation of discourse and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute's involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At the deepest level, Ngai argues, these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities.
Through readings of Adorno, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts ranging from Bob Perelman's poetry to Ed Ruscha's photography books to the situation comedy of Lucille Ball, Ngai shows how these everyday aesthetic categories also provide traction to classic problems in aesthetic theory. The zany, cute, and interesting are not postmodernity's only meaningful aesthetic categories, Ngai argues, but the ones best suited for grasping the radical transformation of aesthetic experience and discourse under its conditions.
24 04 24
,
[001]
What even is Fashion Technology
Individual
autonomous
Fashion, Technology
A podcast discussing the latest news, innovations and trends shaping the future of fashion.
23 04 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[037]
Notes on Phygitality
Collaboration
speculative
Phygital, Fashion, Techno-social
Published in Issue#6 of NXS Magazine ‘Phygital Fashioning’, ‘Notes on Phygitality’ documents an asynchronous dialogue held in the spring of 2022.
The conversation delves into the concept of "phygitality," blending physical and digital realms. They explore its implications, noting, "It’s about how you can interface between the physical and the digital." Discussions encompass the fusion's impact on human interaction voicing that we have more freedom to express ourselves. Ethical dimensions are scrutinized: "We need to be careful about what that [digital footprint] means." The dialogue reflects on art, privacy concerns, and the intricate interplay shaping future socio-technological landscapes.
01 05 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[045]
⤴
OPEN CALL – Screening: Luxury
18.08.24
22.11.24
[046]
⤴
Angels, Bots, Cute AIs and Animism: A Conversation on AI Imaginaries
10.07.24
22.11.24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
22.11.24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
,
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[039]
The SSENSE of Authenticity
Individual
critical
Authorship, Digital culture
In "the ssense of authenticity" writer Nabi Williams explores the concept of authenticity in the digital age, particularly through analyzing the canadian fashion e-tailer ssense and its popular Instagram account. posting daily on the social media platform, ssense draws from contemporary culture through its use of language, image layout, and cultural references to create promotional content that exists on the thin line between “authentic meme” and marketing material. by investigating this account and social media’s impact on how authenticity is manufactured, communicated, and perceived, this thesis traces how the concept of authenticity has evolved and argues that we now live in a “post-authentic” world, where storytelling and the “authentically inauthentic” reign supreme in place of sincerity and reality.
“The reality is that “authenticity” holds no value. But then again, who wants to engage in reality?”
04 09 24
[021]
Networked Worlds
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture
‘Networked Worlds’ focuses on worlding as a creative strategy in the early 21st century. As a response to the multiple crises of our time – a crisis of reality, agency and traditional sensemaking structures – worlding is an emergent creative practice of re-imagining and prototyping alternative futures.
Hyper aware of the rules and power structures of dominant narratives and infrastructures, worlding has become a vital strategy for artists and creatives to experiment with alternative futures and render the conditions of the present visible in order to change them. Worlding as such is different from worldbuilding. While the latter has been established by writers, directors, set designers in creating believable imaginary worlds (think Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or the Marvel Universe), worlding signifies the continuous, ever-evolving, collaborative effort of making worlds emerge rather than creating a closed universe by an individual master creator.
Networked Worlds is the third part of Networked Culture, a series of publications that explore the effects of networked technologies on the creative process. The previous two memos of the series are Networked Counterculture (2023) and Networked Reality (2023).“Worldbuilding is a means to resist complacency and categorization; an affirmation that one can draw new borders (or ends) and declare new logics for life.”
02 04 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
,
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[051]
Towards A Minor Tech (Peer-reviewed newspaper)
Collaboration
critical
Digital culture, Techno-social, Critique
Following a process of open exchanges and a three-day research workshop in London, at London South Bank University and King’s College, London, this publication brings together researchers who address the problems of technological scale, thinking through the potentials of 'the minor'; or what we are referring to as minor (or minority) tech – small tech that operates at human scale (more peer to peer than server-client) and stutters in its expression and application. As Marloes de Valk puts it in the Damaged Earth Catalog: “Small technology, smallnet and smolnet are associated with communities using alternative network infrastructures, delinking from the commercial Internet.” As such, the publication sets out to question the universal ideals of technology and its problems of scale, extending it to follow the three main characteristics identified in Deleuze and Guattari's essay (Toward a Minor Literature), namely deterritorialization, political immediacy, and collective value.
“we're exploring how technological scale sets conditions for relations, feelings, democratic processes, and infrastructures.”
26 08 24
[031]
A Website is a Room
Individual
autonomous
Techno-social
A-website-is-a-room.net is a little handmade web space that features a live feed of urls of a similar sentiment, anonymously contributed by fellow internet travelers. This site is the distillation of extensive research, conversations, and experiments around alternative web practices, decentralized networks, and online gathering.
The goal was to make something communal, romantic, introspective, raw, and beautiful. I also really wanted to dive deep into the research, and in that process, discovered a whole world of like-minded people, learned about new and old tools, and drew unexpected connections between different artists, designers, and their works.
23 04 24
[048]
⤴
Declarations: Website fabulations
07.09.24
22.11.24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
22.11.24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
[022]
Pirate Care, a syllabus
Collective
critical
Care, Digital culture, Techno-social
Pirate Care is a research process - primarily based in the transnational European space - that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”, which in new and interesting ways are trying to intervene in one of the most important challenges of our time, that is, the ‘crisis of care’ in all its multiple and interconnected dimensions.
These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges. Often they act disobediently in expressed non-compliance with laws, regulations and executive orders that ciriminalise the duty of care by imposing exclusions along the lines of class, gender, race or territory. They are not shying risk of persecution in providing unconditional solidarity to those who are the most exploited, discriminated against and condemned to the status of disposable populations.
The Pirate Care Syllabus presents here for the first time is a tool for supporting and activating collective processes of learning from these practices.“We live in a world where captains get arrested for saving people’s lives on the sea; where a person downloading scientific articles faces 35 years in jail; where people risk charges for bringing contraceptives to those who otherwise couldn’t get them. Folks are getting in trouble for giving food to the poor, medicine to the sick, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless. And yet our heroines care and disobey. They are pirates.”
01 05 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
,
[071]
Memestrilism
Individual
critical
Feminism, Digital culture, Diaspora
Memestrilism is a term made up of "meme" and "minstrelsy" used to describe minstrel-like behaviours, trends and creations in digital spaces. Produced by artist Ama Ogwo as part of the first Feminist Internet Residency, the film critically examines how racism persists in the digital age, paralleling contemporary online representations of blackness with historical racist imagery. Using found footage from social media and 20th-century minstrel shows, Ogwo collapses time to reveal how the ventriloquism of blackness online mirrors and reinvents what minstrelsy looks like today.
The concept of Memestrilism offers a critical lens on the current online zeitgeist, particularly in fashion, by highlighting how cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping continue to manifest in digital spaces. In fashion, the commodification of black culture often intersects with the 'meme economy' of social media, where trends are amplified, decontextualised and stripped of their origins for mass consumption.
The digital landscape thrives on 'hypervisibility', where cultural markers are presented as bold statements, but often lack the necessary cultural nuance. Often Black cultural expressions - hairstyles, clothing styles, linguistic expressions and aesthetics - are showcased through influencers or memes that gain widespread appeal, often without reference to their roots. This parallels historical minstrelsy, where black identity was caricatured and exploited for entertainment. The digital age exacerbates this by enabling the rapid dissemination and monetisation of these trends, further blurring the line between homage and exploitation.
Ogwo's exploration of memestrilism not only critiques, but also reflects the larger conversations taking place in digital fashion spaces about authenticity, representation and the ethics of appropriation in a globalised, meme-driven culture.
20 11 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[024]
Our Bodies, Online
Individual
social
Feminism, Body, Photography
What are the qualifications of being a feminist artist today? This is an impossible question, which is, in many ways, the point. One of the defining doctrines of third-wave feminism (or fourth-wave feminism, or postfeminism, or whatever you call our current moment) is its persistent unwillingness to be defined. Whether you make abstract photograms or stag films, label your work feminist, and it is.
“An emerging guard of young, female photographers has carved out a new brand of feminism
with a new set of definitions.”
01 05 24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
22.11.24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[019]
Syntax Magazine
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture, Publishing, Authorship
Syntax is an online magazine using the grammar of the internet. The editors letter of Syntax's first edition reads:
"Digital media promised us new modes of reading. Instead, we got sound bites and “which One Direction member should you date” quizzes. Scrolling online became an experiment in self-defense: we’re bombarded by paywalls and pop-up ads, lured by A/B tested headlines and microtrend pieces. [...] But no one writes how we read. In chat rooms, comment sections, forums, personal blogs. The video essay, the playlist, Tumblr collage—these forms are as familiar to us as the novel, film, and album. Their words would never reach the true citizens of the internet.."
And so, Syntax provides a honest reflection of what pre-capitalist internet.“So we go back to the blog. Repurpose the zine. We’re sending our reply using the grammar of the internet.”
01 05 24
,
[017]
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Artistic Research
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies presents the reader with a variety of digital methodologies to help build skills in searching for, analyzing, and discussing vintage design, photography, and writing on fashion, as well as historic and ethnographic dress and textile objects themselves. Each chapter focuses upon a different method, problem, or research site, including:
- Maximalism and mixed-methods approaches to research - Searching large databases effectively - Pattern recognition and visual searching. - Critical reading, use, and citation of social media texts - Digital ethnography and shopping as research - Data visualization and mapping - Images in the public domain
From advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students working on research projects to veteran professionals in fashion and textile history and beyond, everyone can benefit from a diverse set of fresh approaches to conducting and disseminating research. In the current age of instant gratification, with users snapping and posting images from runway shows long before the clothes will ever appear instores, the world of fashion is increasingly digital and fast-paced. Research on fashion is, too. Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies will help you keep up in this rapidly changing world.
22 04 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
Fashion, New Media, Language
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
23 04 24
,
[015]
Interdependence FM
Collaboration
speculative
Artificial Intelligence, Techno-social, Virtual reality
In an age where global events, technologies, and cultures are increasingly intertwined, the Interdependence FM podcast explores the intricate web of connections shaping our world. While the hosts talk to artists and experts in the field of AI (and beyond) and are mainly positive about the 21st century, it becomes clear that understanding the concept of interdependence has never been more crucial.
01 05 24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[051]
Towards A Minor Tech (Peer-reviewed newspaper)
Collaboration
critical
Following a process of open exchanges and a three-day research workshop in London, at London South Bank University and King’s College, London, this publication brings together researchers who address the problems of technological scale, thinking through the potentials of 'the minor'; or what we are referring to as minor (or minority) tech – small tech that operates at human scale (more peer to peer than server-client) and stutters in its expression and application. As Marloes de Valk puts it in the Damaged Earth Catalog: “Small technology, smallnet and smolnet are associated with communities using alternative network infrastructures, delinking from the commercial Internet.” As such, the publication sets out to question the universal ideals of technology and its problems of scale, extending it to follow the three main characteristics identified in Deleuze and Guattari's essay (Toward a Minor Literature), namely deterritorialization, political immediacy, and collective value.
“we're exploring how technological scale sets conditions for relations, feelings, democratic processes, and infrastructures.”
22.11.24
[012]
Mission Accomplished: Belanciege
Collaboration
politics
Fashion, Critique
Trafó Gallery, photo by Dávid Biró
Hito Steyerl "Mission Accomplished: BELANCIEGE" is part of the exhibition "… of bread, wine, cars, security and peace". The point of departure for the three-channel video installation is the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and how this historical event paved the way for commodification and privatization. The artists turn to the field of fashion, using the luxury brand Balenciaga as an example to reflect on political and cultural changes in the period of the last thirty years. The video installation MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE presented at Trafó Gallery reveals similar ’invasions’ of history and emphasizes their cyclical nature by turning towards the processes of economic and political realignment that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and by featuring examples that target our hyper-contemporary world armed with trend analysis, data mining, political advertising and audience targeting.
The video installation is co-created by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl and Miloš Trakilović and is based on their lecture in 2019 at n.b.k. - Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Almost 30 years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lecture reflects on post-1989 transformations and political rearrangements in the former Soviet territories, sheds light on the interconnections between culture and populism, and examines in a broader context the mechanisms of oligarchic-capitalist culture that emerged during the 'privatisation' of the former Eastern bloc.
01 05 24
[040]
Scroll, Skim, Stare
Individual
critical
Authorship, Critique
This essay critiques the static nature of artists' websites, proposing that they could be more dynamic and innovative. Gat argues for these sites to function as online exhibition spaces, offering unique and creative ways to present and control art, enhancing the digital art experience.
Orit Gat’s essay “Scroll, Skim, Stare” in *The White Review* explores the evolving role of artists' websites in the contemporary digital landscape. Gat argues that while the internet has transformed art consumption, the design of artists' websites often remains static and uninspired. She suggests that these sites could be more dynamic, serving as online exhibition spaces that challenge the traditional gallery format. Gat emphasizes the potential for artists to leverage their websites to present and control their work uniquely and creatively, thus reshaping the visual culture of the internet.
03 07 24
,
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
,
[003]
The Cell for Digital Discomfort (CfDD)
Collective
critical
Techno-social
Formed as part of the 2021/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, the Cell for Digital Discomfort (CfDD)—composed of Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha—are the guest editors of this special Prospections focus “Digital Discomfort,” a compilation of newly commissioned and archival resources such as texts, interviews, and videos that allow for a collective exploration of sensibilities around an affirmative repoliticization and redefinition of compu-relational practice.
23 04 24
[018]
Figuring Things out Together
Individual
critical
Agency, Techno-social
This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities‘ resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships.Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance ‘teamwork’, ‘the commons’, or ‘cooperativism’, are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.
“This publication derives from an enthusiasm for the various ways collective learning environments take shape. It grew out of a curiosity for the ways that such practices are shared across different localities, timelines, and experiences.”
05 06 24
[031]
A Website is a Room
Individual
autonomous
Techno-social
A-website-is-a-room.net is a little handmade web space that features a live feed of urls of a similar sentiment, anonymously contributed by fellow internet travelers. This site is the distillation of extensive research, conversations, and experiments around alternative web practices, decentralized networks, and online gathering.
The goal was to make something communal, romantic, introspective, raw, and beautiful. I also really wanted to dive deep into the research, and in that process, discovered a whole world of like-minded people, learned about new and old tools, and drew unexpected connections between different artists, designers, and their works.
23 04 24
[022]
Pirate Care, a syllabus
Collective
critical
Care, Digital culture, Techno-social
Pirate Care is a research process - primarily based in the transnational European space - that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”, which in new and interesting ways are trying to intervene in one of the most important challenges of our time, that is, the ‘crisis of care’ in all its multiple and interconnected dimensions.
These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges. Often they act disobediently in expressed non-compliance with laws, regulations and executive orders that ciriminalise the duty of care by imposing exclusions along the lines of class, gender, race or territory. They are not shying risk of persecution in providing unconditional solidarity to those who are the most exploited, discriminated against and condemned to the status of disposable populations.
The Pirate Care Syllabus presents here for the first time is a tool for supporting and activating collective processes of learning from these practices.“We live in a world where captains get arrested for saving people’s lives on the sea; where a person downloading scientific articles faces 35 years in jail; where people risk charges for bringing contraceptives to those who otherwise couldn’t get them. Folks are getting in trouble for giving food to the poor, medicine to the sick, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless. And yet our heroines care and disobey. They are pirates.”
01 05 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
22.11.24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
[061]
Gossamer Press
Individual
autonomous
Feminism, Crafts, Technology
Gossamer Press by Lejla Vala Verheus
Gossamer Press, a micro-publishing platform, intertwines female-driven textile crafts with digital realms, adopting annon-linear approach akin to navigating a web. Exploring concepts like 'Warp,' 'Weft,' and 'Gap,' it connects physical and digital realms, uncovering hidden narratives and challenging historical erasure, presenting a dynamic view of interconnected webs.
GP is founded by Lejla Vala Verheus and is part of an ongoing research on open-source methodologies in textile craft and the digital realm, drawing upon her background as a critical fashion practitioner and graphic designer. By rediscovering overlooked codes and relationships, questioning traditional publishing methods, and blending fashion with printed media, Lejla aims to create new narratives in the fashion realm.
05 09 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[071]
Memestrilism
Individual
critical
Feminism, Digital culture, Diaspora
Memestrilism is a term made up of "meme" and "minstrelsy" used to describe minstrel-like behaviours, trends and creations in digital spaces. Produced by artist Ama Ogwo as part of the first Feminist Internet Residency, the film critically examines how racism persists in the digital age, paralleling contemporary online representations of blackness with historical racist imagery. Using found footage from social media and 20th-century minstrel shows, Ogwo collapses time to reveal how the ventriloquism of blackness online mirrors and reinvents what minstrelsy looks like today.
The concept of Memestrilism offers a critical lens on the current online zeitgeist, particularly in fashion, by highlighting how cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping continue to manifest in digital spaces. In fashion, the commodification of black culture often intersects with the 'meme economy' of social media, where trends are amplified, decontextualised and stripped of their origins for mass consumption.
The digital landscape thrives on 'hypervisibility', where cultural markers are presented as bold statements, but often lack the necessary cultural nuance. Often Black cultural expressions - hairstyles, clothing styles, linguistic expressions and aesthetics - are showcased through influencers or memes that gain widespread appeal, often without reference to their roots. This parallels historical minstrelsy, where black identity was caricatured and exploited for entertainment. The digital age exacerbates this by enabling the rapid dissemination and monetisation of these trends, further blurring the line between homage and exploitation.
Ogwo's exploration of memestrilism not only critiques, but also reflects the larger conversations taking place in digital fashion spaces about authenticity, representation and the ethics of appropriation in a globalised, meme-driven culture.
20 11 24
,
[028]
A Guide To Softer Ware
Collaboration
experimental
Gender, Materiality, Weaving
A Guide To Softer Ware is a collaborative exploration of contemporary and not-so-contemporary languages of instruction in the context of “womanhood”, calling out their binary notions of gender designation as a social construct. Through analysing their own behavior as socialised women, and simultaneously analysing guides by women addressing other women about how to be a woman, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp expose the idea of the manual as a (self-)imposed directive, trapped between the imperative to be unconditionally affirmed and the need to be in charge of one’s own narrative.
The format of the manual is used here as a rhetorical construct that explores how the social roles of women have been impacted by the rise of new technologies from the second half of the 20th century until now. With their shared background ranging from (type-)design to creative coding, Charlotte Rohde and Vera van de Seyp (quite literally) deconstruct and reprogramme these languages of instruction: From the wording used in 1960s technical manuals for sewing machines, knitting machines and various domestic appliances addressing women as a new target group to Memes and YouTube tutorials as a phenomenon representing the contemporary internet culture of self-optimization.
With their Guide To Softer Ware the two artists reflect on the supposed need for guidance and the forms this guidance has historically taken and still takes. The exhibition at soft power presents new works by the two artists that may function as a manual for the spectators and simultaneously as type specimens. The use of tools and typography, soap and metal, software and code (and ultimately, the use of the body itself), invites us to question the „softness“ historically/conventionally/subconsciously assigned to certain materials and spaces, to gender and its construction.
23 04 24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
,
[010]
Leonardo Dellanoce, Amal Khalaf, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Nanjala Nyabola, Renée Roukens, Arthur Steiner, Mi You
Vertical Atlas
Collaboration
social
Climate, Techno-social
How to navigate the rapidly changing digital geopolitics of the world today? How do we make sense of digital transformation and its many social, political, cultural, and environmental implications at different locations around the world?
Vertical Atlas brings together the insights of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, scientists and technologists from different backgrounds and places. From an investigation into the lithium mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to maps of the fiber-optic submarine cables in the Atlantic and the ride-hailing platforms of China.
Vertical Atlas is not a classic atlas that depicts the world in a uniform manner and it is not a simple collection of traditional maps. This book is a tool that enables comparisons, connections and contradictions between different and diverse visions, realities and worlds – through newly commissioned diagrams, interviews, essays and works of art by leading experts from around the world.
30 04 24
[031]
A Website is a Room
Individual
autonomous
Techno-social
A-website-is-a-room.net is a little handmade web space that features a live feed of urls of a similar sentiment, anonymously contributed by fellow internet travelers. This site is the distillation of extensive research, conversations, and experiments around alternative web practices, decentralized networks, and online gathering.
The goal was to make something communal, romantic, introspective, raw, and beautiful. I also really wanted to dive deep into the research, and in that process, discovered a whole world of like-minded people, learned about new and old tools, and drew unexpected connections between different artists, designers, and their works.
23 04 24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[053]
⤴
Making Manifest: Feminist Publishing Practices
31.08.24
22.11.24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
22.11.24
[006]
Extending Horizons: The Praxis of Experimental Publishing in the Age of Digital Networks
Individual
critical
Publishing, Network(s), Community
This dissertation is focused on the practices of experimental publishing that are intertwined with digital and networked technology, and borrow strategies derived from the context of arts and design. In order to build a model of interpretation of such practices, Lorusso defined a theoretical framework, made an overview of influential perspectives within the field, and carried out an investigation of the ‘communities of practice’ in which experimental publishing takes place. Lorusso analyzes a phenomenology of projects that highlight the characteristics of an experimental approach in each specific stage of the publishing process. Finally, I developed an online archive for the purpose of categorizing and connecting the different case studies. The main question addressed is:
05 06 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
,
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[022]
Pirate Care, a syllabus
Collective
critical
Care, Digital culture, Techno-social
Pirate Care is a research process - primarily based in the transnational European space - that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”, which in new and interesting ways are trying to intervene in one of the most important challenges of our time, that is, the ‘crisis of care’ in all its multiple and interconnected dimensions.
These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges. Often they act disobediently in expressed non-compliance with laws, regulations and executive orders that ciriminalise the duty of care by imposing exclusions along the lines of class, gender, race or territory. They are not shying risk of persecution in providing unconditional solidarity to those who are the most exploited, discriminated against and condemned to the status of disposable populations.
The Pirate Care Syllabus presents here for the first time is a tool for supporting and activating collective processes of learning from these practices.“We live in a world where captains get arrested for saving people’s lives on the sea; where a person downloading scientific articles faces 35 years in jail; where people risk charges for bringing contraceptives to those who otherwise couldn’t get them. Folks are getting in trouble for giving food to the poor, medicine to the sick, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless. And yet our heroines care and disobey. They are pirates.”
01 05 24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[021]
Networked Worlds
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture
‘Networked Worlds’ focuses on worlding as a creative strategy in the early 21st century. As a response to the multiple crises of our time – a crisis of reality, agency and traditional sensemaking structures – worlding is an emergent creative practice of re-imagining and prototyping alternative futures.
Hyper aware of the rules and power structures of dominant narratives and infrastructures, worlding has become a vital strategy for artists and creatives to experiment with alternative futures and render the conditions of the present visible in order to change them. Worlding as such is different from worldbuilding. While the latter has been established by writers, directors, set designers in creating believable imaginary worlds (think Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or the Marvel Universe), worlding signifies the continuous, ever-evolving, collaborative effort of making worlds emerge rather than creating a closed universe by an individual master creator.
Networked Worlds is the third part of Networked Culture, a series of publications that explore the effects of networked technologies on the creative process. The previous two memos of the series are Networked Counterculture (2023) and Networked Reality (2023).“Worldbuilding is a means to resist complacency and categorization; an affirmation that one can draw new borders (or ends) and declare new logics for life.”
02 04 24
,
[015]
Interdependence FM
Collaboration
speculative
Artificial Intelligence, Techno-social, Virtual reality
In an age where global events, technologies, and cultures are increasingly intertwined, the Interdependence FM podcast explores the intricate web of connections shaping our world. While the hosts talk to artists and experts in the field of AI (and beyond) and are mainly positive about the 21st century, it becomes clear that understanding the concept of interdependence has never been more crucial.
01 05 24
[036]
GIRLSTACK
Individual
speculative
Feminism, Techno-social, Identity
image by siir bicer
Building on the ideas of Tiqqun’s 1999 anti-neoliberal treatise Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females and Bogna Konior’s work on the girl and the inhuman vis-a-vis the machinic, Quicho has developed a concept she calls the “Girlstack,” which, to borrow her words, models the “ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the girl’s natural habitat.” Quicho articulates how the ‘girl’ inhabits no one person, body, or gender. She is a technology of subjectivity composed of symbolic, consumer, and inhuman elements and might be our only way out of the platform trap. Quicho's reformulation of 'the stack' was first published as an essay on Wired and expanded at BODYSTACK and Creamcake 3HD.
Quicho’s girl-stack is a speculative prototype models themany dimensions of the girl’s natural online habitat. To be clear: Quicho does not speak of actual girls or the experience of lived girlhood, but a socially constructed ideation of the girl. So, the girl as a vehicle for selling product, the girl as a tool for manipulating entrenched power, the girl as living currency, and the girl as desiring machine. The model is imperative for understanding the environment that produces the ‘girl as condition’.
30 04 24
[003]
The Cell for Digital Discomfort (CfDD)
Collective
critical
Techno-social
Formed as part of the 2021/2022 BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice, the Cell for Digital Discomfort (CfDD)—composed of Cristina Cochior, Karl Moubarak, and Jara Rocha—are the guest editors of this special Prospections focus “Digital Discomfort,” a compilation of newly commissioned and archival resources such as texts, interviews, and videos that allow for a collective exploration of sensibilities around an affirmative repoliticization and redefinition of compu-relational practice.
23 04 24
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
22.11.24
[032]
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Individual
critical
Feminism, Gender, Digital culture
A new manifesto in cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology.
The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create solidarity?
The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates. The glitch offers the opportunity for us to perform and transform ourselves in an infinite variety of identities. In Glitch Feminism, Russell makes a series of radical demands through memoir, art and critical theory, and the work of contemporary artists who have travelled through the glitch in their work. Glitch Feminism shows how the error can be a revolution.“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance.”
20 11 24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
[039]
The SSENSE of Authenticity
Individual
critical
Authorship, Digital culture
In "the ssense of authenticity" writer Nabi Williams explores the concept of authenticity in the digital age, particularly through analyzing the canadian fashion e-tailer ssense and its popular Instagram account. posting daily on the social media platform, ssense draws from contemporary culture through its use of language, image layout, and cultural references to create promotional content that exists on the thin line between “authentic meme” and marketing material. by investigating this account and social media’s impact on how authenticity is manufactured, communicated, and perceived, this thesis traces how the concept of authenticity has evolved and argues that we now live in a “post-authentic” world, where storytelling and the “authentically inauthentic” reign supreme in place of sincerity and reality.
“The reality is that “authenticity” holds no value. But then again, who wants to engage in reality?”
04 09 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
,
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[068]
ŠUM#22 Angel Mode
Collaboration
philosophy
Agency, Post-human, Techno-social
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
The journal ŠUM#22 – Angel Mode explores themes in contemporary art, theory, and speculative fiction. Key articles include topics such as online identities, accelerationist philosophy, the concept of "angelic sexuality," and reinterpretations of faith and love in the digital age. Contributors like Bogna Konior and Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix discuss theoretical frameworks connecting cyberculture and philosophy. The issue is edited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha.
The Angel Mode Issue explores the intersection of online aesthetics and identities, focusing on the "angel" as a symbol for transcendent, hyper-feminine personas. This ties into ongoing online discourse of femininity, vulnerability, and performance, often communicated through ethereal-esque aesthetics, cyberpunk references, and soft romanticism style write-ups. The "angel" metaphor also critiques our roles in cybernetic systems, where humans act as conduits for larger external forces. Embracing this mode reflects a shift from individuality toward alignment with overarching digital and 'transcendental' patterns.
“As human agency erodes, faced with singularity and extinction, the figure of “the girl (on the internet)” is on the rise. In the new issue of Šum we explore how this surrender of agency mediates (human) history itself.”
15 11 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[056]
Screen Walks
Collaboration
experimental
Screen Walks < website design by UNSTATED, Leonardo Angelucci >
In Screen Walks, a series of live-streamed explorations of digital spaces, selected artists and researchers investigate artistic strategies taking place online. The project gives an insight into practices using the screen as a medium. Artists, curators and researchers are invited to perform live-streamed explorations of the digital spaces where their core practice takes place. Every Screen Walk is different, as the guest artists of the programme share their screen and walk the viewers through their work, as a desktop performance of sorts. From re-contextualising imagery found on online marketplaces and uncovering data brokers’ invisible circulation of images to analysing in-game photography and the social, political and economic implications of games – Screen Walks examines various approaches, offers a behind-the-scenes look at artists' work and uncovers new, current and forgotten digital spaces.
Screen Walks is a collaborative project by Fotomuseum Winterthur and The Photographers' Gallery, investigating the changing role of the photographic image in its networked and digital forms.
“Fostering cultural exchange and institutional collaboration, Screen Walks aims to engage with discourses and practices generated by a wide range of practitioners. All live-streamed events are freely accessible, regularly archived and openly.”
22.11.24
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
Fashion, New Media, Language
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
23 04 24
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Fashion, Language, New Media
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
10 10 24
[023]
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information
Individual
politics
Algorithm, Visual culture, New Media
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 - Cover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 Backcover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
The Superstorm is a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which culminated in the tempestuous Western political visual culture of today. Within this vortex, complex and unexpected events occur, where politics is mixed with entertainment and communication is hyper-mediated through algorithms, memes and alternative realities.
As politicians refine marketing techniques applied to the electorate and online users become political trendsetters, designers face an impasse. But not all is lost in the Superstorm. Surprisingly, it might precisely be this uncertain future that holds the key for designers to question and reformulate their role and purpose within the political sphere.
In her first book Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, Noemi Biasetton traces the development of the Superstorm from the 1960s to the present and proposes new coordinates that designers may consider on in order to, eventually, face its relentless evolution.
22 04 24
,
[023]
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information
Individual
politics
Algorithm, Visual culture, New Media
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 - Cover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 Backcover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
The Superstorm is a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which culminated in the tempestuous Western political visual culture of today. Within this vortex, complex and unexpected events occur, where politics is mixed with entertainment and communication is hyper-mediated through algorithms, memes and alternative realities.
As politicians refine marketing techniques applied to the electorate and online users become political trendsetters, designers face an impasse. But not all is lost in the Superstorm. Surprisingly, it might precisely be this uncertain future that holds the key for designers to question and reformulate their role and purpose within the political sphere.
In her first book Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, Noemi Biasetton traces the development of the Superstorm from the 1960s to the present and proposes new coordinates that designers may consider on in order to, eventually, face its relentless evolution.
22 04 24
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
22.11.24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Fashion, Capitalism
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
30 10 24
,
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[010]
Leonardo Dellanoce, Amal Khalaf, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Nanjala Nyabola, Renée Roukens, Arthur Steiner, Mi You
Vertical Atlas
Collaboration
social
Climate, Techno-social
How to navigate the rapidly changing digital geopolitics of the world today? How do we make sense of digital transformation and its many social, political, cultural, and environmental implications at different locations around the world?
Vertical Atlas brings together the insights of a diverse group of internationally renowned artists, scientists and technologists from different backgrounds and places. From an investigation into the lithium mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to maps of the fiber-optic submarine cables in the Atlantic and the ride-hailing platforms of China.
Vertical Atlas is not a classic atlas that depicts the world in a uniform manner and it is not a simple collection of traditional maps. This book is a tool that enables comparisons, connections and contradictions between different and diverse visions, realities and worlds – through newly commissioned diagrams, interviews, essays and works of art by leading experts from around the world.
30 04 24
[031]
A Website is a Room
Individual
autonomous
Techno-social
A-website-is-a-room.net is a little handmade web space that features a live feed of urls of a similar sentiment, anonymously contributed by fellow internet travelers. This site is the distillation of extensive research, conversations, and experiments around alternative web practices, decentralized networks, and online gathering.
The goal was to make something communal, romantic, introspective, raw, and beautiful. I also really wanted to dive deep into the research, and in that process, discovered a whole world of like-minded people, learned about new and old tools, and drew unexpected connections between different artists, designers, and their works.
23 04 24
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
,
[056]
Screen Walks
Collaboration
experimental
New Media, Visual culture
Screen Walks < website design by UNSTATED, Leonardo Angelucci >
In Screen Walks, a series of live-streamed explorations of digital spaces, selected artists and researchers investigate artistic strategies taking place online. The project gives an insight into practices using the screen as a medium. Artists, curators and researchers are invited to perform live-streamed explorations of the digital spaces where their core practice takes place. Every Screen Walk is different, as the guest artists of the programme share their screen and walk the viewers through their work, as a desktop performance of sorts. From re-contextualising imagery found on online marketplaces and uncovering data brokers’ invisible circulation of images to analysing in-game photography and the social, political and economic implications of games – Screen Walks examines various approaches, offers a behind-the-scenes look at artists' work and uncovers new, current and forgotten digital spaces.
Screen Walks is a collaborative project by Fotomuseum Winterthur and The Photographers' Gallery, investigating the changing role of the photographic image in its networked and digital forms.
“Fostering cultural exchange and institutional collaboration, Screen Walks aims to engage with discourses and practices generated by a wide range of practitioners. All live-streamed events are freely accessible, regularly archived and openly.”
04 09 24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
[023]
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information
Individual
politics
Algorithm, Visual culture, New Media
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 - Cover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 Backcover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
The Superstorm is a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which culminated in the tempestuous Western political visual culture of today. Within this vortex, complex and unexpected events occur, where politics is mixed with entertainment and communication is hyper-mediated through algorithms, memes and alternative realities.
As politicians refine marketing techniques applied to the electorate and online users become political trendsetters, designers face an impasse. But not all is lost in the Superstorm. Surprisingly, it might precisely be this uncertain future that holds the key for designers to question and reformulate their role and purpose within the political sphere.
In her first book Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, Noemi Biasetton traces the development of the Superstorm from the 1960s to the present and proposes new coordinates that designers may consider on in order to, eventually, face its relentless evolution.
22 04 24
[058]
Whole Earth Index
Collaboration
social
Here lies a nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1968 and 2002. They are made available here for scholarship, education, and research purposes. The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, “do it yourself,” and holism, featuring the slogan “access to tools.”
Whole Earth published a number of singular publications throughout its run focused on topical themes, or containing content from aligned organizations. Often these volumes reprinted articles from prior Whole Earth perodical journals, supplemented with new content. And, while the entire archive is insightful and lives up to its “access to tools, ideas, and practices” byline, side projects like 'The Whole Earth Software Catalog' deserve special attention. Originally proposed by John Brockman as a magazine which “would do for computing what the original had done for the counterculture: identify and recommend the best tools as they emerged”, it seems to have been to ahead of its time. The first issue was released in the Fall of 1984. The Whole Earth Software Catalog was a business failure, however, and was only published twice, with only three of the Whole Earth Software Review supplements published. If we were to position this publication in the here and now, it would most likely belong to the niche digital networks that are sprouting from spaces such as are.na and the handmade web.
“Soft Tech is a term we’ve used and defended since the late sixties. Soft signifies that something is alive, resilient, adaptive, maybe even lovable.”
22.11.24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[068]
ŠUM#22 Angel Mode
Collaboration
philosophy
Agency, Post-human, Techno-social
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
The journal ŠUM#22 – Angel Mode explores themes in contemporary art, theory, and speculative fiction. Key articles include topics such as online identities, accelerationist philosophy, the concept of "angelic sexuality," and reinterpretations of faith and love in the digital age. Contributors like Bogna Konior and Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix discuss theoretical frameworks connecting cyberculture and philosophy. The issue is edited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha.
The Angel Mode Issue explores the intersection of online aesthetics and identities, focusing on the "angel" as a symbol for transcendent, hyper-feminine personas. This ties into ongoing online discourse of femininity, vulnerability, and performance, often communicated through ethereal-esque aesthetics, cyberpunk references, and soft romanticism style write-ups. The "angel" metaphor also critiques our roles in cybernetic systems, where humans act as conduits for larger external forces. Embracing this mode reflects a shift from individuality toward alignment with overarching digital and 'transcendental' patterns.
“As human agency erodes, faced with singularity and extinction, the figure of “the girl (on the internet)” is on the rise. In the new issue of Šum we explore how this surrender of agency mediates (human) history itself.”
15 11 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
[059]
Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544887/autotheory-as-feminist-practice-in-art-writing-and-criticism/
Individual
critical
In the 2010s, the term “autotheory” began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.
Fournier argues that the autotheoretical turn signals the tenuousness of illusory separations between art and life, theory and practice, work and the self—divisions long blurred by feminist artists and scholars. Autotheory challenges dominant approaches to philosophizing and theorizing while enabling new ways for artists and writers to reflect on their lives. She argues that Kraus's 1997 I Love Dick marked the emergence of a newly performative, post-memoir “I”; recasts Piper's 1971 performance work Food for the Spirit as autotheory; considers autotheory as critique; examines practices of citation in autotheoretical work, including Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts; and looks at the aesthetics and ethics of disclosure and exposure, exploring the nuanced feminist politics around autotheoretical practices and such movements as #MeToo. Fournier formulates autotheory as a reflexive movement, connecting thinking, making art, living, and theorizing.
“Autotheory—the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography—as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism.”
22.11.24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
Authorship, Agency
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
01 05 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[019]
Syntax Magazine
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture, Publishing, Authorship
Syntax is an online magazine using the grammar of the internet. The editors letter of Syntax's first edition reads:
"Digital media promised us new modes of reading. Instead, we got sound bites and “which One Direction member should you date” quizzes. Scrolling online became an experiment in self-defense: we’re bombarded by paywalls and pop-up ads, lured by A/B tested headlines and microtrend pieces. [...] But no one writes how we read. In chat rooms, comment sections, forums, personal blogs. The video essay, the playlist, Tumblr collage—these forms are as familiar to us as the novel, film, and album. Their words would never reach the true citizens of the internet.."
And so, Syntax provides a honest reflection of what pre-capitalist internet.“So we go back to the blog. Repurpose the zine. We’re sending our reply using the grammar of the internet.”
01 05 24
[039]
The SSENSE of Authenticity
Individual
critical
Authorship, Digital culture
In "the ssense of authenticity" writer Nabi Williams explores the concept of authenticity in the digital age, particularly through analyzing the canadian fashion e-tailer ssense and its popular Instagram account. posting daily on the social media platform, ssense draws from contemporary culture through its use of language, image layout, and cultural references to create promotional content that exists on the thin line between “authentic meme” and marketing material. by investigating this account and social media’s impact on how authenticity is manufactured, communicated, and perceived, this thesis traces how the concept of authenticity has evolved and argues that we now live in a “post-authentic” world, where storytelling and the “authentically inauthentic” reign supreme in place of sincerity and reality.
“The reality is that “authenticity” holds no value. But then again, who wants to engage in reality?”
04 09 24
,
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[002]
Cyberfeminism Index
Individual
critical
Feminism, Cybernetics, Techno-social
Cyberfeminism Index by Mindy Seu
In Cyberfeminism Index, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. When learning about internet history, we are taught to focus on engineering, the military-industrial complex, and the grandfathers who created the architecture and protocol, but the internet is not only a network of cables, servers, and computers. It is an environment that shapes and is shaped by its inhabitants and their use.
The creation and use of the Cyberfeminism Index is a social and political act. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight. Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art.
Both a vital introduction for laypeople and a robust resource guide for educators, Cyberfeminism Index—an anti-canon, of sorts—celebrates the multiplicity of practices that fall under this imperfect categorization and makes visible cyberfeminism’s long-ignored origins and its expansive legacy.
“the Cyberfeminism Index is incomplete and always in progress..”
22 03 24
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
22.11.24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[037]
Notes on Phygitality
Collaboration
speculative
Phygital, Fashion, Techno-social
Published in Issue#6 of NXS Magazine ‘Phygital Fashioning’, ‘Notes on Phygitality’ documents an asynchronous dialogue held in the spring of 2022.
The conversation delves into the concept of "phygitality," blending physical and digital realms. They explore its implications, noting, "It’s about how you can interface between the physical and the digital." Discussions encompass the fusion's impact on human interaction voicing that we have more freedom to express ourselves. Ethical dimensions are scrutinized: "We need to be careful about what that [digital footprint] means." The dialogue reflects on art, privacy concerns, and the intricate interplay shaping future socio-technological landscapes.
01 05 24
[035]
Fashion Knowledge Podcast
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Technology
Fashion Knowledge is a podcast about inclusive, sustainable, and digital fashion futures. Beata Wilczek, founder and director at Unfolding Strategies, a fashion consultancy and edu lab for fashion in Web3, hosts new and brave voices in fashion innovation, design, research, and education, to learn more about digital fashion and sustainability.
23 04 24
,
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
Fashion, New Media, Language
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
23 04 24
,
[056]
Screen Walks
Collaboration
experimental
New Media, Visual culture
Screen Walks < website design by UNSTATED, Leonardo Angelucci >
In Screen Walks, a series of live-streamed explorations of digital spaces, selected artists and researchers investigate artistic strategies taking place online. The project gives an insight into practices using the screen as a medium. Artists, curators and researchers are invited to perform live-streamed explorations of the digital spaces where their core practice takes place. Every Screen Walk is different, as the guest artists of the programme share their screen and walk the viewers through their work, as a desktop performance of sorts. From re-contextualising imagery found on online marketplaces and uncovering data brokers’ invisible circulation of images to analysing in-game photography and the social, political and economic implications of games – Screen Walks examines various approaches, offers a behind-the-scenes look at artists' work and uncovers new, current and forgotten digital spaces.
Screen Walks is a collaborative project by Fotomuseum Winterthur and The Photographers' Gallery, investigating the changing role of the photographic image in its networked and digital forms.
“Fostering cultural exchange and institutional collaboration, Screen Walks aims to engage with discourses and practices generated by a wide range of practitioners. All live-streamed events are freely accessible, regularly archived and openly.”
04 09 24
[023]
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information
Individual
politics
Algorithm, Visual culture, New Media
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 - Cover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 Backcover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
The Superstorm is a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which culminated in the tempestuous Western political visual culture of today. Within this vortex, complex and unexpected events occur, where politics is mixed with entertainment and communication is hyper-mediated through algorithms, memes and alternative realities.
As politicians refine marketing techniques applied to the electorate and online users become political trendsetters, designers face an impasse. But not all is lost in the Superstorm. Surprisingly, it might precisely be this uncertain future that holds the key for designers to question and reformulate their role and purpose within the political sphere.
In her first book Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, Noemi Biasetton traces the development of the Superstorm from the 1960s to the present and proposes new coordinates that designers may consider on in order to, eventually, face its relentless evolution.
22 04 24
[027]
Fashion Paratext Dataset
Collaboration
critical
Fashion, New Media, Language
The FASHION PARATEXT DATASET focuses on the collection and analysis of fashion captions within contemporary fashion media. Although often overseen and rendered subordinate, these paratextual snippets of text-such as titles, introductions and captions-work as strategic value producers within fashion media and shape our fashion narratives and vocabulary. Accordingly, these textual elements play an important role in our relation to fashion and clothes as readers, wearers, makers and consumers. Through its dominance and vast networks, industrial market-based fashion language is becoming our fashion mother tongue. And as professor of applied linguistics Robert B. Kaplan writes, our first language, or mother tongue has a powerful influence on the way we shape our thoughts and organise our ideas.
Using data science methods, this project collaboratively produces a large-scale dataset of fashion captions that can be mapped and analysed using Natural Language Processing. The dataset takes the captions out of the saturated pages of fashion media (both print and online), offering the opportunity to read them attentively, isolated from their original context. As such, it can open up space to think about an alternative vocabulary.
“This website explores the unique poetic character of fashion captions, and text in general of its media systems.”
23 04 24
[061]
Gossamer Press
Individual
autonomous
Gossamer Press by Lejla Vala Verheus
Gossamer Press, a micro-publishing platform, intertwines female-driven textile crafts with digital realms, adopting annon-linear approach akin to navigating a web. Exploring concepts like 'Warp,' 'Weft,' and 'Gap,' it connects physical and digital realms, uncovering hidden narratives and challenging historical erasure, presenting a dynamic view of interconnected webs.
GP is founded by Lejla Vala Verheus and is part of an ongoing research on open-source methodologies in textile craft and the digital realm, drawing upon her background as a critical fashion practitioner and graphic designer. By rediscovering overlooked codes and relationships, questioning traditional publishing methods, and blending fashion with printed media, Lejla aims to create new narratives in the fashion realm.
22.11.24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
[071]
Memestrilism
Individual
critical
Feminism, Digital culture, Diaspora
Memestrilism is a term made up of "meme" and "minstrelsy" used to describe minstrel-like behaviours, trends and creations in digital spaces. Produced by artist Ama Ogwo as part of the first Feminist Internet Residency, the film critically examines how racism persists in the digital age, paralleling contemporary online representations of blackness with historical racist imagery. Using found footage from social media and 20th-century minstrel shows, Ogwo collapses time to reveal how the ventriloquism of blackness online mirrors and reinvents what minstrelsy looks like today.
The concept of Memestrilism offers a critical lens on the current online zeitgeist, particularly in fashion, by highlighting how cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping continue to manifest in digital spaces. In fashion, the commodification of black culture often intersects with the 'meme economy' of social media, where trends are amplified, decontextualised and stripped of their origins for mass consumption.
The digital landscape thrives on 'hypervisibility', where cultural markers are presented as bold statements, but often lack the necessary cultural nuance. Often Black cultural expressions - hairstyles, clothing styles, linguistic expressions and aesthetics - are showcased through influencers or memes that gain widespread appeal, often without reference to their roots. This parallels historical minstrelsy, where black identity was caricatured and exploited for entertainment. The digital age exacerbates this by enabling the rapid dissemination and monetisation of these trends, further blurring the line between homage and exploitation.
Ogwo's exploration of memestrilism not only critiques, but also reflects the larger conversations taking place in digital fashion spaces about authenticity, representation and the ethics of appropriation in a globalised, meme-driven culture.
20 11 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
,
[035]
Fashion Knowledge Podcast
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Technology
Fashion Knowledge is a podcast about inclusive, sustainable, and digital fashion futures. Beata Wilczek, founder and director at Unfolding Strategies, a fashion consultancy and edu lab for fashion in Web3, hosts new and brave voices in fashion innovation, design, research, and education, to learn more about digital fashion and sustainability.
23 04 24
[064]
A Rant About “Technology”
Individual
critical
Technology
In A Rant About Technology, Ursula K. Le Guin explores society's near-obsession with technology, suggesting that we often glorify new gadgets and tools at the expense of deeper human values such as creativity, compassion and wisdom. She argues that while technology can be helpful, we should question its role and avoid making it a substitute for meaningful, humane experiences. Le Guin advocates a balanced perspective, encouraging us to value technology without allowing it to define or control us.
““Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn't “hi,” isn’t necessarily '“low” in any meaningful sense.”
29 10 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[001]
What even is Fashion Technology
Individual
autonomous
Fashion, Technology
A podcast discussing the latest news, innovations and trends shaping the future of fashion.
23 04 24
[062]
⤴
ITERATIONS: Creative Coding Symposium
06.12.24
22.11.24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
22.11.24
[044]
Transactional Aesthetics
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Aesthetics
da Falck Øien explores the emotional relationships humans have with their garments and how acquisition methods influence these relationships. The research, conducted from 2017 to 2021, involves ethnographic studies, collaboration with a fashion label, public engagement through a physical space, and the creation of publications and products. Øien aims to address the environmental impact of the fashion industry by rethinking resource use and consumer behavior, emphasizing fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon beyond mere clothing items.
04 09 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[026]
“Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Feminism, Fashion
In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption.
This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.”
01 05 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
,
[021]
Networked Worlds
Collaboration
experimental
Digital culture
‘Networked Worlds’ focuses on worlding as a creative strategy in the early 21st century. As a response to the multiple crises of our time – a crisis of reality, agency and traditional sensemaking structures – worlding is an emergent creative practice of re-imagining and prototyping alternative futures.
Hyper aware of the rules and power structures of dominant narratives and infrastructures, worlding has become a vital strategy for artists and creatives to experiment with alternative futures and render the conditions of the present visible in order to change them. Worlding as such is different from worldbuilding. While the latter has been established by writers, directors, set designers in creating believable imaginary worlds (think Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or the Marvel Universe), worlding signifies the continuous, ever-evolving, collaborative effort of making worlds emerge rather than creating a closed universe by an individual master creator.
Networked Worlds is the third part of Networked Culture, a series of publications that explore the effects of networked technologies on the creative process. The previous two memos of the series are Networked Counterculture (2023) and Networked Reality (2023).“Worldbuilding is a means to resist complacency and categorization; an affirmation that one can draw new borders (or ends) and declare new logics for life.”
02 04 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[039]
The SSENSE of Authenticity
Individual
critical
Authorship, Digital culture
In "the ssense of authenticity" writer Nabi Williams explores the concept of authenticity in the digital age, particularly through analyzing the canadian fashion e-tailer ssense and its popular Instagram account. posting daily on the social media platform, ssense draws from contemporary culture through its use of language, image layout, and cultural references to create promotional content that exists on the thin line between “authentic meme” and marketing material. by investigating this account and social media’s impact on how authenticity is manufactured, communicated, and perceived, this thesis traces how the concept of authenticity has evolved and argues that we now live in a “post-authentic” world, where storytelling and the “authentically inauthentic” reign supreme in place of sincerity and reality.
“The reality is that “authenticity” holds no value. But then again, who wants to engage in reality?”
04 09 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Agency, Digital culture
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
30 10 24
,
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
[056]
Screen Walks
Collaboration
experimental
New Media, Visual culture
Screen Walks < website design by UNSTATED, Leonardo Angelucci >
In Screen Walks, a series of live-streamed explorations of digital spaces, selected artists and researchers investigate artistic strategies taking place online. The project gives an insight into practices using the screen as a medium. Artists, curators and researchers are invited to perform live-streamed explorations of the digital spaces where their core practice takes place. Every Screen Walk is different, as the guest artists of the programme share their screen and walk the viewers through their work, as a desktop performance of sorts. From re-contextualising imagery found on online marketplaces and uncovering data brokers’ invisible circulation of images to analysing in-game photography and the social, political and economic implications of games – Screen Walks examines various approaches, offers a behind-the-scenes look at artists' work and uncovers new, current and forgotten digital spaces.
Screen Walks is a collaborative project by Fotomuseum Winterthur and The Photographers' Gallery, investigating the changing role of the photographic image in its networked and digital forms.
“Fostering cultural exchange and institutional collaboration, Screen Walks aims to engage with discourses and practices generated by a wide range of practitioners. All live-streamed events are freely accessible, regularly archived and openly.”
04 09 24
[023]
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information
Individual
politics
Algorithm, Visual culture, New Media
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 - Cover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
SUPERSTORM. Design and Politics in the Age of Information, 2024 Backcover (Credits: Noemi Biasetton)
The Superstorm is a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which culminated in the tempestuous Western political visual culture of today. Within this vortex, complex and unexpected events occur, where politics is mixed with entertainment and communication is hyper-mediated through algorithms, memes and alternative realities.
As politicians refine marketing techniques applied to the electorate and online users become political trendsetters, designers face an impasse. But not all is lost in the Superstorm. Surprisingly, it might precisely be this uncertain future that holds the key for designers to question and reformulate their role and purpose within the political sphere.
In her first book Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, Noemi Biasetton traces the development of the Superstorm from the 1960s to the present and proposes new coordinates that designers may consider on in order to, eventually, face its relentless evolution.
22 04 24
[064]
A Rant About “Technology”
Individual
critical
In A Rant About Technology, Ursula K. Le Guin explores society's near-obsession with technology, suggesting that we often glorify new gadgets and tools at the expense of deeper human values such as creativity, compassion and wisdom. She argues that while technology can be helpful, we should question its role and avoid making it a substitute for meaningful, humane experiences. Le Guin advocates a balanced perspective, encouraging us to value technology without allowing it to define or control us.
““Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn't “hi,” isn’t necessarily '“low” in any meaningful sense.”
22.11.24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[001]
What even is Fashion Technology
Individual
autonomous
Fashion, Technology
A podcast discussing the latest news, innovations and trends shaping the future of fashion.
23 04 24
[035]
Fashion Knowledge Podcast
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Technology
Fashion Knowledge is a podcast about inclusive, sustainable, and digital fashion futures. Beata Wilczek, founder and director at Unfolding Strategies, a fashion consultancy and edu lab for fashion in Web3, hosts new and brave voices in fashion innovation, design, research, and education, to learn more about digital fashion and sustainability.
23 04 24
[061]
Gossamer Press
Individual
autonomous
Feminism, Crafts, Technology
Gossamer Press by Lejla Vala Verheus
Gossamer Press, a micro-publishing platform, intertwines female-driven textile crafts with digital realms, adopting annon-linear approach akin to navigating a web. Exploring concepts like 'Warp,' 'Weft,' and 'Gap,' it connects physical and digital realms, uncovering hidden narratives and challenging historical erasure, presenting a dynamic view of interconnected webs.
GP is founded by Lejla Vala Verheus and is part of an ongoing research on open-source methodologies in textile craft and the digital realm, drawing upon her background as a critical fashion practitioner and graphic designer. By rediscovering overlooked codes and relationships, questioning traditional publishing methods, and blending fashion with printed media, Lejla aims to create new narratives in the fashion realm.
05 09 24
[065]
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Individual
critical
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, proposed by Ursula K. Le Guin, suggests that storytelling is akin to a "carrier bag"—a container for diverse narratives rather than a linear progression of events. This theory emphasizes inclusivity and multiplicity in storytelling, advocating for narratives that encompass various voices and experiences rather than focusing solely on traditional heroic plots. By framing fiction as a space for collecting and sharing rather than imposing structure, Le Guin encourages a more holistic understanding of literature's role in shaping human experience.
While acclaimed for its radical rethinking of narrative structures, challenging traditional linear storytelling and instead presenting fiction as a collection of diverse, interconnected experiences, Le Guin's perspective is primarily driven by the importance of inclusivity and multiplicity of voices. It considers how narratives can be used to facilitate understanding of complex human experiences, rather than merely serving as vehicles for plot-driven heroics. It takes special note on the act of 'gathering' and is therefore often referred to by collectives and practitioners that focus on gathering tools, people, experiences and non-conformist ways of doing. By advocating this more holistic, and more inclusive approach to storytelling, Le Guin critiques dominant cultural narratives and opens up space for alternative forms of expression.
“A story is like a carrier bag; it holds the experience of many people, not just one.”
22.11.24
[042]
From a Tool to a Culture : Authorship and Professionalism of Fashion 4.0 Designers in Contemporary Digital Environments
Individual
Fashion, Authorship, Techno-social
This thesis looks at how fashion design is affected by new technology. It contributes to fashion studies and design research. It uses ideas from authorship theory, sociology of professions and posthumanism. The research looks at four fashion design practices where creation takes place in virtual spaces and is shared with non-professionals, networks or machines. The case studies are The Fabricant, Atacac, Self-Assembly and Minuju.
04 07 24
[059]
Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing and Criticism
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544887/autotheory-as-feminist-practice-in-art-writing-and-criticism/
Individual
critical
Feminism, Authorship
In the 2010s, the term “autotheory” began to trend in literary spheres, where it was used to describe books in which memoir and autobiography fused with theory and philosophy. In this book, Lauren Fournier extends the meaning of the term, applying it to other disciplines and practices. Fournier provides a long-awaited account of autotheory, situating it as a mode of contemporary, post-1960s artistic practice that is indebted to feminist writing, art, and activism. Investigating a series of works by writers and artists including Chris Kraus and Adrian Piper, she considers the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of autotheory.
Fournier argues that the autotheoretical turn signals the tenuousness of illusory separations between art and life, theory and practice, work and the self—divisions long blurred by feminist artists and scholars. Autotheory challenges dominant approaches to philosophizing and theorizing while enabling new ways for artists and writers to reflect on their lives. She argues that Kraus's 1997 I Love Dick marked the emergence of a newly performative, post-memoir “I”; recasts Piper's 1971 performance work Food for the Spirit as autotheory; considers autotheory as critique; examines practices of citation in autotheoretical work, including Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts; and looks at the aesthetics and ethics of disclosure and exposure, exploring the nuanced feminist politics around autotheoretical practices and such movements as #MeToo. Fournier formulates autotheory as a reflexive movement, connecting thinking, making art, living, and theorizing.
“Autotheory—the commingling of theory and philosophy with autobiography—as a mode of critical artistic practice indebted to feminist writing and activism.”
04 09 24
[040]
Scroll, Skim, Stare
Individual
critical
Authorship, Critique
This essay critiques the static nature of artists' websites, proposing that they could be more dynamic and innovative. Gat argues for these sites to function as online exhibition spaces, offering unique and creative ways to present and control art, enhancing the digital art experience.
Orit Gat’s essay “Scroll, Skim, Stare” in *The White Review* explores the evolving role of artists' websites in the contemporary digital landscape. Gat argues that while the internet has transformed art consumption, the design of artists' websites often remains static and uninspired. She suggests that these sites could be more dynamic, serving as online exhibition spaces that challenge the traditional gallery format. Gat emphasizes the potential for artists to leverage their websites to present and control their work uniquely and creatively, thus reshaping the visual culture of the internet.
03 07 24
[004]
Multidimensional citation
Collective
speculative
Authorship, Agency
At the start of 2020 we announced our collaboration by sending around a postcard. Three women in stone-colored clothing sat on the ground, our faces staring directly into the camera in a diagonal cascade. The postcard also contained a link to our website where we described ourselves and our collaboration.
Our differences allowed us to come together in a complementary way. An alliance of islands intuitively felt like our symbol: and for this reason we used three dots cascading ⋱ for our website’s favicon — the small icon that appears near the web browser’s address bar.
“A citation should not be singular, but instead explicitly connected to the lineage of research that came before it.”
01 05 24
[066]
Moodbored
Individual
critical
Olivia Linnea Rogers explores the rise of digital mood boarding as a modern form of identity exploration and creative expression. Originally physical collages, mood boards have evolved online, becoming aspirational but intangible collections of lifestyle aesthetics. It reflects on how images once rare and precious are now curated endlessly on platforms like Pinterest, shaping identity through associations with unattainable ideals. Rogers suggests mood boarding reflects consumerism, escapism, and a desire for curated self-expression, raising questions about authenticity in digital self-construction.
“There is no place for self-actualisation like the Internet. To put on and take off identities, personalities, interests, and styles with no cost at all and by simply lifting a pointer finger. This has generally been considered an advantage of the Internet. I’d argue it is not. It feeds an instinct that has been trained in us from marketing executives. You can create a “self” and a “space” for that self, with none of it being real at all.”
22.11.24
[011]
Our aesthetic categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting
Individual
philosophy
Aesthetics
The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture. They dominate the look of its art and commodities as well as our discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of the aesthetic categories that most people use to process the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism, treating them with the same seriousness philosophers have reserved for analysis of the beautiful and the sublime.
Ngai explores how each of these aesthetic categories expresses conflicting feelings that connect to the ways in which postmodern subjects work, exchange, and consume. As a style of performing that takes the form of affective labor, the zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and our sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to the circulation of discourse and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute's involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At the deepest level, Ngai argues, these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities.
Through readings of Adorno, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts ranging from Bob Perelman's poetry to Ed Ruscha's photography books to the situation comedy of Lucille Ball, Ngai shows how these everyday aesthetic categories also provide traction to classic problems in aesthetic theory. The zany, cute, and interesting are not postmodernity's only meaningful aesthetic categories, Ngai argues, but the ones best suited for grasping the radical transformation of aesthetic experience and discourse under its conditions.
24 04 24
[009]
Glitch Poetics
Individual
critical
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Artificial Intelligence
Glitches are errors where the digital bursts or creeps into our everyday lives as fragmented image, garbled text and aberrant event. Today, when computational technology is integrated ever more closely into bodies and social structures, glitches are considered by artists and companies alike as critical and commercial opportunities, revealing tears in the real-virtual binary. Glitch has also increasingly become a metaphor for understanding the political and ecological shocks the world pushes into the mediasphere each day. In Glitch Poetics Nathan Jones shows how contemporary writers and artists are integrating the glitch as a literary effect, an affective critique and a realist reflection, at a time characterised by breakage, corruption and crisis.
Based on a range of close readings of contemporary literature by writers including Linda Stupart, Sam Riviere, Keston Sutherland, Ben Lerner, Caroline Bergvall, Erica Scourti, David Peace and the internet novelists, and drawing on theories of error, shock, glitch, critical posthumanism and code, Jones lays the groundwork for writing that can productively engage in the new situation for literature in the context of AI, the Anthropocene and the post-digital age. His book articulates the working of error in literary and media practice at the horizon of human and machine language.
“Glitch Poetics resists technofuturism, reinventing errancy as a necessary aesthetic value of (and crucially against) our time.”
15 07 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[044]
Transactional Aesthetics
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Aesthetics
da Falck Øien explores the emotional relationships humans have with their garments and how acquisition methods influence these relationships. The research, conducted from 2017 to 2021, involves ethnographic studies, collaboration with a fashion label, public engagement through a physical space, and the creation of publications and products. Øien aims to address the environmental impact of the fashion industry by rethinking resource use and consumer behavior, emphasizing fashion as a cultural and social phenomenon beyond mere clothing items.
04 09 24
,
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[018]
Figuring Things out Together
Individual
critical
Agency, Techno-social
This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities‘ resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships.Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance ‘teamwork’, ‘the commons’, or ‘cooperativism’, are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.
“This publication derives from an enthusiasm for the various ways collective learning environments take shape. It grew out of a curiosity for the ways that such practices are shared across different localities, timelines, and experiences.”
05 06 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[068]
ŠUM#22 Angel Mode
Collaboration
philosophy
Agency, Post-human, Techno-social
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
The journal ŠUM#22 – Angel Mode explores themes in contemporary art, theory, and speculative fiction. Key articles include topics such as online identities, accelerationist philosophy, the concept of "angelic sexuality," and reinterpretations of faith and love in the digital age. Contributors like Bogna Konior and Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix discuss theoretical frameworks connecting cyberculture and philosophy. The issue is edited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha.
The Angel Mode Issue explores the intersection of online aesthetics and identities, focusing on the "angel" as a symbol for transcendent, hyper-feminine personas. This ties into ongoing online discourse of femininity, vulnerability, and performance, often communicated through ethereal-esque aesthetics, cyberpunk references, and soft romanticism style write-ups. The "angel" metaphor also critiques our roles in cybernetic systems, where humans act as conduits for larger external forces. Embracing this mode reflects a shift from individuality toward alignment with overarching digital and 'transcendental' patterns.
“As human agency erodes, faced with singularity and extinction, the figure of “the girl (on the internet)” is on the rise. In the new issue of Šum we explore how this surrender of agency mediates (human) history itself.”
15 11 24
,
[055]
Welcome to the Swarm
Individual
social
Techno-social, Digital culture
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms spread misinformation, help each other, and represent the public. This is not our grandparents' crowd. Swarms are networks of people and information. They can act together without set rules. This research looks at different swarms, like the response to Hurricane María, to see how they work together. We also need to look at other online groups to understand swarms better. These groups have rules that make them easier to manage.
The concept of "swarms" can be connected to the online fashion landscape by considering how decentralized, collective behaviors emerge in digital spaces. In fashion, swarms can be seen in how trends develop, spread, and evolve without a centralized authority. Social media platforms, influencer culture, and digital communities act as nodes in a network where fashion trends are collectively shaped, shared, and adopted. These swarms enable rapid shifts in consumer preferences, allowing niche styles to become mainstream almost overnight, reflecting the fluid and adaptive nature of digital fashion ecosystems.
“In a swarm, the whole emerges from local interactions, with no central control or singular direction. This phenomenon can be seen in digital spaces where collective behaviors and patterns emerge organically, driven by the actions and decisions of individual participants.”
26 08 24
[039]
The SSENSE of Authenticity
Individual
critical
Authorship, Digital culture
In "the ssense of authenticity" writer Nabi Williams explores the concept of authenticity in the digital age, particularly through analyzing the canadian fashion e-tailer ssense and its popular Instagram account. posting daily on the social media platform, ssense draws from contemporary culture through its use of language, image layout, and cultural references to create promotional content that exists on the thin line between “authentic meme” and marketing material. by investigating this account and social media’s impact on how authenticity is manufactured, communicated, and perceived, this thesis traces how the concept of authenticity has evolved and argues that we now live in a “post-authentic” world, where storytelling and the “authentically inauthentic” reign supreme in place of sincerity and reality.
“The reality is that “authenticity” holds no value. But then again, who wants to engage in reality?”
04 09 24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
22.11.24
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
,
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[017]
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Artistic Research
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies presents the reader with a variety of digital methodologies to help build skills in searching for, analyzing, and discussing vintage design, photography, and writing on fashion, as well as historic and ethnographic dress and textile objects themselves. Each chapter focuses upon a different method, problem, or research site, including:
- Maximalism and mixed-methods approaches to research - Searching large databases effectively - Pattern recognition and visual searching. - Critical reading, use, and citation of social media texts - Digital ethnography and shopping as research - Data visualization and mapping - Images in the public domain
From advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students working on research projects to veteran professionals in fashion and textile history and beyond, everyone can benefit from a diverse set of fresh approaches to conducting and disseminating research. In the current age of instant gratification, with users snapping and posting images from runway shows long before the clothes will ever appear instores, the world of fashion is increasingly digital and fast-paced. Research on fashion is, too. Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies will help you keep up in this rapidly changing world.
22 04 24
[070]
Myth Magazine
Collaboration
commercial
Fashion
Myth Magazine is a shapeshifting online publication, that will not be found on the news stands.
MythMagazine is a digital-first editorial journal, created with digital affordances at its core, rather than as a print adaptation. The magazine takes a screen-first approach to its fashion editorials, incorporating a variety of visual elements such as still, moving, looping, glitching and collaged imagery, as well as sound. This approach differs from the post-human aesthetics commonly seen in digital-first fashion practices.. ,
“Being online means the possibilities are endless. It makes the edit different too, because a page count is irrelevant, but there’s still a permanence and a relevance”
15 11 24
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Fashion, Language, New Media
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
10 10 24
[068]
ŠUM#22 Angel Mode
Collaboration
philosophy
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
ŠUM22: ANGEL MODE Design by Jaka NeonEdited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha
The journal ŠUM#22 – Angel Mode explores themes in contemporary art, theory, and speculative fiction. Key articles include topics such as online identities, accelerationist philosophy, the concept of "angelic sexuality," and reinterpretations of faith and love in the digital age. Contributors like Bogna Konior and Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix discuss theoretical frameworks connecting cyberculture and philosophy. The issue is edited by Maks Valenčič and Tisa Troha.
The Angel Mode Issue explores the intersection of online aesthetics and identities, focusing on the "angel" as a symbol for transcendent, hyper-feminine personas. This ties into ongoing online discourse of femininity, vulnerability, and performance, often communicated through ethereal-esque aesthetics, cyberpunk references, and soft romanticism style write-ups. The "angel" metaphor also critiques our roles in cybernetic systems, where humans act as conduits for larger external forces. Embracing this mode reflects a shift from individuality toward alignment with overarching digital and 'transcendental' patterns.
“As human agency erodes, faced with singularity and extinction, the figure of “the girl (on the internet)” is on the rise. In the new issue of Šum we explore how this surrender of agency mediates (human) history itself.”
22.11.24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[014]
The User Condition: Computer Agency and Behaviour
Individual
critical
Agency, Technology
The User Condition is a micro-interactive essay on computer agency and behavior, and was developed within the 2020 research group organized by the Lectorate Design of KABK. What are the conditions for a computer user to gain agency, defined here as the ability to evade automatisms? What is the user’s horizon of autonomy within a built world made of software programmed by somebody else, when its logic is made inaccessible in the name of convenience?
01 05 24
[058]
Whole Earth Index
Collaboration
social
Agency
Here lies a nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1968 and 2002. They are made available here for scholarship, education, and research purposes. The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, “do it yourself,” and holism, featuring the slogan “access to tools.”
Whole Earth published a number of singular publications throughout its run focused on topical themes, or containing content from aligned organizations. Often these volumes reprinted articles from prior Whole Earth perodical journals, supplemented with new content. And, while the entire archive is insightful and lives up to its “access to tools, ideas, and practices” byline, side projects like 'The Whole Earth Software Catalog' deserve special attention. Originally proposed by John Brockman as a magazine which “would do for computing what the original had done for the counterculture: identify and recommend the best tools as they emerged”, it seems to have been to ahead of its time. The first issue was released in the Fall of 1984. The Whole Earth Software Catalog was a business failure, however, and was only published twice, with only three of the Whole Earth Software Review supplements published. If we were to position this publication in the here and now, it would most likely belong to the niche digital networks that are sprouting from spaces such as are.na and the handmade web.
“Soft Tech is a term we’ve used and defended since the late sixties. Soft signifies that something is alive, resilient, adaptive, maybe even lovable.”
04 09 24
[018]
Figuring Things out Together
Individual
critical
Agency, Techno-social
This dissertation explores matters of collectivity, drawing from the experience of working with the Amsterdam-based collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). The main thesis of this research is that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of sufficiently expressing and accounting for collectivities‘ resistance to fixation and stabilization. Collective design as it is discussed here challenges notions of individual authorship, differentiations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. While collectives shape particular affiliations and commitments, design approaches and aesthetics, they also require perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of a design process. By means of several case studies, it is argued that the fragmentation of social and work relations is as much a characteristic of collective practice as the effort to sustain long-term relationships.Thus, collective practice is not fully deliberate, at least not in the same way as for instance ‘teamwork’, ‘the commons’, or ‘cooperativism’, are purposeful organizational frameworks for living, working or being together. Collective Collective design processes take part in and are a result of particular (often fragile) socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and shape the ways collectives function.
“This publication derives from an enthusiasm for the various ways collective learning environments take shape. It grew out of a curiosity for the ways that such practices are shared across different localities, timelines, and experiences.”
05 06 24
,
[034]
Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World - The Feminine Cyberspace
Individual
critical
Techno-social, Post-human, Feminism
Sadie Plant argues that cyberspace is a potentially radical space which uses modes of thinking and operating that have traditionally been seen as female. She also considers the relationship between cyberspace and immaterial space and speculates on what this could mean for the future. Christine Tamblyn and Pat Cadigan contribute to the discussion/Q&A, which makes for a lively discourse on the females positioning in technoculture.
30 04 24
,
[057]
The Wretched of the Screen
Individual
politics
Techno-social, Visual culture, Capitalism
In Hito Steyerl’s writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl’s landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image.
Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings.
“Images are no longer passive reflections; they are active agents, manipulated and distorted by the flows of capital and power, reshaping reality in their own fractured, pixelated image.”
04 09 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
[036]
GIRLSTACK
Individual
speculative
Feminism, Techno-social, Identity
image by siir bicer
Building on the ideas of Tiqqun’s 1999 anti-neoliberal treatise Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females and Bogna Konior’s work on the girl and the inhuman vis-a-vis the machinic, Quicho has developed a concept she calls the “Girlstack,” which, to borrow her words, models the “ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the girl’s natural habitat.” Quicho articulates how the ‘girl’ inhabits no one person, body, or gender. She is a technology of subjectivity composed of symbolic, consumer, and inhuman elements and might be our only way out of the platform trap. Quicho's reformulation of 'the stack' was first published as an essay on Wired and expanded at BODYSTACK and Creamcake 3HD.
Quicho’s girl-stack is a speculative prototype models themany dimensions of the girl’s natural online habitat. To be clear: Quicho does not speak of actual girls or the experience of lived girlhood, but a socially constructed ideation of the girl. So, the girl as a vehicle for selling product, the girl as a tool for manipulating entrenched power, the girl as living currency, and the girl as desiring machine. The model is imperative for understanding the environment that produces the ‘girl as condition’.
30 04 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
22.11.24
[029]
Girl Online: A User Manual
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism, Agency
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?
Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.
23 04 24
[050]
Fred Perry x Raf Simons interactive lookbook
Company
commercial
Virtual reality, Fashion, Digital culture
Fred Perry x Raf Simons AW19 by Random Studios
The Fred Perry x Raf Simons SS19 collaboration is presented within an immersive editorial lookbook, honouring an everyday interface familiar to many. Worn by anonymised individuals, the garments can be viewed in a navigable environment, where modified stills create the setting of a universal suburb. Each garment can be examined up-close, with options to view it in situ or in the shop. Location URLs of found garments, sound snippets or visual frames can be shared on social media. The entire campaign can also be viewed as a series of semi-accidental screenshots.
This is the first instalment in a three-part exploration of 360 storytelling. Part two centres around 80s Youth Archive photographs, while part three, 'A Lookbook of Many Gazes', allows the viewer to see the SS20 collection through the eyes of many.
While lookbook offers an examination of the intersection of fashion and digital culture as it immerses the viewer in a hyper-stylised digital environment, utilising motion sensors and abstract imagery to transform familiar, lived experiences into something eerily distant when played out on screen. This dissonance challenges our perceptions of reality, suggesting that the digital mediation of fashion can distance us from the authenticity of human experience, making the familiar strangely unsettling.
06 08 24
[047]
Sublime Heartbreak: Vectors for an Ending of Times
Individual
Speculative
Aesthetics, Techno-social, Digital culture
Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
Endarkenment pantheon and its vectors: Possibility ⟷ Futility, Introspection ⟷ Reactivity. The intersection of these vectors (aka quadrants) give rise to aesthetic guilds. Image by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
This essay explores the concept of "Endarkenment," an aesthetic response to current global crises. Instead of apocalyptic destruction, Endarkenment finds beauty in chaos and decay. It contrasts traditional enlightenment, emphasizing engagement with darkness and complexity. Four aesthetic "guilds"—NovusHex, Netmesh, Candyblade360, and Hyper-ogre—illustrate different aspects of this concept, embracing both technological and primitive elements to find new forms of meaning and enchantment amid widespread despair and systemic failures.
The essay's concept of "Endarkenment" connects to how we experience fashion online by highlighting emerging digital aesthetics and trends that embrace chaos, complexity, and non-traditional beauty. Online fashion communities reflect this through styles like "indiesleaze" and "ratgirlsummer," which celebrate raw, unpolished looks, and "technomysticism" that merges spirituality with cybernetics. Platforms like Instagram curate these trends, showcasing designs that fuse nature with technology or embrace hyper-femininity and grotesque, anti-minimalist aesthetics. These digital movements redefine fashion by rejecting conventional norms and finding beauty in unconventional, dark, and chaotic expressions.
“I propose Endarkenment, an aesthetic posturing that’s emerging from the abyss of ultimate system failures and chronic mass despair. I’m not interested in a doomsday, pure-nihilistic dystopian narrative.”
16 07 24
[063]
Embodying the browser
Collaboration
experimental
Aesthetics, Digital culture, Visual culture
Chia Amisola, Himala, 2024, hypertext website. Courtesy of the artist.
An interview between Meg Miller and Chia Amisola on the development of her practice; from creating browser based environments to translating them into physical performances of the 'ambient internet'. Chia and Meg delve into the concept of embodying the browser as a personal and performative space, transforming websites into lived, immersive experiences. They explore how reading becomes a creative act, akin to authorship, and examines how writing can exist fluidly within data structures, blending code and narrative. With themes of ritual, religion, and repetition, Amisola sees the internet as a potent tool for activism and cultural expression, wielding it as a platform to advance the Filipino struggle and amplify underrepresented voices in the digital age.
I’m interested in reconfiguring our attention to the web: What is visible, invisible, foregrounded? How does poetry emerge from the landscape of the browser?
In this conversation, Amisola explores the agency inherent in 'embodying' technology, where her poetic, chaotic and calming performances reveal how online spaces can become canvases for self-creation, transformation and sharing. Her work in Internet art performance highlights the potential of digital spaces as extensions of (cultural) identity.
Amisola's approach to digital embodiment can critically inform how we view fashion as a social system in online spaces. By 'authoring' identity - through online fashion, words or images - the digital self can become both publisher and platform, forever shifting, growing, shrinking as an evolving interface.
“If Ursula K. Le Guin described technology as the “active human interface with the material world,” I also attempt to become a technology myself.”
29 10 24
,
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Fashion, Capitalism
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
30 10 24
[060]
Fashion is not a Sign: Reading P.R.A.D.A. Theory-Fashion and Luxury Language
Individual
critical
Fashion, Language, New Media
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
Prada Spring/Summer 2021 campaign by Ferdinando Verderi. Courtesy of the photographer and Prada
“It is obvious enough why a clothing company might align itself with art or theory: to spritz its all-too-worldly wares with the air of intellect.”
10 10 24
[070]
Myth Magazine
Collaboration
commercial
Fashion
Myth Magazine is a shapeshifting online publication, that will not be found on the news stands.
MythMagazine is a digital-first editorial journal, created with digital affordances at its core, rather than as a print adaptation. The magazine takes a screen-first approach to its fashion editorials, incorporating a variety of visual elements such as still, moving, looping, glitching and collaged imagery, as well as sound. This approach differs from the post-human aesthetics commonly seen in digital-first fashion practices.. ,
“Being online means the possibilities are endless. It makes the edit different too, because a page count is irrelevant, but there’s still a permanence and a relevance”
15 11 24
[070]
Myth Magazine
Collaboration
commercial
Myth Magazine is a shapeshifting online publication, that will not be found on the news stands.
MythMagazine is a digital-first editorial journal, created with digital affordances at its core, rather than as a print adaptation. The magazine takes a screen-first approach to its fashion editorials, incorporating a variety of visual elements such as still, moving, looping, glitching and collaged imagery, as well as sound. This approach differs from the post-human aesthetics commonly seen in digital-first fashion practices.. ,
“Being online means the possibilities are endless. It makes the edit different too, because a page count is irrelevant, but there’s still a permanence and a relevance”
22.11.24
[067]
The Side Hustle in Your Closet
Individual
critical
Fashion, Capitalism
Scarabelli explores the rise of 'virtual shopping' on resale platforms such as eBay, Poshmark and Grailed, which allow users to engage in 'digital window shopping'. The ability to save items to wish lists and shopping carts allows us to create a curated collection of items we may never buy, transforming consumption into an imaginative, almost aspirational experience. The essay highlights the ways in which resale platforms mimic social media, encouraging not only purchases but also the creation of online identities through saved designer goods and mood boards - ultimately embedding subliminal modes of consumption into digital habits, while blurring the lines between physical and virtual consumption.
“In the world of recommerce, virtual shopping is the new consumerism that everyone can afford. [..] Virtual shopping exists within a liminoid space, what cultural theorist Rob Shields defines as a meeting point of the imaginary and the material.”
30 10 24
[069]
BUFFER: on fashion, world building and our bodies
Academia
pedagogy
Simulation, Fashion, Digital culture
A playlist of talks given during the BUFFER summit organised by MA Fashion Media & Communication at the London College of Fashion (UAL).
In his opening remarks, Dr. Daniel Felstead highlights the growing influence of fashion and gaming in today's cultural landscape, particularly in the context of societal shifts and the decline of traditional art forms. Both industries excel in world-building, blending economic, social, and aesthetic elements into immersive narratives. The convergence of gaming's interactive environments and fashion's diverse media outputs reflects and momentarily escapes today's chaotic realities. Fashion is increasingly being viewed as a form of "world-building technology," as evidenced by collaborations such as Balenciaga's forays into gaming. This cultural shift and growing relationship between these sectors raises questions about how such immersive worlds influence our identities, bodies and societal roles in this period of transformation.
“If World building has become a central mode of cultural production today, then what kind of subjectivities and bodies will it demand?”
15 11 24
[030]
Our Digital Selves
Collaboration
speculative
Fashion, Virtual reality, Techno-social
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
‘Ecstatic Wholeness’ by The Fabricant
"With the emergence of the Metaverse, we can reinvent ourselves in ways in which we’ve always dreamt. Modem teamed up with The Fabricant, SHOWstudio and Anastasiia Fedorova to imagine how our virtual alter-egos could change the ways we think about ourselves. Expanding on the work of The Fabricant, which explores the malleable future of human identity through non-physical garments, Our Digital Selves studies the ambiguous relationship between the real and the virtual self"
“When musing on fashion and identity, it’s always worth asking: when does wearing something truly change the meaning of who we are?”
01 05 24
[017]
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies
Individual
pedagogy
Fashion, Artistic Research
Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies presents the reader with a variety of digital methodologies to help build skills in searching for, analyzing, and discussing vintage design, photography, and writing on fashion, as well as historic and ethnographic dress and textile objects themselves. Each chapter focuses upon a different method, problem, or research site, including:
- Maximalism and mixed-methods approaches to research - Searching large databases effectively - Pattern recognition and visual searching. - Critical reading, use, and citation of social media texts - Digital ethnography and shopping as research - Data visualization and mapping - Images in the public domain
From advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students working on research projects to veteran professionals in fashion and textile history and beyond, everyone can benefit from a diverse set of fresh approaches to conducting and disseminating research. In the current age of instant gratification, with users snapping and posting images from runway shows long before the clothes will ever appear instores, the world of fashion is increasingly digital and fast-paced. Research on fashion is, too. Digital Research Methods in Fashion and Textile Studies will help you keep up in this rapidly changing world.
22 04 24
[071]
Memestrilism
Individual
critical
Memestrilism is a term made up of "meme" and "minstrelsy" used to describe minstrel-like behaviours, trends and creations in digital spaces. Produced by artist Ama Ogwo as part of the first Feminist Internet Residency, the film critically examines how racism persists in the digital age, paralleling contemporary online representations of blackness with historical racist imagery. Using found footage from social media and 20th-century minstrel shows, Ogwo collapses time to reveal how the ventriloquism of blackness online mirrors and reinvents what minstrelsy looks like today.
The concept of Memestrilism offers a critical lens on the current online zeitgeist, particularly in fashion, by highlighting how cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping continue to manifest in digital spaces. In fashion, the commodification of black culture often intersects with the 'meme economy' of social media, where trends are amplified, decontextualised and stripped of their origins for mass consumption.
The digital landscape thrives on 'hypervisibility', where cultural markers are presented as bold statements, but often lack the necessary cultural nuance. Often Black cultural expressions - hairstyles, clothing styles, linguistic expressions and aesthetics - are showcased through influencers or memes that gain widespread appeal, often without reference to their roots. This parallels historical minstrelsy, where black identity was caricatured and exploited for entertainment. The digital age exacerbates this by enabling the rapid dissemination and monetisation of these trends, further blurring the line between homage and exploitation.
Ogwo's exploration of memestrilism not only critiques, but also reflects the larger conversations taking place in digital fashion spaces about authenticity, representation and the ethics of appropriation in a globalised, meme-driven culture.22.11.24
[054]
The Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet
Collaboration
social
Techno-social, Community, Digital culture
This essay explores the fragmentation of the internet, likened to the "Balkanization" and "Babelification" of online spaces. As the unified digital world splits into smaller, private communities, distinct languages and cultures emerge, leading to communication breakdowns when different groups interact. This splintering mirrors the biblical Tower of Babel story and poses challenges to shared understanding. The authors argue that deeper human connection, especially through physical touch, is essential to overcoming these divides and fostering genuine communication.
The essay's discussion of the internet's fragmentation can be linked to online fashion cultures, where digital spaces have become increasingly niche and isolated. Just as the internet splinters into distinct communities with their own languages and norms, fashion subcultures online—like streetwear, high fashion, or vintage—develop their own unique styles, terminologies, and identities. This fragmentation can both foster strong in-group connections and create barriers to broader communication and understanding between different fashion communities, mirroring the challenges of "Babelification."
“When we return to the public squares, it is not uncommon to think: what the hell is anyone saying? Imagine explaining what an 'Aesop Soap Guy' or a 'Sandy Liang Girlie' are to someone who isn't involved in that discourse.”
26 08 24
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
[041]
I'm Like a PDF but a Girl
Individual
pedagogy
Feminism, Techno-social, Digital culture
A literary and ethnographic analysis of the Tumblr platform, supplemented by personal experiences, to explore the site's potency as a pedagogical tool. Ester Freider explains.. "I'm Like a Pdf but a Girl originates from my usage of tumblr as a social learning platform during high school, when AFK I had little educational resources surrounding feminist studies, philosophy, and potential leftisms in my high school and so, turned to a network of peers online to educate myself."
“Embrace subjectivity. Nomadologize. Unclog digital neuroses. Reconnect with the ancients. Atomize. Overflow with information. Make love piratic. Plagiarize with the girls. Weave webs of excess. Become a girlblogger.”
03 07 24
[022]
Pirate Care, a syllabus
Collective
critical
Care, Digital culture, Techno-social
Pirate Care is a research process - primarily based in the transnational European space - that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”, which in new and interesting ways are trying to intervene in one of the most important challenges of our time, that is, the ‘crisis of care’ in all its multiple and interconnected dimensions.
These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges. Often they act disobediently in expressed non-compliance with laws, regulations and executive orders that ciriminalise the duty of care by imposing exclusions along the lines of class, gender, race or territory. They are not shying risk of persecution in providing unconditional solidarity to those who are the most exploited, discriminated against and condemned to the status of disposable populations.
The Pirate Care Syllabus presents here for the first time is a tool for supporting and activating collective processes of learning from these practices.“We live in a world where captains get arrested for saving people’s lives on the sea; where a person downloading scientific articles faces 35 years in jail; where people risk charges for bringing contraceptives to those who otherwise couldn’t get them. Folks are getting in trouble for giving food to the poor, medicine to the sick, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless. And yet our heroines care and disobey. They are pirates.”
01 05 24
,
[049]
Performing Cyber Tenderness
Individual
social
Digital culture, Feminism
This text discusses the concept of the "Sad Girl" and its evolution in the digital age. It explores how the internet, particularly platforms like Tumblr, became a space for young women to express their emotions, often through romanticized depictions of sadness and melancholy. The text examines the authenticity and commodification of these emotional performances, as well as the broader societal expectations and pressures placed on women's emotional expression. It also touches on the concept of the "Influencer" and how the pursuit of authenticity has become a tool for capitalist exploitation. The document ultimately suggests that embracing the "Cyborg" and the performative nature of online identity may be a way to resist the commodification of emotion and reclaim digital spaces.
““As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, (…) you have already become posthuman.””
15 07 24
[013]
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers
Collective
social
Community, Techno-social, Feminism
A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
01 05 24
[024]
Our Bodies, Online
Individual
social
Feminism, Body, Photography
What are the qualifications of being a feminist artist today? This is an impossible question, which is, in many ways, the point. One of the defining doctrines of third-wave feminism (or fourth-wave feminism, or postfeminism, or whatever you call our current moment) is its persistent unwillingness to be defined. Whether you make abstract photograms or stag films, label your work feminist, and it is.
“An emerging guard of young, female photographers has carved out a new brand of feminism
with a new set of definitions.”
01 05 24
[052]
Xenofeminism
Academia
speculative
Techno-social, Gender, Feminism
In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?
These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the ‘Laboria Cuboniks’ collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.
26 08 24
[close]
[SUBMIT]
As the online realm often feels infinite, this directory highlights non-commercial, critical, and experimental online content related (but not limited) to fashion and creative practices. It features projects, essays, visuals, and events, offering tools to navigate this dynamic landscape.
In gathering a wide variety of practitioners and collectives, we are always expanding, and looking to add to this growing bibliography of ‘being online’.
If you've encountered or created something that fits within this scope, feel free to share and submit!
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