Research Proposal:
Aims and Objectives
I would like to develop research and models into posthuman digital protests that use consumption by researching historical and interspecie protests to make 1-1 everyday revolutions in food politics and interspecie care.
I am not sure yet what the outcome will be, but I would like to examine post-human protests, such as the rally for Palestine in the multiplayer online game Roblox that brought attention to political activism in video games alongside examples of using consumption in protests such as hunger strikes across religious beliefs and power economies. The aim of this research will be to test my hypothesis: posthuman consumption can affect positive political change on a 1-1 scale. The set of questions I would like to ask are:
● What ecology of posthuman consumption is around me?
● What posthuman relationships are there between consumption and power?
● What forms of love can. and do, intersect these relationships?
● How can I foster a better environment for caring and empathetic political change
through posthuman consumption?
Multiplayer online game spaces have been utilised in protest before, particularly by the Black Lives Matter movement and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. They can provide a space for participation for people unwilling or unable to take part in physical protests as well as cathartic emotional release. But questions remain over how much of a real-world impact these video game protests have, with critics accusing them of being clicktivism.
Consumption protests commonly centre on hunger strikes which can be fatal for those who choose to do them, but also include The Diggers revolution, food riots and langar. To study this in a posthuman context, I plan on reading Tai Shani’s A Fatal Magic to explore consumption in female bodies across a mediaeval mystic to AI machines.
Methodology
I plan to develop a model exploring posthuman consumptive protests that enable people to enact change in caring and empathetic political change that benefits people's lives collectively. I will narrow down this framework to a specific example through studying the case study on the Intelligence-Love-Revolution residency.
My methodology for data collection will be across a literature review (literature review in development: Rebellious Consumption Reading List) which spans western feminism, disability politics and mediaeval thought; exploring disturbances in consumption economics such as degrowth, studying other species in their consumption adaptations that repel, intersect or protect as well as disturbances in food and desire chains. I will collect data through talking with specialists in nutrition, food politics and wildlife; researching and creating diagrammatic sketches, and using digital collage processes such as right click tools like cut and paste. I would love to take the opportunity to verify data through collaboration and discussion on the Intelligence-Love-Revolution residency with other residents. I will analyse and interpret the data through artistic exploration in diagrams, animation and speculative protest design models based on trust, empathy, and finding agency and positive emotional health in difficult situations. I will report, evaluate and communicate the research findings through the residency blog, documenting my research in a diary-like format as well as socials and publications.
Bio:
I am an artist based in the UK. I work across sculpture, animations, writing, and quiet performances exploring gentle to high dramas in politics, ecological care and consumptive issues.
My research into rebellious consumption looks at positive vectors of revolution that combat destructive ecological and human systems, including eating in protest, crop plant care work and domestic ecosystems.
Ecological care work looks at ways to care for our environment around us, mixing the human with the non-human, reading includes anthropomorphic metamorphosis, mutualism, interspecies forms of love, the care work industry and surreal planetary optics that could be made real.
Gentle to high political dramas I explore spans links between reason, omens and intuition; institutional slants on truth in media, justice and policing systems; and deceptions in relationships - from the good to the bad.
I participated in the Conditions Studio Programme from 2019 - 2021 after studying at Central Saint Martins where I received the LVMH Scholarship. I have exhibited across the UK at Tate St Ives, NewBridge Project and Turf Projects, and taken part in international residencies. Recent work includes collaboratively curating site-specific installations for b-side C.I.C. in response to common land and the Bibby Stockholm barge, writing based on the strange optics of profit in capitalist finance systems for Weird Economies, and poetry looking at altruism for Ethereal Pilgrims.
By website can be found at www.alixemery.com
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