Research Proposal
mecha mecha mecha is a maximalist modular livestreamed lecture performance series and assorted wearable assemblage collection that seeks to rigorously engage with critical notions of cuteness and clothing. Delivered through OBS on platforms like Twitch in the vein of experimental participatory lectures like Mindy Seu’s “A Sexual History of the Internet“ with a variable length of 5-20 minutes, mecha mecha mecha will be presented with, but not limited to: a slideshow and glitched view of myself in drag for independent and academic researchers and artist groups engaged with topics surrounding contemporary internet culture, critical AI studies, and future studies that hopes to proliferate/inspire more performance, art projects, publications, and research. Pulling from Alex Quicho’s use of the mecha as metaphor for “climb[ing] into and pilot[ing] this already-existing subject that has the unique privilege of being greater than us all, yet thoroughly downplayed and underestimated,” mecha mecha mecha takes the lecture performance as a starting point for participatory experience. Quicho’s text Everyone is a Girl Online is a foundation for mecha mecha mecha’s interest in modeling an example of unveiling invisibilized stories of technocapital reproduction and the Girl as decoy technology for the 21st Century. The talk will be punctuated with quotes for the vibes.
Central question: What would happen if we mutated first? - Quicho (in reference to the evolution of late liberal capitalism into states unknown, or what Marek Poliks and Roberto Alonso Trillo denote as “lift” - this further abstraction of financial maneuvers that takes capitalism into its next stage: exocapitalism, in which the system propagates itself without need for the operational body of humanity writ large).
The answer will always be a question - Astrida Neimanis
Evidencing stories of agency in material forms for a performing body is one aspect of mecha mecha mecha that dovetails with an engagement with the dual conditions of fragility and strength incorporated within the Girl. Through the monstrous, cute, and maximalist aesthetics of nails and corsets in particular, coupled with the vulnerable position extremely long nails and tight corsets place onto the wearer, the girl with lower case G in the cockpit of the Girl with upper case G seeks to decouple aesthetics from its own trappings.
Potential sources for visual assets and qualitative sources include Neon Genesis Evangelion, screenshots from TikTok, fashion/culture fan fiction podcast Nymphet Alumni wherein the podcasters take cultural artifacts a priori and construct meaning through their own fantasies and personal experiences surrounding those artifacts, Alex Quicho’s Prey Mode lecture at the London College of Fashion’s conference BODYSTACKED, Molly Soda’s G(URL) syllabus, and NYU Shanghai professor Bogna Konior’s lecture Angels in Latent Spaces: Notes on AI Erotics. Quicho cites Konior as the progenitor of Girl Theory and she takes it into a machinic level connecting Girl to AI, pulling from philosopher Sadie Plant’s 1997 book Zeros + Ones wherein Plant notes, “clothing himself in the feminine . . . clothing himself in cyberspace . . . is there a difference?"
In terms of forms I’ve begun to potentially explore 360 video with narration/visuals using the Insta 360 X3 as an interview tool for qualitative sources and their surroundings.
I’m also interested in AR/VR applications of this project, exploring new modalities of AR familiar (wearables) and unfamiliar to me (environmental). 3D or VR environments for world-building would be an interesting way to communicate artist and researcher interviews with potential sources such as Quicho, Konior, Soda, and/or Trillo and Poliks. Through this methodology, I’d be interested in leveraging New Art City, thinking of volumetric documentary Clouds that tells stories through interviews with creative coders, as a platform wherein the project can be integrable with past research residency exhibits.
Ongoing logistical considerations:
Length: 5 minutes
Format: Livestreamed lecture performance with slide show, two cameras - one with glitched version of myself and another a 3D VRM model using https://openlive3d.com/ Voice could be put through a voice modulator (either Roland SP404 MKII or Ableton Live) with OBS live captions for accessibility/clarity.
Bio: Vinh Mai Nguyen is a nonbinary Viet artist. They are interested in ephemeral acts of bodily augmentation via AR, makeup, nails, and sculpture that glitch the routinized, aiming for illegibility through flux and the practice of incomprehensibility as a liberatory imagining. Their current practice takes, in part, the form of augmented maximalist nails through the medium of AR, 3D prints, and DIY found objects like cloth, foam, etc - aiming towards an engagement with feminist posthuman phenomenology and the mandate of gender self-determination and anti-femme-phobia in the vein of Astrida Neimanis, Alok Vaid-Menon, and Legacy Russell. They are currently working on their thesis at NYU ITP on the Girl, cuteness, and nails where they also edit the journal on emerging media, Adjacent about the 2024-2025 theme of Becoming. mecha mecha mecha is a developing performance-lecture / nail-costuming workshop series and iteration of their final thesis project. Imagining style as salient political tool, the project seeks to view augmented technological mediations as modeled in Bodies of Water by Neimanis by Find them online @dalanium ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡
Comments