Proposal 2020 E-flux fellowship 2020

Uma Breakdown

E-flux fellowship 2020 proposal

“Voids”






[Image: Bettinelli-Olpin, M., Bruckner, D., Gillett, T., Martinez, J., McQuaid, G., Silence, R., Swanberg, J., Villella, C., West, T., & Wingard, A. (2012, September 6). V/H/S [Horror, Thriller]. 8383 Productions, Bloody Disgusting, Studio71.]




Background

My PhD research proposes and analyses an approach to art practice as the negotiation of something that overwhelms, or as a “machinic” process that is always collapsing, or as something hidden that can only be understood through how it changes things it comes into proximity with. This work uses existing frameworks from other disciplines such as the écriture feminine of Kathy Acker, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray, the systems of tabletop role playing games, and the theory of horror cinema. Within a chapter on the artist Porpentine Charity Heartscape I wrote a footnote (which coincidentally also references a classic text from e-flux Journal) marking out a loose thread for future research that does not fit within the thesis.

“12. The ellipses in Aperitif along with its other instances of expressiveabsences or damaged/low definition information and therefore could be furtherexamined in terms of writer and curator Legacy Russell’s theory regardingglitches and “sliding between identifications” (Russell, 2012, 2013). Thisline of inquiry could be then further pursued via artist Hito Steyerl’s conceptof the “poor image” which can create “disruptive movements of thought andaffect” (Steyerl, 2009). Likewise theorist Steven Shaviro’s text on the titular“found-footage” horror film “The Glitch Dimension: Paranormal Activityand the Technologies of Vision”, presents another point of departure viaThe deployment of absence and noise in horror cinema (Shaviro, 2017).Shaviro’s analysis that “We are affected (and oppressed) as much by theirglitches, gaps and limitations as we are by their successful operations”(Shaviro, 2017, p. 331), like those of Russell and Steyerl open up the breaksin digital images as a site of both politics and affect.”

The thread of vital noise/absence/glitch runs through the e-flux archive, appearing repeatedly as the edges of images/politics to Steyerl (#15, #60, #72…), as care to Mary Walling Blackburn (#26) as the with-without to Alenka Zupančič (#33), as capital itself to John Russell (#46), as corruption/revolt to Natasha Ginwala (#67), as the flexible terrain on sonic affects to Lamin Fofana (#79), as woman to Amy Ireland (#80), and the unspeakable/forgotten to Rob Goyanes (#84), as stateless/damaged Palestinian bodies to Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (#106)


For this fellowship, I would pursue this thread through the following questions:


-What is absence, noise, and glitch in the e-flux archive, including where they are not named as such and exist outside of the digital?


-What are their processes?


-What are the politics of formless or unidentifiable, yet dynamic, breaks? What are the politics of collaborating with or centring these?


-What are the tactics deployed for negotiating these unknowns?



Methodology

Through close reading I will identify texts which deal with glitching, volatile/vital absence/a-signification, both directly and tangentially. From these I will extract the processes employed to do so, and map out the differences of these across the journal’s archive. This work will be contextualised through the work of related theorists of absence, damage, and instability such as Georges Bataille, Félix Guattari, and Luce Irigaray.


Output


A taxonomy of absence/noise/glitch within the archive that accounts for the instability of these things, a glitching taxonomy.