[2023]
Archive -<3
Panne velvet, faux fur, glazed ceramic, cardboard, acrylic, spray paint, polyester fill, found objects, sound and video (2 min 22 secs).
A transmission comes through a model Q 2023 ARCHIVE-<3u_ console; placing reference within reference (interlink). What have our forefathers, ‘Bi’(Hetero)centennial man, ‘ally 2 all’ Scarlett Johansson and (my) 1st celebrity crush Mark Hamill - taught us about the conflation of humanity with innate sexuality and Western norms relating to desire, intimacy, attraction, Love!, and the hierarchy of relationships?
ARCHIVE-<3u_ is a sculpture video based work which engages with Sci-Fi through a queer asexual and anti-orientalist lens; questioning the Hollywood genres prescription of heteronormativity and compulsory sexuality. A video/audio piece sits within a Barbarella inspired console, soft forms hold ceramic touches, and text finds obscure linkages between my personal experiences of intimacy and dialogue found in Sci-Fi movies. Aligning with Asexual Resonances: Tracing a Queerly Asexual Archive, the work is an exploration of the asexual moments that are “tangled somewhere within us, in the personal archive that we carry” (Przybylo & Cooper, 2014). Through the language of kitsch and prop making, I form an archive that is “multiple and contradictory” which documents the intersections between the personal and pop cultural (Przybylo & Cooper, 2014). In providing a materially and conceptually layered work, ARCHIVE-<3u_ decentres “the experience of (especially hetero)sexual attraction and desire (in Sci-Fi), which is opposed to mechanical rationality, coded as “asexual,” so that sexuality is taken to be foundational to the concept of humanity” (Barr, 2019).