RESEARCH

Not as a natural accompaniment to our interactions but a profitable usurpation of them, and to some degree, a degradation of our communicative capacity. With nuance, I consider what is valuable (e.g. a global network) and what is damaging to our ability to meaningfully engage with one another (e.g. dominant social media platforms). I am interested in the notion of “hard work” that comes with undermining the commodified data-extracting internet - self-hosting, PGP keys, open-source software, VPNs etc. - and the pretence of smooth functionality, ease, and user-friendly interfaces that renders platforms opaque.

The larger political structures that maintain broader social relations, complicating class distinctions and re-enforcing ideological difference. I think also about what class means when there are asylum seekers housed on lethal barges and prevented from working, not even allowed access to a class relation located at the point of production, effectively denied access to class for transgressing the primacy of borders. I am interested in learning how states manage and surveil populations, the limitations of universal suffrage and democracy, and how national imaginaries supersede matters of political citizenship - who can go where, and at what cost.

The challenge of navigating the perpetual ambiguity of other people in conversation. This also informs my engagement in facilitation, and questioning what use there might be in facilitating from a position of lack rather than mastery over a topic, theme or subject. Looking to create and utilise shared structures for conversation that means we can actually communicate from a shared position, rather than a uniquely individuated position.

Establishing contexts that are not based on commodity exchange. With discontent increasingly internalised, I am thinking about what part conversation around a common theme might play in revealing solidarities. I take a general interest in political economy and collectively navigating material constraints to the production of art and active participation in politics. Where else can solidarities lie if we are pushed to specialise, if we cannot be equally located on the factory line? Where can we find shared value outside of shared productive value?

As a speculative enquiry into far-reaching potentialities, particularly of revolution and different ways of living together and relating to one another. My interest here also guides an enquiry into concepts of hope and utopia, currently I am not entirely sure that they are of benefit - and I’m thinking about hope as a counter-revolutionary affect that translates to toleration rather than action.