Spaceshifting

Abstract

The ontological violence of being confined to categories of the Inhuman (especially the “Animal”) is often resisted by appealing to acceptance into “common humanity,” a desire to be recognized as "human,” validating and working within this category. Through the creation of this exploratory, sticky, tangled website, I construct emerging connections and contrasts in BIBI's "Animal Farm" (가면무도회), INIKO's "Jericho," Rina Sawayama's "XS," and horsegiirL's "f0rbiidden l0ve$tory," and the ways each project occupies and employs the Inhuman, interrogating and challenging appeals to acceptance and expansion in the category of the “human.” These projects are created by artists who themselves are subjected to historic and present processes of de"human”ization, warping and transforming their own physical matter, as well as transgressing space and time around them—visibly, lyrically, audibly—through embracing and inhabiting Inhumanity as robot/cyborg, alien, monster, and/or nonhuman animal(s). Through this website, I tear open questions of racialized, gendered violence and "survivor"-hood; capitalist excess, co-optation, and consumption; and other interconnected, overlapping layers of violence of fixed and fixing notions of “the Human.” I additionally question the limitations of these projects, exposing contradiction and tension, as well as asking what is at stake in Inhumanity—and what this means in immediate organizing and resistance work.

Notes on Contributor:

Gray is a multi-disciplinary artist making multimedia pieces often exploring—but not limited to—sonic analyses. Gray's research often reflects on soundscapes as ontology in practice, as well as the relationships that can result from these practices. Outside of their art-work, Gray spends time community organizing.