Brandon is a Network Not a Name: Fictocriticism & the Cyberfeminist Art of Shu Lea Cheang

IF 0.3 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY Open Library of Humanities Pub Date : 2021-11-18 DOI:10.16995/olh.6391
Zachary Pearl
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Abstract

The cyberfeminist art practice of Shu Lea Cheang evinces a particular relation of generative complicity with the art object—what Canadian cultural theorist Jeanne Randolph referred to as “the amenable object” (1983). Randolph, who pioneered “ficto-criticism”—a method of writing that intentionally blurs theory, poetics and narrative—wrote of the amenable object as an incomplete creation whose “ambiguous elements” allow the viewer to make “subjective interventions” in the work. Likewise, Cheang’s participatory installations and non-linear online narratives operate as amenable object-texts, requiring the user to not only navigate but contribute to them through acts of critical play and improvisation. Across Cheang’s oeuvre is also a nomadic politics of border-crossing that resonates as loudly with Donna Haraway’s cyborg as it does with the experimental feminist writing that became associated with fictocriticism. In this paper, I examine correlations between fictocritical approaches and formal tactics in Cheang’s studio practice to consider them as interrelated cyberfeminist strategies of resistance and dissent; ones that arose in counterpoint to the proliferation of deterministic, technocapitalist narratives. In particular, I look at how the fragmentation, partiality and double-voicing seen in many fictocritical texts were echoed in the user-experience of Cheang’s Brandon (1998), a sprawing network that posited the queer body as a collective series of actions. I conclude by looking at how these same techniques recall methods from Dadaism and Surrealism in the early 20th century and reflect on the recurrent role of indeterminacy in art and literature more generally to stem the entropy of binary paradigms.
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布兰登是网络,不是名字:小说批评&张舒莉的网络女性主义艺术
张淑蕾的网络女性主义艺术实践证明了她与艺术对象的一种特殊关系——加拿大文化理论家珍妮·伦道夫(Jeanne Randolph)称之为“可顺从的对象”(1983)。伦道夫开创了“小说批评”——一种故意模糊理论、诗学和叙事的写作方法——他把可接受的对象写为一个不完整的创作,其“模棱两可的元素”允许观众在作品中进行“主观干预”。同样,Cheang的参与式装置和非线性在线叙事作为可顺从的对象文本运作,要求用户不仅要导航,还要通过批判性游戏和即兴创作的行为为它们做出贡献。在她的全部作品中,也贯穿着一种跨越边界的游牧政治,与唐娜·哈拉威(Donna Haraway)的半机械人产生了强烈的共鸣,也与与小说批评联系在一起的实验性女权主义写作产生了共鸣。在本文中,我研究了小说批评方法和正式策略之间的相关性,将它们视为相互关联的抵抗和异议的网络女权主义策略;它们的出现与决定论和技术资本主义叙事的扩散相对应。我特别关注了在许多小说批评文本中看到的碎片化、偏袒和双重声音是如何在张布兰登(1998)的用户体验中得到回应的,这是一个将酷儿身体视为一系列集体行动的庞大网络。最后,我想看看这些相同的技巧是如何让人回想起20世纪初达达主义和超现实主义的方法,并反思不确定性在艺术和文学中反复出现的作用,更普遍地阻止二元范式的熵。
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来源期刊
Open Library of Humanities
Open Library of Humanities HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
1.30
自引率
20.00%
发文量
24
审稿时长
15 weeks
期刊介绍: The Open Library of Humanities is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal open to submissions from researchers working in any humanities'' discipline in any language. The journal is funded by an international library consortium and has no charges to authors or readers. The Open Library of Humanities is digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS archive.
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