Current Projects
Logics of Leaks
We are living in times of increasing leakiness—while many theorists utilize liquid metaphors to describe the late modern moment, Logics of Leaks asserts that turning towards leakiness, rather than liquidity, allows for a deeper interrogation of this seeming fluidity. In following the leak’s lead, this project rejects disciplinary constraints in order to explore the phenomena of leaking across many of its forms. From information leaks to leaky bodies, and from port cities to theories of the self, Logics of Leaks traces how leaking, as a vital dynamic, becomes implicated in politics, ecology, media, philosophy and beyond. Animated through material conditions and figurative potentials, the leak should be understood not as a distinct actor, but rather as an entangling, relational force. To these ends, this project asserts that leaks provide a productive means for thinking through materiality and nature-culture, as well as mobilizing their emancipatory potentials. (Forthcoming Monograph)
Charting Course
Charts appear across many media forms; integrated within corporate reporting, commercial advertising, investigative journalism, policy papers, and artworks. As tables, graphs, and maps, charts embody efficient modes for representing large amounts of data into simple communicative devices. However, this project argues that charts do more than represent data—they render information into discrete relationships, thus charting is, itself, a process of datafication. “Charting Course” traces how charts are operationalized, passively, strategically, and artistically for different purposes. Chart’s aesthetic qualities are often called upon in discussions about effective and attractive information presentation and the rendering of evidence as “beautiful”, however plain charts, official documentation, and straight-forward records are often considered to operate anaesthetically. By this logic, for information to appear as insipid, boring and dull is not simply a problem of content, but something solvable through good design. There are two critiques of this position that ground this research project: firstly, this project asserts that undesirable attributes such as “boring” and “dull” still operate aesthetically, and secondly, the collapsing of aesthetics into an exclusive framework of beauty and taste (as it is sometimes conceived) disarms the potential of aesthetic theory in accounting for the political and ideological functions of data representation through charting.
Material Destruction and Virtual Endurance
This project examines practices of material media destruction and their transformation and efficacy in light of the digital contemporary. The historical shift from orality to literacy manifests through information’s increasing integration into physical forms, and with the ability to physically possess information, comes the possibility for its destruction. From book burning to the locking away of controversial artworks, control over analogue media objects has a long and complex history. In spite of the deepening of digital cultures—often framed through imaginations of ephemeral network flows—these material strategies against media endure in the contemporary moment. This seeming contradiction between physical and intangible media implicates the material destruction of media objects as a key intersection in understanding both the material and more-than-material aspects of media themselves. The continued symbolic value of material destruction in the digital contemporary is pertinent to these analyses. This project considers the shifting dynamics of destruction demanded by information’s virtual existence, and investigates how ongoing technological development and environmental crises affect how media is destroyed, and how—in turn—this destruction affects media cultures more broadly.