nostalgia or innovation? 

Research
Inspiration

During the 2016 presidential campaign, nostalgia was used as a weapon by Trump and his conservative, alt-right affiliates to rally supporters. As Trump transitioned from candidate to president, I felt compelled to research how paleoconservative nostalgia influences the tech industry. My research thus far has focused on technology created by private, conservative companies such as Palantir and Anduril that claim to "serve America" by aiding in the surveillance of vulnerable communities (particularly at the US/Mexico border) and helping further militarize our law enforcement.

Look for the people to understand the tech: Popular consumer and surveillance technologies are often understood as objects in-and-of themselves, rather than objects made by people with unique beliefs, ideologies, identities and political affiliations. Furthermore, rhetoric used to market both liberal and conservative technologies tends to look and sound the same, often confusing people into assuming all tech is liberally-minded. In this project, I peek behind technology to explore who is making the technologies that affect our environment and how they are shaping our world. 

Relevant Article: "Inside Palmer Luckey's Bid to Build a Border Wall," Wired Magazine

Related Work: "Me, My Quantified Self, and I" and "Border Quants"

Questioning
Aesthetics

This research arose from a yearning to situate my own critical and creative research within my home region of the American Southwest and to engage in a creative process that does not exclusively focus on White, Euro-American concert dance aesthetics. The American Southwest has and continues to be a testing ground for new experimental technologies, yet little dance/tech work has been created to explore the impacts of technology design within the American Southwest. Most experimental dance/technology work coming from US institutions reflects US coastal urban city aesthetics at the very least, but more often Western European concert dance aesthetics. This observation is not intended to oversimplify the complex reasons why dance/technology research tends to reflect such aesthetics, but to point to a chasm between the geographic location in which my research takes place and the dominant aesthetics of the dance/technology community. As an artist who’s lived and made my work in the metro Phoenix area for over 12 years, the strong division between American Southwestern culture and dance/technology aesthetics is palpable. This division inspired me to develop a work that directly addresses the American Southwest as an active playground for technology design inspired by neoconservative politics and challenge common aesthetics used to make dance/tech artwork.

We do this through the use of: satirical humor, contemporary jazz dance, burlesque dance, Las Vegas entertainment aesthetics, haptic technologies, feathers, glitter, and feminist critique

Creative Inspirations: Grisha Coleman's (echo::system) and arts collective Radio Healer.

Process

"Politics of the Grid" is still in the early stages of development. We completed a 2-week residency at University of New Mexico in May 2018 which launched the project. During this time, we began creating the showgirl characters through text and movement and designed two wifi-enabled showgirl costumes with 12 independently addressable channels of EL wire.

My goal is to create this work regionally with other dance artists and researchers currently living and making working in the American Southwest over the next 2 - 3 years. We will host iterative, regional showings throughout and share our progress both regionally and nationally. 

The project will have a few local, informal showings in the fall, and project development will pick back up at the beginning of 2019.