Research

‘Research’, ‘methodology’ and ‘pedagogy’ all float around our working group discussions, but are not convened in a single inquiry. While we are focused on HIV & stigma at present, we are neither limited by themes nor area studies. We are motivated rather by continuous expansion and emergent interactions between the topic and our respective inquiries and aesthetic practices. Brad Walrond’s Every Where Alien (EWA) is a phenomenological interrogation of core historical ideas [race, genetics and white supremacy] tethered to a trauma-informed framework that structures discourse in a virtual environment at the level of self and group, formation and reformation. It encourages participants to feel, as much as they are inclined to think, their way through new identity projects and embodied futures. His eponymous first book drops in 2021. Todd Lanier Lester makes durational, multi-stakeholder and rights-focused artworks. Of immaterial form, he says “I outline very specific things for which you can catch the first glimpse around the end of a project’s ‘official’ duration…like if invisible ink worked backwards, with words growing brighter over time.” Emphasising co-authored and collaborative practices, Swarm Methodology helps to cultivate non-hierarchical relationships between its component parts–organisms, actors and players–that work together through local interactions to achieve a global harmony and make tools together. Swarm Methodology and Game of Swarms are concepts authored by Paula Nishijima. She is actively applying them to Luv ’til it Hurts.