Xenotemporality
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Westminster
Department Name: Westminster Sch of Arts
Abstract
Xenofeminism-A Politics for Alienation (XF) is a text written in 2015 by the working group
Laboria Cuboniks of which I am a founding member. It develops a feminism that embraces
reason, technology and complexity, and claims alienation as a productive force and 'an
impetus to generate new worlds'.
The manifesto is my point of departure for this PhD research proposal. The project will develop
the idea of a Xenotemporality which is implicit in the XF text but needs rigorous elaboration. To
do this I will articulate what is meant by alienation in the manifesto and how it can be
productive. I will go on to argue why alienation in relation to the question of 'time' can be vital
for constructing adequate conceptual tools for thinking about the anthropocene.
Xeotemoporality (XT) is based on the idea that the human experience of time has historically
guided our conception of it but that this anthropogenic conception of time is too parochial for
our current needs. The primacy of human phenomenological experience of time is no longer
sufficient for how we organise, inflect and orient the systems we have created because these
systems function on scales beyond the experiential capacity of the human. GPS satellites and
High Frequency Trading provide two examples. These conditions establish a need for a
rethinking of time, demoting our experiential understanding of it and removing ourselves as
primary measures of its ontology. XT endorses instead a necessary and productive alienation
between our experience and our knowledge that broadens how we think about the very idea of
'the future' and how we might go about constructing it. This is the conceptual work I am
proposing with this project. It will be executed through both written dissertation and studio
practice.
I am proposing practice based PHD research. It will be conducted as an art practice and make
clear and distinctive interdisciplinary connections between philosophy, science and design.
The outcomes will be two video works and a series of drawings and a written text elaborating
the theoretical developments of the research.
Laboria Cuboniks of which I am a founding member. It develops a feminism that embraces
reason, technology and complexity, and claims alienation as a productive force and 'an
impetus to generate new worlds'.
The manifesto is my point of departure for this PhD research proposal. The project will develop
the idea of a Xenotemporality which is implicit in the XF text but needs rigorous elaboration. To
do this I will articulate what is meant by alienation in the manifesto and how it can be
productive. I will go on to argue why alienation in relation to the question of 'time' can be vital
for constructing adequate conceptual tools for thinking about the anthropocene.
Xeotemoporality (XT) is based on the idea that the human experience of time has historically
guided our conception of it but that this anthropogenic conception of time is too parochial for
our current needs. The primacy of human phenomenological experience of time is no longer
sufficient for how we organise, inflect and orient the systems we have created because these
systems function on scales beyond the experiential capacity of the human. GPS satellites and
High Frequency Trading provide two examples. These conditions establish a need for a
rethinking of time, demoting our experiential understanding of it and removing ourselves as
primary measures of its ontology. XT endorses instead a necessary and productive alienation
between our experience and our knowledge that broadens how we think about the very idea of
'the future' and how we might go about constructing it. This is the conceptual work I am
proposing with this project. It will be executed through both written dissertation and studio
practice.
I am proposing practice based PHD research. It will be conducted as an art practice and make
clear and distinctive interdisciplinary connections between philosophy, science and design.
The outcomes will be two video works and a series of drawings and a written text elaborating
the theoretical developments of the research.
