The NO!!!BOT

NO!!!BOT AT PRO ARTS GALLERY, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. OCTOBER 6, 2018.

This performance embodied the tentacular necrosis of militarist surveillance capitalism - with it’s grotesque, invasive and degenerate Tech Cartel leaders and DARPA cannibals that dominate the Necro-Techno Complex.

Video documentation edited by Praba Pilar; video footage filmed by John Normoyle; tech at performance run by Michael Daddona, curated by Natalia Mount.

Photographs by Natalia Mount.

GRACE PERFORMANCE SPACE, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK. MAY 18, 2018. with invited guest, bioartist Adam Zaretsky.

This performance, with invited artist Adam Zaretsky, relentlessly engaged militarized neo-colonial cannibalism, by drawing on the enduringly successful Exoskeletons that have been on Earth for 430 million years – the cannibalistic Scorpion. From the guardians Scorpion-Man and Scorpion-Woman in the Epic of Gilgamesh, to Christian conceptions of scorpions as so evil they cannot be part of God’s creation, to Asian concepts of scorpion as coitus – scorpions simultaneously embody pain, lust, poison, evil and protection from evil.

As cannibals, how are scorpions the source of military Exoskeleton technologies? Who are militaries, DARPA funded university labs, and technology company leaders cannibalizing? Adam Zaretsky complicated the piece with salmon sperm DNA and other biotech processes, and worked with Pilar on a remix of the Cartels video used in the second part of the performance.

NO!!!BOT with La Pocha Nostra at SOMARTS, san francisco. Aug 4, 2018

This evening of performance of La Pocha Nostra & SOMArts - with Gómez-Peña, Balitronica, La Saula, Guillermo Galindog, Juan Ybarra, Praba Pilar & 15 artists from the US, Canada & Mexico - focused on 'The City in Ruins.' After a 10-day interdisciplinary workshop exploring the concept of the “city in ruins” and artist-driven responses to the predatory politics of urban land-use, the event involved the creation of interactive performance installations with an emphasis on the human body and the relation to the neighborhood.

I explored my QueerCornut/copia figure from the NO!!!BOT performance over the two hours. All photographs by Erika Hannes.

NEW FEMINIST RESEARCH SERIES. UNIVERSITY OF SASKATOON, Gordon snelgrove gallery, MARCH 7, 2018

Situated Embodied Resistance to 21st Century Necro-Techno Colonialism

A lecture and performance addressing how contemporary necro-techno colonialism adapts the salvation narrative to instrumentalize faith, using the “doctrine of discovery” to undergird a global apparatus of surveillance capitalism that converts bio-life into an extra-judicial colony in service of ruthless intensification of control. 

Sponsored by Women's and Gender Studies and the Role Model Speaker Fund of the College of Arts and Science.

PREMIERE. vancouver LIVE BIENNALE 2017, October 7, 2017

Not an acquiescent programmed Robot or a despicable malicious Bot, the NO!!!BOT is an Exoskeleton created out of the impossible desire of a body resisting the supersonic technological rail driving us deeper into militarized neo-colonial relations.

Across our globe, medical, corporate and military sectors are developing Exoskeletons at a very rapid rate. The medical ones help people with immobilizing conditions regain mobility. Most often, Exoskeletons are being created for much more perverse aims. Corporations use them to double or triple the labor of the workers they cannot replace with robotics. But militaries? Theirs increase the strength of soldiers, significantly reduce strain in covering long distances, improve precision in shooting, and technologically enhance the capacity for human bodies to more efficaciously kill other human bodies. Silicon Valley technology companies are only too happy to collaborate on fashioning this stale science fiction reality for our shared present.

This performance is part of a series of experiments hurtling into our own collective imaginaries, hacking these destructive code makers, and generating our own deviant electric dreams.