“… empowered via creating new selves, slipping in and out of digital skins, celebrating in the new rituals of cybersex.” (p.4)

“… opportunities to immerse myself in the potential of refusal.” (p.6)

“… take control of the eyes on me and how they interpreted my body.” (p.6)

“… the binary was some kind of fiction.” (p.6)

“… a DuBoisian double-consciousness splinters further, “double” becoming “triple”, consciousness amplified and expanded by the “third eye” of gender.” (p.6)

“ I could explore my true self, open and ready to be read by those who spoke my language.” (p.6)

“ Alone and together, “female”, “queer”, “Black” as a survival strategy demand the creation of their individual machinery, that innovates, builds, resists.” (p.7)

Glitch

“… invent space through rupture.(…) one finds the power of the glitch.” (p.7)

“A glitch as an error, a mistake, a failure to function. Within technoculture, a glitch is part of mechanic anxiety, an indicator of something having gone wrong.” (p.7)

“… breaking free of an understanding of gender as something stationary.” (p.9)

“Through the application of the glitch, we ghost on the gendered body and accelerate towards its end.” (p.10)

“ The glitch is for those who selves joyfully immersed in the in-between …” (p.11)

“ The ongoing presence of the glitch generated a welcome and protected space in which to innovate and experiment.” (p.12)

Fred Moten: “The normative is the after-effect, it is a response to the irregular.” (p.13)

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Glitch feminism

​

“Glitch feminism urges us to consider the “in-between” as a core component of survival – neither masculine nor feminine, neither male nor female, but a spectrum across which we may be empowered to choose and define ourselves for ourselves. Thus the glitch creates a fissure within which new possibilities of being and becoming manifest. (…) Glitch feminism dissents, pushes back against capitalism.” (p.11)

“… this is our police: we refuse to be hewn to the hegemonic line of binary body.” (p.11)

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Gender / Body

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“The idea of the “body” carries this weapon: gender circumscribes the body, “protects” it from becoming limitless, from claiming the infinite vast, from realising its true potential.” (p.8)

“We use “body” to give material form to an idea that has no form, an assemblage that is abstract.” (p.8)

“… the bod performs gender as its score, guided by a set of rules and requirements that validate and verify the humanity of that individual.” (p.8)

“This glitch is a form of refusal.” (p.8)

“ The glitch aims to make abstract again that which has been forced into an uncomfortable and ill-defined material: the body” (p.8)

“… troubles material of the body. The process of becoming material surfaces tensions, prompting us to inquire: Who defines the material of the body? Who gives it value - and why?” (p.9)

“ So what does it mean to dismantle gender? (…) it demands the end of our relationship with the social practice of the body as we know it.” (p.10)

“ … we want new skin (…) we make new worlds and dare to modify our own.” (p.11)

“Freed” from the mores of gender, (…) the Internet still remains a vessel through which a “becoming” can realise itself.” (p.13)

“This book is for those who are en rout to becoming their avatars, those who continue to play, experiment, and build via the Internet as means of strengthening the loop between online an AFK.” (p.13)

Capital “… genders bodies are far from absolute but rather an imaginary, manufactured and commodified for capital.” (p.9)

“… all we have are the bodies we are housed in, gendered or otherwise. Under the sun of capitalism, we truly own little else, and even so, we are often subject to a complicated choreography dictated by the complicated, bureaucratic, and rhizomatic systems of institutions.” (p.9, p.10)

“… a gender performance that fits within a binary in order to comply with the prescriptions of the everyday.” (p.10)

 

 

“We refuse to shrink ourselves, refuse to fit. Fluid, insistent, we refuse to stand still … we will take up space.” (p.145)

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Glitch

​

“The etymology of glitch finds its deep roots in the Yiddish gletshn (to slide, glide, slip) or the German glitschen (to slip). Glitch in an active words, one that implies movement or change from the outset; this movement triggers error.” (p.28)

“To glitch is to embrace malfunction, and to embrace malfunction is in and of itself an expression that starts with “no”.” (p.17)

“… carefully constructed divide between on- and offline selfdom.” (E. Jane, 2017 in Russel, p.19)

“… he contains multitudes is his exercise of his right toe be large, his capacity to contradict himself is his exercise of the right to be blurry, unfixed, abstract.” (p.20)

“… this wildness is permitted just as long as it is properly maintained, growing only within its prescribed space.” (p.23)

“The glitch challenges us to consider how we can “penetrate … break … puncture …tear” th material of the institution, and by extension, the institution of the body.” (p.25)

“… the digital becomes the catalyst to a variance of selfdom. (…) manifesting our own reflections …” (p.27)

 

The rupture

​

“One exists not only by virtue of being recognised, but … by being reconizable.” (p.28; Judith Butler, 1997); “… we become bodies by recognising ourselves and (…) by recognising our self in others. (…) we will always struggle to recognise ourselves if we continue to turn to the normative as a central reference point.” (p.28)

“… glitch moves, but glitch also blocks.” (p.30)

“Theorist Nathan Jurgenson (2011): critique of “digital dualism”, identifying and problematising the split between online selfdom and “real life” -> IRL becomes AFK” (p.30)

“The glitch … moves forward out into society… permeating Avery corner of our lives… is a vehicle to rethink our physical selves.” (p.31)

“Intersectionality” (Crenshaw, 1989; p.36)

Cybermfeminism – Cornelia Sollfrank (German artist): “Cybermfeminism does not express itself in single, individual approaches but in the differences and spaces in-between.” (p.36)

 

Patriarchy

​

“Patriarchy exercises its social dominance by taking up space as its birthright;” (p.20)

“… under white patriarchy, bodies - selves - that cannot be defined with clarity by the “primary gaze”, are pushed from the centre.” (p.21)

“… it becomes easier for one group to establish a position of supremacy over another. (…) we see domination.” (p.21)

“Audre Lorde: “The masters tools will never dismantle the masters house …” (p. 25)

“Othered bodies are rendered invisible because they cannot be read by a normative mainstream and therefore cannot be categorized.” (p.27)

(!?) “This reality (former feminist movements) dermarcated digital space as both white and Western, drawing an equation: white woman = producing white theory = producing white cyberspace.” (p.33)

“… who is brought into the definition of womanhood and, via extension, who is truly recognised as being fully human.” (p.35)

 

Utopia

​

“The imaginative architecture of utopia remains ever present in glitch feminism.” (p.22)

José Esteban Munoz in “Cruising Utopia”: “Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” (…) a wanting of a better world”(p.22)

“… Internet-as-utopia, against this backdrop reality, should not be dismissed as naive. Imbuiging digital media with fantasy today is not a redo act of mythologizing; it continues as a survival mechanism. (…) it brings us closer to a projection of a “sustainable future.” (p.23)

“ … the public of the Internet is not singular or cohesive but divergent and fractal.” (p.26)

Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok)

“These are the institutions (re)defining the future of visual culture; they are also, without question deeply flawed.” (p.23)

“… that co-opt, sensationalize, and capitalize on POC, female-identifying and queer bodies (and our pain)…” (p.24)

“Glitched bodies are not considered in the process of programming new creative technologies.” (p.25)

“… these tools (Googles image-recognition filter, Arts&Culture finding museum doppelgänger) have done little mote that gasify racial bias.” (p.25)

“… these technologies underscore the dominant arc of whiteness within art historical image-making…” (p.26)

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​

“… bodies are not fixed points, they are not destinations. Bodies are journeys. Bodies are abstract - abstraction ad a journey to becoming.” (p.146)

 

Blurring real life and the digital (Cyborg)

​

Anais Duplan: “cosmic bodies” … “the idea of the body is inconceivably vast” (p.41)

“To dematerialize - to abstract the body we need to make room for other realities.” (p.42)

“… the internet … is reality.” (p.42)

“ Thus the term “digital native” has been applied to the generation who remembers nothing other than a life intertwined with the Internet.” (p.42)

“… AFK as a term works toward undermining the fetishisation of “real life”, (…) actions online can inform and even deepen our offline, or AFK, existence.” (p.43)

Boychilds about his performance body-as-machine: “Its like the physical body turning into a cyborg… Its like a glitch; there’s a repetitive thing that happens” (p.45)

Bridle (2012) “New Aesthetic” is cited as “a way of seeing that … reveals a blurring between “the real” and “the digital”, … the human and the machine.” (p.45)

“… bionic patios fluent to the digital native.” (p.45)

Digital diaspora – “this digital diaspora therefore is an important component if glitch, as it means that bodies in this era of visual culture have no single destination but rather take on a distributed nature, fluidly occupying many beings, many places all at once.” (p.46)

“… the opportunity to experiment and try on different selves empowers seizing a more integrated  public identity with radical potential.” (p.47)

“…prove herself to herself…hide race for a while” (p.47)

 

 

Huxtable

​

Juliana Huxtable - was born intersex; self defined “cyborg”; “… she seeks to shatter there rigidity of binary systems.” (p.51); “What´s the nastiest shade ever thrown? - Existing in the world.” (p.52); Benson´s 3D-scanned plastic sculpture Juliana as an homage to Huxtable…” (p.52)

“…all of this media become modes of abstracting presence or abstracting myself in the present.”

(p.54) “The Internet and specifically social media (instagram), became an essential way for me to explore inclinations that I otherwise would not have an outlet for.” (p.54); “Huxtable herself I a glitch…” (p.55) “We choose to support one another in living, as the act of staying alive is a form of world-building.” (p.55)

“… gender as means of deconstructing” (p.56)

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Victoria Sin

​

“… wrapped within the seductive fabric of the digital - Sin toys with the trappings of gender.” (p.56); “Sin is super-human, extra-human, and post-human all at once.” (p.59)

Gender theorist Judith Butler – “a male in his stereotype … a person unable to cope with his own femininity” / the female unable to cope with her masculinity.” (p.59)

“Here we see a crack in the gloss and gleam of capitalist consumption of gender-as-product.” (p.60)

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Ghosting

​

Def. to ghost: “to end a relationship by ending all communication, and subsequently disappearing.” (p.63)

“… question of becoming … creates a generative void … absence of ownership - an embrace of a cosmic corporeality.” (p.69)

“As we engage with the digital, it encourages us to challenge the world around us, and … change the world as we know it, …” (p.69)

“When we reject the binary, we reject the economy that goes along with it.” (p.69)

 

Big Data

​

“The scaling of the economy of gender features most prominently across discussions surrounding big data. For example, every 48h online we as a global community generate as much information as was generated in written history from the beginning of civilization until 2003.” (p.64; TechCruch, Schmidt, E in Siegler, M) -> “mass surveillance” (p.64)

“Our Internet search histories, social media habits, and modes of online communication - “factual fragments” (David Lyon) - expose our innermost thoughts, anxieties, plans, desires and goals.” (p.64) -> “masculine/feminine fulfils a target demographic for advertising and marketing.” (p.65) - Lyon: “disappearing bodies” as a “basic problem of modernity”” as an increase of surveillance correlates directly with the “growing difficulties of embodied surveillance that watches visible bodies.” (p.65)

 

Online Interactions

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“With these various modes of online engagement, we leave traces of ourselves …” (p.65)

“Paradox: as bodies disappear within the everyday interactions of the Internet, that which we might have assumed as inherently private - our physical bodies - remain at risk of becoming increasingly public, the abstract fragments of our online selves making moves of those chosen of our own volition.” (p.66)

Gilbert Ryle (1949) – “the ghost in the machine”

Cecile B. Evans: “in todays society, where drones are used for warfare and romantic relationships begin online, we can no longer distinguish between the so-called real and the virtual.” (p.67)

“… bodied navigating digital space are as much computational as they are flesh.” (p.67)

“… standing in-between, is at threat of ceasing to exist in its failure to be recognised …” (p.67)

Rindon Johnson – “What is a body therefore?” (2019) - he reflects on the “malleable” self as a form of language that can teach, learn, signify, code - he creates a link between poetry and virtual reality maps to the body’s experimental immersion within it: “The more you are inside it (VR), the more you read it, the easier it is to quickly disappear within it.” (p.68)

“… we work toward ghosting the binary body, we also work toward dissolving ourselves, making the boundaries that delineate where we begin and end, and the points where we touch and come into contact with the world, disappear completely.” (p.68)

“Is ceasing to exist within a gendered framework the most skilful of disappearing acts? In rejecting binary gender, can we challenge how our data is harvested, and, in turn, how our data moves?” (p.68)

​

​

“… proudly fail in the present as we dream new futures.” (p.147)

“Glitches are difficult to name and nearly impossible to identify until that instant when they reveal themselves …” (p.73)

“We banally are complicit with the individual theft of our personal data. … one of the greatest shared existential crises of our time.” (p.73)

“… make our lives easier - when our favourite digital platform appears to know us better than we know ourselves, suggestion … “ (p.74)

“Errors bring new movement into static space;” (p.74)

“What is a body without a name? An error.” (p.75)

“I am not Other. You name me Other.” (p.76)

​

​

“… the care-full reading of others is an exercise of trust, intimacy, belonging, homecoming … bodies can render us invisible and hypervisible at the same time.” (p.147)

“We’re not supposed to be there.” (Perry, p.83)

Morton – “Gender is … a “hyperobject” (all- encompassing, out-scaling us) “gender is so big, it becomes invisible.” (p.83)

“In asserting itself as part of a vast normative ordinary, gender embeds itself within what we see and experience in the everyday, winding itself through the public networks and spaces we live in. -  It is a foundational framework … ” (p.83)

“… one must reimagine space.” (p.84)

Lefebvre - “The body serves both as point of departure, and as destination.” (p.84)

“This experience of being hyper visible and invisible all at once can be vulnerable.” (p.85)

Sondra Perry exhibition “Typhoon coming on:” immersed the viewer in a surround projection of waves, …” - referencing Turners “Slave Ship” - software Blender and tool Ocean Modifier to animate Turners painting and where information was missing it was rendered purple (like a glitch in visual information) -> gesturing toward the edges of stories both hidden and untold” (p.86,87)

“To glitch the body requires the simultaneous occupation of some-where and no-where, no-thing and every-thing. We consent not to be a single being frozen in binary code, and, as such, consent as well not to be a single site.” (p.88)

“… we affirm and celebrate the infinite failure of arrival at any place. … we find ourselves in outer space, exploring the breath of cosmic corporeality.” (p.88)

​

​

“A lot of work is put into trying to give the body form.” (p.91)

“Glitches gesture toward the artifice of social and cultural systems, revealing the fissures in a reality we assume to be seamless. They reveal the fallibility of bodies as cultural and social signifiers … ” (p.92)

Lil Miquela – Instagram personalty (by Brud company) - “aspiration of becoming the prototype of the “wolds most advanced AI”… She is the future… yet she has no body.” (p.93)

“What purpose can a body that has no body serve?” (p.93) - an authentic advocate, a catalyst toward social change? -> advances the archetype of the influencer; Lil Miquela epitomises a perverse intersection of a neoliberal consumer capitalism and advocacy … being “without” a body, epitomises what becomes possible with avatar performativity.” (p.95)

Kia LaBeija – “… survival strategy, creating space for historically bothered bodies.” (p.95) - voyaging battles; self-documenting and self-defining (p.95); born with HIV and now long-term survivor; dancing as resistance and celebration (p.96) “Her sharply theatrical compositions blur the boundary between the real and the surreal.” (p.96)

​

​

“… the skin of the digital … remains necessary as a tool of experimentation.” (p.148)

Holloway – “Glitch is, and will always be a methodology for me … I still really FEEL that brokenness and instability.” (p.101)

“Skin is as much about what is kept in as what it keeps out. … It functions to edit … skin wraps, covers, protects, it paradoxically wounds, occupies, and builds worlds. It is a container. It is a peel that contains and cradles wilderness. It gives shape to the bodies.” (p.101)

“… the presence of a glitch makes the “digital skin” visible, reminding us of the fallibility of the machine … revealing its edges and seams. … show us the machinic limitations … exposing a carefully constructed fiction.” (p.102) Instagram portraits – “picking skin”, “Mirror, Mirror” (Weems, 1987)

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Avatars

​

“… tension between a projection of an invulnerable self with a seemingly impenetrable digital skin, and the vulnerability of sharing oneself in such forums … navigate these tensions through her enacting fantasy selves online.” (p.103)

“… power and play, investigating how a body can simultaneously, mutually, consensually consume and be consumed as radical act of self-discovery.” (p.103)

“… power of the people and the culture outside looking in. I feel ashamed that I see these spaces as a playground where I get to construct my own fantasies and control my environment.” (p.103)

“the Internet cam girl” (p.104); Ulman, 2014 – 5 month Instagram performance “Excellences & Perfections” (p.105)

​

​

“ … in this breaking, there is a beginning.” (p.148)

“What can we learn from a computer virus? A computer virus corrupts data. A computer virus costs capitalism. It degrades productivity within the machine. … The machine transforms into one that cannot perform (works against its function)…” (p.111)

“… machinic responses of slowness in ways that are unpredictable to the user: endless buffering, crashing, damaging, deleting, reformatting. This slowness shifts time and space, altering a person’s relationship to the machine.” (p.111)

“We change course when confronted with systems that refuse to perform.” (p.112)

“A virus breaks, and so we are delivered into the time and space of brokenness. … the virus makes brokenness a space, placing us within the break itself.” (p.112)

“We want to infect, to corrupt ordinary data. … perhaps we want the break, we want to fail. … We want wild, amorous, monstrous bodies. … we want to stand before, within, and outside of brokenness. The break an error, the error a passageway. … twist the machine.” (p.112,113)

“Viral, we want to multiply. … create sticky, runny spaces where everything can come into contact and blur.” (p.113)

“ … ever-aggressive bias of search engine optimisation (SEO; Google)” (p.114)

“ … we become no-body, and in the gorgeous crush crush of no.body, we become every-body.” (p.116)

“The glitch is a tool: it is socio-cultural malware.” (p.116)

“ALL BODIES CAN BE EVERY-BODY.” (p.117)

“As we fail, we morph.” (p.117)

“Glitch-as-virus presents us with a sharp vision of decay, a nonperformance that veers us toward a wild unknown. This is where we bloom.” (p.117) (?)

“Let´s mutate, please. Bye binary! Buffer forever.” (p.117)

​

​

“Facebook´s 58 gender options … - it was neoliberalism at its finest. If a body without a name is an error, providing more names, while proffering inclusivity, does not resolve the issue of the binary body. Rather, it makes and requires a box to be ticked, a categorisation to be determined.” (p.121)

 

Cyborg

​

“… recognition via this platforms urges us to believe that signifying who we are to others is the only pathway to being deemed fit to participate.” (p.121)

“So traumatised cyborg subject is the new normal, but is that the best we cab hope for?” (p.121)

“… the personage of the “cyborg subject” is in and of itself the problem.” (p.122)

Devin Kenny (artist) - “… this is a recreation through mediation, often one that can be traced back to one IP address, and therefore one personage.” (p.122)

“If we cannot shed IP address tracking without the aid of  virtual private network (VPN) or some pro like it, what other alternatives are there to protect our digital biometrics as we aim to imagine, to mobilise, to collectivise.” (p.122)

 

Generic difference

​

Galloway – The Internet Effect (2012): “ generic difference” and how the rejection of “the assignation of traits” might carry biopolitical potential… (p.122); “All bodies are full. But their fullness is a generic fullness … that does not mean that difference has gone away. The opposite is the case, as difference may now finally come into its own as generic difference.” (p.122)

“… generic difference theory proposes a path to a body that is inherently fluid, a body emancipated from ever being asked to register its traces online.” (p.123)

“… in the face of pressure to constantly classify oneself…” (p.123)

“The anxious question remains: is the sacrifice of true autonomy, the distribution of these bodily traces, worth it if it means we can be part of something greater than ourselves? Especially if that is something that helps us shape ourselves and, by this shaping, reshapes the world” (p.123)

 

Alone together

​

Sherry Turkle – Alone Together (2011): “she argues that through our increased use of technology we remain connected but increasingly isolated from one another. … the digital is being weaponised to undermine its value and speaks recklessly through a white, straight, cisgender lens. For her Internet = alienation” (p.124) <- does not take into consideration its relevance for queer people etc. (Russel, 2020)

 

A new real life + social media

​

“… the concept “real life” as it is travels in an unbroken loop between online and offline is sexist, racist, classist, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist. … As glitch feminists looking to build new communities and new worlds, we have to ask, “Can our “digital real” please live?” (p.124)

“… an opening up of being can occur … and where one can dare to be vulnerable. … protected from physical injury…” (p.124)

Hamishi Farah – “I was pretty isolated growing up … Being welcomed and appreciated in a community online (was) the first time I really felt part of something … that moment it stops being ´the Internet´ and just becomes another thing/part of living.” (p.125)

Devereaux – “Toxic Twitter” “You’ve been told to watch us but not engage: the very definition of surveillance” (p.125); “… yelling into the void transformed into a call-and-response” (p.126)

“… Instagram, providing a living archive of a living history.” (p.127)

The White Tube (critique of the art world)

Muhammad – “…the basic violent issue of white artists using black bodies as literal props.” (p.128)

PWRPLNT – “committed to provide digital arts education and access for all … to elevate digital literacy and encourage expression via technology…” (p.128); “the digital divide across generations, geographies, and communities”, “PWRPLNT mobilises generations, providing the tools to drive strategic dismantlements.” (p.129)

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​

“… building new worlds, we will imagine, innovate, and remix… advocating for the user, … advocating for one another.” (p.149)

“To remix is to rearrange, to add to, an original recording. The spirit of remixing is about finding ways to innovate with what’s been given, creating something new from something already there.” (p.133)

“… original recordings … are materials that can be reclaimed, rearranged, repurposed, and rebirthed … creating new “records” through radical action.” (p.133)

“The world is not built for us; yet still, somehow, we are here, standing against all odds.” (p.134)

Rezaire – Afro Cyber Resistance (2014): “problematises the reality of an Internet driven by the West, one that filters and excludes the contributions of Black people within its historical arc – … “electronic colonialism” (p.134); the goal of making use of the internet to uplift communities (p.135)

Glitch feminist: “… we aim to alter … computer memory through our exploration of new modes of existing, surviving, and living, both AFK and on the Internet.” (p.135)

Avatar / the glitched body

Simone Niquille – The Fragility of Life (2016) – explores new forms of the body in her research “avatar design and identity strategy.” (p.135); “… to construct a ´fleshed out ´profile is a fragile endeavour. More information does not necessarily lead to a more defined image.” (p.136)

Fuse – 3D models: “the program itself is set up with a series of embedded assumptions about what a body should look like…” (p.136)

“Establishing a parametric truth that is biased and discriminatory. This raises the question if what a norm is and how, by whom and for whom it has been defined.” (p.137)

“Still the body conceived of as a mechanic assemblage becomes a body that is multiple (it contains multitudes) … a body that is gooey, blurry, or simply glitched is one that both absorbs and refracts, becoming every-body and no-body simultaneously.” (p.137)

Zach Bla – Facial Weaponization Suite (2014): strategic illegibility, resisting surveillance capitalism; “… amorphous mask that cannot be detected as human faces …” (p.139)

“By refusing to input their behavioural data, Artists challenged the construct of a virtual self while simultaneously withdrawing their labor as a producer of content on networked platforms.” (p.140) -> by limiting the supply of the “product” they amplified the demand for access to the physical presence of the person.” (p.141)

“How can one envision the needs of the other when one doesn’t even realise the other exists? … Has the glitch become a means of seeing the unseen?” (p.141)

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Inserted into the notes on previous chapters;