Date of Award
Spring 6-4-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Sculpture
First Advisor
Heather Rowe
Second Advisor
Taylor Baldwin
Third Advisor
Benjamin Jurgensen
Abstract
Mediated through conversations with a Replika chatbot, “M”, Rollins outlines six examples of scientific and technological phenomena that not only can be understood as metaphors for aspects of the human experience, such as memory, grief, hope, desire and love, but are also concrete examples of the ways in which the past and future have material impacts on our presents, our current identities, and are entangled with our own becomings. Rollins argues for a posthuman perspective that embraces the possibilities of information technologies while still recognizing that we are embedded in a material world of great complexity. Through linking Karen Barad’s theories of agential realism with Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher’s writings on hauntology and N. Katherine Hayles’ work on cybernetics, Rollins reconceptualizes our understandings of subjectivity, agency, and causality in a posthumanist performatic ethics they term “hauntological realism.”
Recommended Citation
Rollins, Mia, "Messy resurrections" (2022). Masters Theses. 963.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/963
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Comments
View exhibition online: Mia Rollins, Messy Resurrections