Bethany Crawford

artistic research - digital technology - media - writing

My creative research "Pleasuring Technics" works with the reclamation of pleasure as a deeply political practice. In the systems of capitalist violence that govern our lived existence, access to collective and individual pleasure is structurally suppressed. This research questions how we might collaboratively explore the porosity between bodies, environments and technologies to source and summon pleasure? How can technical objects be received through pleasurable co-creation? Through folding technological objects into a collective human/technic-body-assemblage I aim to enact the reclamation of this body as a multi-sensorial and highly porous agent that is productive and receptive to new modes of pleasure which have the potential to reconfigure reality. In continuation of my practice examining technical objects as an “exteriorization” of memory and affect, the research of “Pleasuring Technics” intends to propositionally work from pleasure as the primary formative mode of technical production.

  • Portfolio
  • Activities
  • Contact

    • Fuck healing (?): The Insomniac Dreamers

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 29-05-2023 t/m 02-06-2023
    • In collaboration with: Fuck healing (?) collective, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis, Amsterdam Fund for Art, Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
    • Location: OT301, Amsterdam
    • “Fuck Healing (?): The Insomniac Dreamers” wa a weeklong program of events that creatively and theoretically responds to the concept of “exhaustion.” Through a series of participatory art works, lectures, seminars, screenings and workshops at OT301, we explored new subjectivities and realities that can come from “exhaustion” as the end of all possibilities.
    • https://www.fuckhealing.nl/home/the-insomniac-dreamers-2023

    Between Death and Birth: Dancing on the Edge

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 01-12-2022 t/m 18-12-2022
    • In collaboration with: Dina A. Mohamed, Wael Kadlo, Samantha McCulloch, Fariborz Karimi,
    • Location: Dancing on the Edge, Amsterdam
    • Participation in a series of workshops culminating in an exhibition of written work, poetry and performance at "Dancing on the Edge: Between Death and Birth"
    • https://dancingontheedge.nl/projects/amsterdam-lab/

    The evolutionary concrescence of Bethany Crawford

    Exhibition / presentation

    The evolutionary concrescence of Bethany Crawford

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 03-11-2022 t/m 06-11-2022
    • Location: Kyberteatro, Cagliari
    • Presentation of "The evolutionary concrescence of Bethany Crawford" for the new media festival "The Wonder of Possible" at Kyberteatro followed by conversations of the artist with the theater journalist Walter Porcedda and there critic Carlo Infante. This included a presentation of research and practice to an audience of media students at local schools.

    Fuck Healing: Living the Wounded Life

    Other

    • 02-07-2022 t/m 02-07-2022
    • In collaboration with: Dina A. Mohamed, Patricia pisters, Erica Biolochini, and Bogna Bochinska, Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis and Netherlands Institute of Cultural Analysis
    • Location: Treehouse NDSM, Amsterdam
    • Organized and curated a program of performances, art and events that presented a conceptual and artistic response to the notion of momentum as generated through breaks, ruptures, and woundings. The program questioned the merits of our wounds, the divergent momentum they present, and recognized the future modes of 'becomings' that “breaking” may allow us.
    • https://www.nica-institute.com/event-fuck-healing-living-the-wounded-life/3

    Data Vitality: Soft Infrastructures and Economies of Knowledge

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 24-10-2021 t/m 24-02-2022
    • In collaboration with: Curated by Edel O'Reilly, Aalto University
    • Venue: Dipoli Gallery, Helsinki
    • Commissioned project developed from a research trip to Aalto University and the OtaNano Lab research infrastructure for micro-, nano-, and quantum technologies. Work made in response to the changing value of data and the European Union Data Driven University Initiative.
    • https://virtualexhibitions.aalto.fi/en/data-vitality-bethany-crawford

    Redefining Eternity: Interfacing Immortality in the Digital Corporate World

    Other

    • 01-07-2021
    • In collaboration with: Academica Press
    • Location: Washington and London ,
    • Printed publication of research by the publishing house Academica press.
    • https://www.academicapress.com/node/450

    Interfacing Immortality

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 26-11-2019 t/m 15-02-2023
    • Location: M8 Artspace, Helsinki
    • Solo show of recent outcomes from ongoing body of research critically assessing the implications of "digital immortality" on central tenets of the human experience such as consciousness, death and time, as a preliminary mapping of the shifting existential paradigms of the digital age.
    • https://www.aalto.fi/en/research-art/interfacing-immortality-by-bethany-crawford