Rewilding the Digital Archive
An Artistic Exploration of the Bug as a Queer and Decolonial Agent
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15756679Keywords:
Digital archive, bug, extractivism, technology, natureAbstract
In “Moths Dreaming of Electric Waters”, artist duo Fadi Houmani and Ster Borgam created a digital ecosystem inhabited by cyber-bugs to challenge the anthropocentric worldviews and digital technologies implicated in colonial and extractivist systems. I engaged in in-depth conversations with Houmani and Borgman and complemented these dialogues with eco-feminist, decolonial, and Indigenous epistemologies. Drawing out a theoretical frame from the artwork, I invite the bug into the digital archive as a means of rewilding. The bug embodies complementary roles: a glitch, a hybrid, and a perspective. Theorizing these roles, I draw principles that can guide the (re)construction of a decolonial digital archive: decentralization, reciprocity, fluidity, and connectivity. Rewilding the digital archive is an invitation to envision new ways of relating with nature, technology, and each other. To build a world worth preserving.
Downloads
References
Berlant, Lauren. On the Inconvenience of Other People. 1st ed. Writing Matters. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478023050.
Carneiro da Cunha, Manuela. “Antidomestication in the Amazon,” HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 9, 9, no. 1 (March 1, 2019): 126–36. https://doi.org/10.1086/703870.
Couldry, Nick, and Ulises A Mejias. The Costs of Connection. 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd, 2019. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/[SITE_ID]/detail.action?docID=7130997.
Gómez-Barris, Macarena. The Extractive Zone. 1st ed. Dissident Acts. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822372561.
Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto. Vol. 8. Paradigm 8. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.
Ippolito, Jon. Trusting Amateurs with Our Future. A Companion to Digital Art. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118475249.ch25.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass. 1st ed. Penguin Ecology. London: Penguin Books, 2020.
Latour, Bruno. Anti-Zoom. Edited by Studio Olafur Eliasson. Olafur Eliasson: Contact. Paris: Flammarion, 2014. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/P-170-ELIASSON-GBpdf.pdf.
Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham [u.a.]: Duke Univ. Press, 2015. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&local_base=BVB01&doc_number=028122935&sequence=000002&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.
Mejias, Ulises A, and Nick Couldry. Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back. Virgin Digital, 2024. https://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=none&isbn=9780753560235.
Muñoz, José E. Cruising Utopia. 1st ed. Sexual Cultures. New York: NYU Press, 2009. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg4nr.
Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism. 1st ed. London ; New York: Verso, 2020.
Schneider, Birgit. “Entangled Trees and Arboreal Networks of Sensitive Environments,” Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung 9, 9, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 108–27. https://doi.org/10.28937/ZMK-9-1_11.
Uexküll, Jakob von. “A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds,” Semiotica 89, 89, no. 4 (1992): 319–91. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1992.89.4.319.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Martina Denegri
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
