Embodied Digital Dissent: Coopting and Transforming Technologies in Art, 1990-present
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This dissertation explores the history of artists and artists-activists who, from the 1990s to the present are working across different mediums in Contemporary and New Media Art and challenge the technocapitalist power that exploits, extracts, and profits from the datafication of bodies in different ways. I emphasize how artists are not passive responders to advancements in technoscience but are at the forefront of critiquing power structures therein. Artists resist the technoscientific and technocapitalist forms of oppression through theatrical performances, hacking techniques, through obfuscation, but they also transform technologies to serve different communities. Through the intersection of art, a history of science and technology, and philosophical inquiry, I examine how the selection of artists rematerialize the body through embodied forms of artmaking that challenge the datafication of bodies, disembodiment, and the mechanization of bodies. Structured into four chapters, I analyze how artists engaged with technological advancements like biotechnology, the rise of the World Wide Web, surveillance, and artificial intelligence. Finally, it is through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality, that I offer a nuanced account of these histories.