In 2011, I embarked on my PhD at the Royal College of Art (Visual Communication). My research was supervised by the late Al Rees, academic extraordinaire, whose encyclopedic knowledge of film and enthusiasm made my PhD a truly transformative experience. I was also lucky to have as second supervisor Nicky Hamlyn, whose incredible eye and sharp criticality were invaluable.

To put it simply, I was looking at digital debris, in other words: streams of data, broken links and abandoned websites which are then used as a material by artists. The project, by thesis, was pluri-disciplinary in as much as it was combining art history, visual culture and philosophy in an attempt to respond to the work of David Joselit in his book After Art. More specifically, I was investigating the works of artists who are producing and displaying their work online. My project was very much walking the line between an art historical exploration of a ‘movement’ and an exercise of critical and creative writing. Indeed, part of my ambition was to develop a specific language and methodology suited, not only for online-based works of art, but also for my own practice.

The idea of researching digital debris came to my mind when in 2010, as I completed my Master's degree, a curator from the Wellcome Trust told me that they were preparing an exhibition on dirt. At that time I was discovering the world of digital and new media art and the idea of bringing the two antinomic notions of dirt and digital art together hit me like lightning bolt.

The ambition of the project was to find a lens for the study of artworks which elude the traditional grid proposed by art historical studies. The idea was to set up a dialogue between various theoretical systems (such as visual culture or media archeology) and the artworks. The core argument of my work was to propose the idea of debris as an allegory which allows the reader to find a space between the agency of the artist and the autonomy of the algorithm. I constructed a series of nine case studies, which each focussed on a specific piece of work. In my approach, I was proposing the idea of description as a generative process. By detailing each work, I was able to unveil the specificities of online debris.

The underlying ambition of the research was also to inscribe the issues at play in digital art into a larger discussion on the role of, for example, the gesture in online art, notion of authorship in participatory time-based works or the challenges of conserving software-based artworks in archives. In order to do so, I’ve developed a speculative and comparative methodology, which brings together, for instance, American philosophy, modernist literature and experimental film. By doing so, I was attempting to challenge the current Object-Oriented-Ontologies of media by re-foregrounding the importance of visuality.

Talks & Conferences

- Instagram live with Catalina Island Museum ‘Titanic: real Artefacts, real people, real stories,’ 12/02/2020

- Led a writing workshop for the MRes students of the RCA, London, 12/02/2018

- 'Ars Moriendi', Salon event, Dellasposa, London, 25/05/2017

- ‘Face | Time: In Conversation’, Curator's talk, Dellasposa, London, 8/11/2016

- ‘Speculative Methodologies’, Research Methods Course, RCA, London, 25/11/2015

- ‘The Entropy of Digital Debris’ in Material Environments: Sensing Time and Matter in Digital and Visual Culture, University of Greenwich, London, 24-25/07/2015

- ‘Digital Debris of Internet Art (an Allegorical Resistance to The Epistemology of Search)’ Humanities Research Forum, RCA, London, 24/01/2014

- ‘Digital Debris’ for Digital Unconscious Symposium, The White Building, London, 11/10/2013

- ‘A Typology of New Media Art Renewals’ for Media Art Histories: RENEW The 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Riga, Latvia, 10/10/2013

- ‘Digital Debris’ paper conference for Archaeological Media and Technological Debris, Goldsmiths, University of London, 20/06/2013

- ‘Logic of Disruption’ Disruption for 2013 Biennial RCA Student Research Exhibition, RCA, London, 24/01/2013

Publications

- Blog posts archive 2016-2016

- Quoted in Vanity Fair ‘En Route’, September 2019, pp. 41.

- 'Interview with Omar Kholeif on Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966)' Art.zip, December 2017

- 'Unstable Media: In Conversation with Hannah Redler' Art.zip, December 2017.

- ‘Digital Art: a Meta-modern View?’ editorial for Art.zip, December 2017.

- Lead designer of  The Response 28, Fabrica's magazine, and contributor 'The Eternal Now', pp. 13, November 2017.

- 'Digital Debris of Internet Art, An Allegorical and Entropic Resistance to the Epistemology of Search' Leornardo/ISAST (Vol. 50, No. 5), MIT Press, October 2017.

- 'Why Gilded Age Ocean Liners Were so Luxurious', Curbed, June 2017.

- ‘Poetry Machines, an Interview with Thomson & Craighead’ Art.zip, September 2016.

- 'A Visit to Dungeness B Nuclear Station' Info magazine, pp. 72, September 2016.

- ‘MovISee: Sequencing a Mix-Media Experience’ catalogue essay for MovISee Exhibition, pp. 14-15, March 2016.

- ‘Renewing HTML Frames and the Discontinuity of Reality’ in Data Drift. Archiving Media and Data Art in the 21st Century, edited by Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits and Lev Manovic, RIXC, LiepU MP Lab, October 2015.

- ‘Digital Debris in Internet Art : A Metaphorical Resistance to The Epistemology of Search’, Prova 2, Royal College of Art Humanities Research Forum Journal (2014), pp. 22-26.

- ‘Digital Debris in Internet Art : A Resistance to The Epistemology of Search’ in Ekphrasis, Recycling Images, Volume 10, February 2013, pp. 212-221.

- ‘Intervention’ catalogue essay for Disruption Biennial RCA Research Exhibition, January 2013, p. 74.

- ‘Instructions’ catalogue essay for Fieldwork 2 (RCA Visual Communication Researchers Exhibition) June 2012, pp. 4-7.

-‘Totes Haus Ur or the Dislocation of Intimate Space’, Mute Magazine, October 2010.

- ‘An Experiment on Phenomenology and Bio-mapping’, Mute Magazine, February 2010.