Awry Signals: A Eulogy for the Stellar [Girls]

Background This artistic research explores kinship systems of exchange and symbolic operations. It responds to Stengers' (2005) idea that ‘ecologies of practice’ must be ‘celebrated as a "cosmic event;" in this way the work serves to recover the plural voices of feminist sub-culture as intermediaries. It also references Tom McCarthy (2002) who describes how in some belief systems deceased warriors disappear and then reappear as star clusters. It further references the artist Joe Davis who hooked his smartphone to an Arecibo telescope and sent plant protein codes into the direction of three nearby stars. Contribution:'Awry Signals' was a performance installation based on the idea of a ‘code séance.’ It was a homage to the radical lives of: Ari Up ‘The Slits’ (1962–2010), Poly Styrene ‘X-Ray Spex’ (1957–2011) and Chrissy Amphlett ‘Divinyls’ (1959–2013). The programming language Python and an array of phrases was gleaned from the women’s lyrics. A data heirloom was devised to tap into a SETI transmission starlight beam to receive messages from the three stellar punks in the firmament as they shone up the night sky. Significance The work was exhibited at Radical Networks, a festival produced by Eyebeam NY, a key art and technology centre surveying the interplay of art & technology. It also featured in the refereed symposium ‘Women, Art and Feminism in Australia since 1970’ (part of an ARC project). In 2021, it was shown in Activist Neuroaesthetics, a three-part exhibition developed by lead institution Verein zur Förderung Berlin, funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Stiftung Kunstfonds (Germany) and Create NSW.