Performing with the Aether: An Aesthetics of Tactical Feminist Practice

Appraising artisanal custom design as critical theory and practice, this chapter describes the application of networking technology as an artistic medium, and reconsiders mobile media art practice through introducing the concept of the feminist internet and the oimai, an antediluvian term which unravels the processual marvels of wandering through the labyrinth of the world. In contrast to expedient narratives of technocratic progress, this chapter enquires how a situated engagement with bespoke hardware, creative code, aesthetical computational media and electronics can further explore the ingenuity behind our fascination with a force that connects us all—the aether. Through examining a tactical feminist media practice through the context of Bag Lady 2.0 (2007), a bespoke apparatus for creative acts of cosmographic cartography. Bag Lady 2.0 (2007) anticipated the supremacy of a network society dominant in our mobile media habitus, an elaborate communication device, demystifying, reprogramming, rethinking and redesigning tools of production and transmission. The hardware-software application was custom built and designed to accompany the oimai, urban wanderings and wonderings, and encourage a more haptic engagement with the aether. Transgressing inbuilt features of slick mobile design functions that inscribe our consumer experience, the work instead inhabits a hybrid space, enabling room for new design approaches and hence new (and neglected) modes of creatively fertile spaces to unfold.