Queering New Media Art : Histories & Asking Questions about Nothing

Abstract

Not rooted in a traditional culture or ancestral homeland, Queerness constitutes ephemeral cultures, continually reinvented and reimagined. Queerness is under constant threat of erasure from cultural amnesia and political malice. Academia and the art world have responded to this erasure with alternately heroic and halting efforts.
 This paper suggests ways in which this erasure manifests, from historic forces to contemporary discourses. The author attempts to assess various responses to queer erasure in the overlapping enclaves of new media art comprised of artists, academics, writers, and curators. Lastly, this paper will consider how new media art inflects or reframes ongoing conversations around queer social erasure and how artists and art historians work against the forces of nothingness.