Re-presencing telematic dreaming – awakening a critical feminist phenomenology

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article enacts a re-presencing of Telematic Dreaming, the influential telepresence art installation by Paul Sermon from the 1990s. Revisiting an often-cited text I wrote in 1994 called ‘Spacemaking', which spoke from the experience of being a performer in the installation, I fill in what was missing, downplayed or unwelcome in the discourses of the time: that nobody is anybody (i.e. in technological environments bodies are never neutral or universal); and that artistic works are deeply contextual and intersectional. Taking a strongly political and contextual approach to Telematic Dreaming, I first reflect on the dual states of wonder & entitlement characterising digital experimentation of the 1990s then I consider the cultural structures and material infrastructures of the installation, assessing the scope for ontological expansiveness and gender crique they afforded. Beyond a particular instance of time-travel, this article proposes a new methodological framework for examining past performances. By turning to critical phenomenology, with contributions from feminist archaeology, media archaeology, and an unexpected appearance of Sara Ahmed’s feminist killjoy, I offer an approach that paves the way for future researchers interested in engaging reflexively and critically with historical phenomenological analyses of artistic performance and of wider lived experiences.