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Elly Clarke, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky: ‘#Sergina is not an avatar, but a Medusa figure’
‘#Sergina is not an avatar, but a Medusa figure’
(p. 173 – 180)

Elly Clarke, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

‘#Sergina is not an avatar, but a Medusa figure’
In conversation with Elly Clarke and Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

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  • ecology
  • art theory
  • global ecology
  • contemporary art

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Elly Clarke

is an artist and researcher. The focus of her multimedia-based artistic work lies on the transformation of the physical body in an increasingly digitally-mediated and experienced world, which she explores though performance, video, photography, music, curated and community-based projects. And through #Sergina, a Drag Princess alter ego, who performs songs online and offline about love, lust and loneliness in the age of digitalism. Performances take place usually in more than one place at once, with #Sergina played by different people simultaneously, linked up by Google Hangout and broadcasted live via YouTube. In this format, #Sergina (plural) has performed in museums, galleries, in queer and theatre contexts in several cities in the UK, in Europe and the USA, including The Lowry Centre, Salford Quays; Marlborough Theatre, Brighton; Kulturni Centar GRAD, Belgrade; Monster Ronson’s, Berlin, BOM, Birmingham; Secret Project Art Experiment, Brooklyn and The Island, Bristol. Other work has been shown at mac birmingham; Milton Keynes Gallery; Franklin Furnace, New York; Kiasma, Helsinki; ONCA, Brighton and Galerie Wedding, Berlin. Clarke has a BA in History of Art from Leeds University, a Masters in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College, London, and is a current CHASE funded PhD scholar at Goldsmiths, London, exploring the drag of physicality in the digital age. Elly has been collaborating with Vladimir Bjeličić on the #Sergina project since 2015. ellyclarke.com
Other texts by Elly Clarke for DIAPHANES

Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

is Professor of Media Theory and Gender Studies at the Institute for Media Studies at the Ruhr-Universit t Bochum and an active contributor to the university’s Gender Studies network. Furthermore, she is an external affiliate of the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin, the ICI Berlin and the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmith College, University of London. Deuber-Mankowsky studied philosophy and German literature in Zurich and Berlin and she co-founded and edited the journal Die Philosophin. Forum für Philosophie und feministische Theorie from 1990 to 2005. Her current research focuses, among other things, on the topic of queer subjectification in film in the light of the current transformation of film technologies and genres in the works of Todd Haynes, Su Friedrichs, Yael Bartana und Sharon Hayes (Queeres Post-Cinema, 2017). From 1995 until 2000, she was research fellow at the Department of Cultural History and Theory at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Among her recent publications are: Conatus und Lebensnot. Schlüsselbegriffe der Medienanthropologie (ed. with Anna Tuschling, 2017), Denkweisen des Spiels. Medienphilosophische Annäherungen (ed. with Reinhold G rling, 2017), Situiertes Wissen und regionale Epistemologie: Zur Aktualität Georges Canguilhems und Donna J. Haraways (ed. with Christoph Holzhey, 2013), Praktiken der Illusion. Kant, Nietzsche, Cohen, Benjamin bis Donna J. Haraway (2007) und Lara Croft. Cyber Heroine (2005).
Other texts by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky for DIAPHANES
Marietta Kesting (ed.), Maria Muhle (ed.), ...: Hybrid Ecologies

The notion of ecology not only figures centrally in current debates around climate change, but also traverses contemporary discourses in the arts, the humanities, and the social and techno sciences. In its present reformulation it refers to the multi-layered and multi-dimensional nexus of reciprocities between living processes, technological and media practices, i.e. to the complex relations of human and nonhuman agents. The book Hybrid Ecologies understands ecology as an ambivalent notion, whose multivalence opens up new fields of action and yet, thanks precisely to this openness and vast applicability, at the same time raises questions not least concerning its genealogy. The interdisciplinary contributions seek to explore the political and social effects that a rethinking of community in ecological and thus also in biopolitical terms may provoke, and which consequences the contemporary notion of ecology might entail for artistic and design practices in particular. The present publication is the result of the fifth annual program of the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies, which was conceived in cooperation with the Chair of Philosophy | Aesthetic Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

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