Join us for an evening as the 2024 graduates from the MA Aesthetics and Politics program showcase their groundbreaking research. The event kicks off with a reception hosted by Alumni Engagement celebrating these emerging scholars. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with provocative ideas and trade ideas with our vibrant academic community.
6 pm: Reception, toasting the recent graduates of the MA Aesthetics and Politics program
7 pm: Research presentations by recent alums
Presenters
Ishani Chokshi (MA 24)
The Future of Law(TM): Exposing Western Legal Philosophy with my Quasi-Hindu Mother
I once tried explaining Western Law™ to my philosophically-illiterate Hindu mother; what I initially took on as a Sisyphean task became the most enlightening endeavor of my life. Adopting a womanist voice to weave an schizoanalysis of Western legal philosophy through narratives of my lovesick longing for a manly messiah (a Muslim man named Mo), my mother’s laborious cooking, the Abrahamic religions (particularly, Islam), and my own coming-to-terms as a (de)transitioning transgender woman, THE FUTURE OF LAW™ is a legal fiction, a labor of love for the Law which dramatizes and fictionalizes my personal search for Law & Order amidst the modern myths of men who promise to bring me freedom through their determinations, and through the lies told to me by my law professors and legal colleagues. With tongue firmly in cheek, I pursue the most basic of jurisprudential questions: “What is Law? What is Justice? What is True?” and ultimately answer all with a resounding and overjoyous: “Yes!” a yes which echoes throughout Islamic philosophy, and finds an eager home in my book.
@badgaltranny (www.badgaltranny.com) was a LA-based artist & lawyer who waged art upon Law. She passed away in late 2024 after months of unrest, leaving behind a body of work which is being reviewed and released by her trustees. Her time at law school was profiled by the Daily Wire under the remarkable (yet woefully inaccurate) headline: ‘Schizophrenic’ Transgender Student Terrorized Top Law School, Ranted About ‘Gavel Dildos,’ Sex With ‘Trumpies’ In His Own Law Journal. Her work has been published by the Hampton Institute, the Northwestern Law Review, the Northwestern Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, and the Northwestern Journal des Refusés, amongst others.
Amorette Muzingo (MA 24)
Critical Bed Theory - Experiments in Contemporary Intimacy
Critical Bed Theory began as a joke, but is now an experimental approach to understanding intimacy from a theoretical and applied perspective. With this burgeoning theory comes practice: the Experiment, as it is called, involved arts-based research resulting in the author and six different "subjects" mutually agreeing to share the same bed with only one condition imposed: no technological interruptions. What appears to be a simple premise proves to be remarkably confounding as the bed is experienced in dialogue with key interlocutors and across these conversations, we work to understand the current state of intimacy.
Amorette Muzingo is an artist, writer, and thinker from Los Angeles, CA. She makes art about grief and lived spaces, writes about intimacy and critical theory, and thinks about a lot of stuff. Amorette has a BA in Art History and Arts Education from UCLA and an MA in Aesthetics and Politics from CalArts, and currently works for Frieze.
Cameron Weeks (MA 23)
How the Alt-Right Harnessed the Techno-Magical Power of the Meme in Trump-Era America
Abstract: In the years surrounding the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, a new discursive landscape emerged, one characterized by subcultural in-humor and a meme-oriented social currency that defined a newly politicized population of young people. This thesis investigates the role of digital culture in Alt-Right ideology, specifically, how the Alt-Right harnesses the power of the Internet meme to manipulate and influence shared beliefs and reality systems. Through the utilization of technology and magic as interrogative vessels, this work imagines the dialectical confrontation of the physical and digital world in order to interpret the Alt-Right’s usage of memetic material.
Cameron Weeks is a writer from Los Angeles. Her work is immersed in the dynamic fusion of the virtual and the real – a space where identities are constructed, deconstructed, and reimagined. She employs her work as a tool for resistance, always with the aim to interrogate and dismantle fascism.
Maisa Imamović (MA 24)
Reclaiming Web Design — A History of a Feminist Logic
Feminist logic rejects the subliminal, male, geek logic to make software open and free, as well as the regime of happiness that its user-friendly Web Design enforces. How can Web Design that roots from feminist logic escape the archives and become alive in our browsers again? In this research, Maisa identifies and explores four feminist approaches to web development by interdisciplinary cultural workers: mimicry, glitch, digital care, and infrastructural reboot.
Maisa Imamović is a researcher, web designer/developer, and experimental educator. Since 2019, Maisa has written code in collaboration with artists, collectives, and cultural institutions including Hackers&Designers, Ali Eslami, Marlies van Hak, Merel Smit, VEIN Agency, CalArts, LASP (Gerrit Rietveld Academie) and was published in Kajet, Simulacrum, Forum, TAAK, Real Review, NXS World, Metropolis M, Other Worlds. Her first book was published by the Institute of Network Cultures in 2022. She runs her own blog (Living Industry) at the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Arts where she is a senior researcher. She is a teaching fellow in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of Arts and an adjunct professor in Media Arts and Practice program at the University of Southern California.
Image: Courtesy of Maisa Imamović