Blue Moon

The Athena myth mutates in a video generated by a custom-built AI model, trained on videos of Simnett playing the flute. A glitching female figure, trapped inside technicolor blue woods, continually morphs, her face occasionally coalescing to resemble Simnett’s own. If a monster’s body is necessarily a social body (1), its form determined by accumulations of cultural anxiety, obsession, and desire, then Simnett’s OGRESS celebrates “the promises of monsters.” (2)

(1) See Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Monster Theory: Reading Culture (1996).

(2) See Donna Haraway, “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others” (1992).