portfoliooooooooo i guess
(FAKE) REES ARE POLITICAL, TOO: uselessness and politicisation of the “technoflora” in downtown abu dhabi, 2024
creative masters dissertation; MSc in visual, material, and museum anthropology. university of oxford
Abstract: This research project focalises telecommunication and cell towers, particularly those disguised as palm trees in Downtown Abu Dhabi. I argue that the telecom palm pole serves as a politicised and politicising vehicle in the urban space of Abu Dhabi, through its material transformations, constrained in the social environment, that lead to its conceptual transformations. This theoretical approach aims to empty the object (the telecom palm) of its pre-supposed meanings (Holbraad, 2014), tear it away from its clichés (Deleuze, 1989), and de-commodify it (Thoburn, 2014). To access this politicisation, I adopt assemblages as a methodological practice that highlight and analyse its evolving assemblages and their “contaminated diversity” (Luca, 1945; Tsing, 2015, p. 30). I collage/combine photographs taken during my fieldwork in three telecom pole sites, using field notes and sketches to supplement analysis on three themes: (1) the UAE’s spectacular image, (2) the haunting of public spaces by non-dominant narratives, and (3) the urban ecologies present and absent in Abu Dhabi. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates that the politicisation of an object is inseparable from its empirical ontology, and unearthing that highlights the radicalising role of academic intervention.
the series of digital collages are creative explorations of visual, material, and aesthetic implications of the telecom poles in and on its surrounding environment.
- interrupting monumentality (collage)
- the haunting of found objects (collage)
- witnessing urban ecologies (collage)