Bodily Refusal: Excerpts from my cockroach design repertoire
Thesis Faculty:
Nancy Valladares, Melanie Crean, Loretta WolozinThis thesis presents a series of critical design practices about cockroaches that I have been working on for two years, including the thesis project. My thesis project, Bodily Refusal, introduces a set of apparatuses I designed that can turn the human body into a resource to support the survival of cockroaches. It is a refusal of anthropocentric logic, while at the same time, it is futile. I use a reflective first-person account and annotated portfolio to analyze the interconnections and emerging themes in my two years of practice: I see my speculation on alternative human-cockroach relationships gradually becoming radical. I further explore how the apparatuses reconfigured cyborg bodies; they also enacted quiet yet transgressive refusals. Through reflecting on my practice, I noticed I continually maintain a critical distance from cockroaches. This tension reveals that speculation with nonhumans is possible in tension and does not require physical or emotional proximity.
To Possible Readers
I designed a set of apparatuses that will transform your body into a resource for cockroaches. They are designed for those who can no longer sustain living in a body that has been commodified, objectified, and gazed upon by this world.
These apparatuses may scare you. You will feel discomfort using them. This fear, this discomfort — both are intentional. However, the cockroaches may pay no attention to your actions. This does not matter. Using these apparatuses is a ritual — a way to enact refusal, to say no to the current technological systems that oppress both humans and nonhumans. Through this act, you disorient yourself from anthropocentric logic. It is a proximity to the more-than-human world. To get closer to cockroaches. But in the end, I hope you know that this work takes nothing from no one.
You may ask: why cockroaches? Because they are among the most ancient, most resilient creatures. If we want to deviate from the existing world, if we want to challenge its violences, we must make a radical act: sharing our bodies with a creature we viscerally dislike, one that we have been taught to eliminate.
But does this act make any difference? Will it change the world? Will it even feed more cockroaches?
Sadly, no. It might be futile.
But at least you will have more conversation starters at social events.
[Inspired by The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector]
