Arna Beth
Through frameworks of critical theory kin to xenofeminism, dromology and necropolitics, Arna constructs immersive, non-linear narratives, attempting to destabilize a dromocratic present.
Research & Critical Reflection
Weaponized Bodies and Military ErosOver the course of this unit, my research has continued to explore the assamblages of fascist aesthetics, military technologies, surveillance, and the subversive identities that emerge in response to these systems. Through a hybrid practice involving digital sculpture, 3D printing, performance, musical composition, and the reuse of PLA byproducts, I continue to explore theoretical frameworks surrounding the posthuman condition, fascist eros, xenofeminism and the sublime/grotesque.
My practice has been shaped by a variety of artistic and theoretical influences. Artistic influences such as Sibylle Rupperts’ biomorphic objects, H.R. Giger’s biomechanical figures, and the bio-surrealism of David Cronenberg have helped define a bodily aesthetic that aligns with themes of technological transformation, erotic violence, and machinic hybridity. These visual languages are critically situated within broader philosophical and political frameworks drawn from a wide range of theorists including Donna Haraway, Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, Manuel DeLanda, Georges Bataille, and Klaus Theweleit to name a few.
Donna Haraway is the xenofeminist blueprint within the posthuman wave that constantly resurfaces in debates about human/machine identity. Her theories on how the cyborg manifests as a queer, post-gender entity—born from war’s technoscience—further support my research into eroticized militarism. The cyborg’s rejection of binaries (e.g., male/female, human/machine) enables a subversive mimesis that resists fascist aesthetics, mirroring my work’s challenge to fixed identity constructs. It opposes myths of purity (racial, gendered, or biological) yet, its origins remain a product of the military-industrial complex. To me, the cyborg embodies radical subversion: a refusal to become merely a metabolic body under dromocracy’s regime (Virilio, Speed and Politics)."
Paul Virilio—a cultural theorist I recently discovered—has greatly shaped my understanding of accelerationist culture and geopolitics. His radical concept of the dromocratic state argues that power no longer resides in territorial control, but in the state’s domination of movement and velocity. Speed has become the invisible architect of politics, war, and culture: governments now rule by manipulating the flows of data, capital, and bodies rather than territories.
Within my practice, I frequently probe this logic through military aesthetics—lasers cutting through fog, strobing light simulating targeting systems, apocalyptic atmospheres infused with algorithmic dread. Virilio’s warning from War and Cinema (1989) haunts me: “With laser guidance, we no longer look—we are looked through by machines.” This inversion of agency reduces human subjects to data points as phallic optics, legible only as targets or obstacles. The body becomes raw material for the war machine’s metabolism—until, inevitably, we are devoured by the very systems we designed to see for us.
My work attempts to rupture this gaze in various way: fog enhances the laser’s path (there is nowhere to hide under surveillance) and phrygmonic soundscapes arpeggiate the acceleration of dromocratic control. If speed is the new sovereignty, then resistance must be a calculated stutter—a resistance to perform as steady data.
Deleuze & Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus critiques Freud’s model of desire-as-lack, proposing instead that desire is a productive, machinic force—a feedback loop of connections and ruptures. Their infamous concepts of the desiring-machine (partial objects in ceaseless coupling) and the Body Without Organs (BwO) (actively resisting the complex structures that facism imposes on life) frame all existence as a metaphysical machine ecology. Under capitalism, these desiring-machines are hijacked, their flows redirected into oppressive hierarchies (gender, race, labor). My work engages this tension by weaponizing the erotic and the transgressive—not as exceptions, but as queer autonomous machines that resist capture.
Pierre Hadot’s The Veil of Isis traces humanity’s obsession with uncovering nature’s secrets—a desire rooted in domination, surveillance, and control. This impulse to colonize nature (and by extension, the feminized body) is ancient, yet its modern manifestations—AI, algorithms, and biometrics—now function as contemporary veils, obscuring the hidden architectures of power. The veil symbolizes both a barrier to knowledge and the peril of its revelation: to lift it risks annihilation.
The atomic bomb became the 20th century’s ultimate veil: a blinding flash that revealed only our own epistemic limits. As Jacques Derrida argues in No Apocalypse, Not Now (1984), nuclear war exists in the realm of the "unrepresentable"—a trauma so total it resists comprehension, leaving us staring into the abyss of our own blindness. My fascination with power, mystery, and destruction bleeds unmistakably into my work—whether through the disintegration of the physical body, the stark violence of light, or environments suspended in decay. Like the peintres maudits (cursed painters), I carve out a space within counter-reality: a realm of dreams, the grotesque, the macabre, and the violently naïve.
This unit has deepened my commitment to crafting immersive worlds—pushing me to experiment with self-composed soundscapes, master new fabrication techniques like 3D printing, and repurpose materials into physical sculptures. I’ve also embraced performance, stepping into my own work rather than shying from the vulnerability of transgressive art.
Collaborations with visionary artists and curators have expanded my understanding of technology, spatial design, and the politics of production (funding, barriers, speed). My evolution since the last unit reflects sharper theoretical rigor, meticulous documentation, and a willingness to integrate critical feedback into research and project pipelines.
References
-
Haraway, D. (1991) A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, pp. 149–181.
-
Virilio, P. (2006) Speed and Politics. Translated by M. Polizzotti. New edition. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
-
Virilio, P. (1989) War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Translated by P. Camiller. London: Verso.
-
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2004) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by R. Hurley, M. Seem and H.R. Lane. London: Continuum.
-
Derrida, J. (1984) 'No Apocalypse, Not Now (full speed ahead, seven missiles, seven missives)', Diacritics, 14(2), pp. 20-31. doi:10.2307/464756.
-
Hadot, P. (2006) The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature. Translated by M. Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.