All Directions At Once

Concept Text:

In these four weeks, I will develop a series of works for what I am calling a »GIF essay,« taking advantage of the sedimented nature of the GIF format – in which images are stacked on top of one another for faster download and visualization. This essay is part of a body of work called »A Topography of Excesses,« in which I examine counterhegemonic technologies of birth control vis à vis the colonial production of race, gender, and sexuality. The project starts by looking into the excesses attributed to the bodies, knowledges, and subjectivities of the colonized (too numerous, too sexual, too fertile). I understand the development and transmission of knowledge about herbal birth control technologies to be a response to this desire for colonial domination; one that conceives alternative readings of history and proposes other, multiple futures through practices of radical care and feminist refiguration – and that, in so doing, approaches the space of »excess« as one of intersectional solidarity.

The GIF essay allows me to expand this reframing of the history of birth control, presenting narratives not as part of a linear and universal continuum, but rather as part of a fragmented, fast-paced pluriverse that meshes together what is perceived as past, present, and future. The series of images is meant to be presented and visualized as one single work, all in one page. Every image is a continuous loop; a disjointed collective, moving in all directions at once.