BECOMING-DIJITAL: APPROACHING RE-ENCHANTMENT AND RACE IN CYBERSPACE

Presented by Mohamed Chamas

Hosted by Signal
03/08/2019
Talk #73

Image courtesy of Mo Chamas - detail from digital collage 'ElektrikEsoterrorism.exe' 2019 (detail)

MOHAMED CHAMAS presents "Becoming-dijital: approaching re-enchantment and race in cyberspace"

MOHAMED CHAMAS is a Lebanese-Australian, multidisciplinary digital artist and designer based in Melbourne. His practice approaches a heterogenous union between spiritism and the contemporary-technological. Chamas explores this through his ethno-cultural identity, imbuing the former with cosmological, familial, medieval and mytho-poetic aspects of Islamic(/mystic) practice. His work usually takes the form of ‘artgames’ or interactive media which include digital painting, 3D modelling and elements of technical art, though he makes ventures into fine arts. Recently a graduate of Media and Communications (Honours) at RMIT University, his areas of interest are embodiment, myth and mysticism, semiology, race, queerness and assemblage as identity. Drawing in what is often held apart helps Chamas to question persisting assumptions/structures of power that orchestrate the image of the oriental other. Leading his approach is an electromagnetic theurgy bestowed by new and emerging technologies, re-territorializing a cyberspace for interstitial and speculative bodies