Beatrice Ferrara

Abstract

The audio-video-essay Hydra Decapita (2010) by the British artgroup The Otolith pivots around the figuration of the flux. The work «summons a series of spectres of Capital», beginning with the historical horrors of the Middle Passage, in order to create a seance «that resonates with contemporary economic abstraction». Using a conjunctural perspective linked to the contemporary financial crisis, the article suggests how Hydra Decapita’s fluid critical constellation moves across the mobile spaces and times of non-free work – between the waves of the Atlantic Ocean and the  electromagnetic waves of new media. The article suggests how the themes and tones of the work reverberate within the attempt to map a «postcolonial museum» by creating a stimulating critical zone of convergence between Cultural and Postcolonial Studies and the studies on «immaterial labour».

Beatrice Ferrara holds a PhD in «Cultural and postcolonial studies of the Anglophone world» from the Università di Napoli «L’Orientale». Her research interests include the urban cultures of the black diaspora, and in particular sound system-based cultures; cyberculture; theories of affect and post-representation; immaterial labour. She has published articles in Italian and in English on feminine and feminist writings, on the cybercultural movement of Afrofuturism, and on the music of Sun Ra, DJ Spooky and Scanner. She has partecipated in the organisation of international seminars and conferences, and is currently writing on afrofuturist post-racial imaginaries and on the British art-duo The Otolith Group. She is a member of the MeLa Project.