Inspired by…

Art Laboratory Berlin is delighted to invite you to take part in our discursive format – a reading club, curated by Tuçe Erel. It takes place in tandem with our colloquium, curated by Regine Rapp.

Inspired by… is an event series, a hybrid format derived from reading group and artist talk formats. In each session, an invited artist will choose a specific text or excerpt from a book that was inspirational for the artist’s practice and/or a particular project that the artist will introduce.

The project follows up Tuçe Erel’s Posthumanism Reading Group, organised between 2018-2020. After co-reading and discussing plenty of seminal texts in two years, the club is transforming into a new discussion, presentation and reading program, an online and offline exchange platform in a non-hierarchical and non-institutional infrastructure in the fields of arts, science and technology.

Guest Artist on 16 April 2024


Nicol Rivera Aro

Nicol Rivera Aro is an artist and PhD candidate. Her research topic, titled “Noise from the Matrix. Dissident, hybrids, cyborgs, new body construction and technofeminism” is a performative research, which puts the focus on the body as praxis, as a tool to detach acknowledgement, to support the academic research. 

Her research project analyses the political relationship between performers and their cyborgisation within performative research. Firstly, it aims to examine how the hybrid body of the performer interacts within performative research, viewed as a macro phenomenon connecting various art forms and fostering transdisciplinary approaches. Secondly, it seeks to interpret dissident perspectives as performative strategies affecting technological mechanisms on stage, particularly regarding gender mutation and the emergence of technofeminist performativities. Thirdly, it aims to understand the cyborgised body as a technological transgression rooted in technofeminism, exploring various artistic expressions like electronic works, noise sonority, post-porn aesthetics, and glitch effects as forms of political resistance. Lastly, it aims to visualise the researcher-performer as a dissident subject embodying hybridity within performative research, challenging conventional academic norms and facilitating alternative access to knowledge. 

In relation to this research, Nicol Rivera Aro suggests for the Reading Club highlighted sections from Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie as an inspiration and her article about her practice and research, “SEXOTECHNOLOGIES. TECHNOFEMINIST PERFORMATIVITIES, EROTIC FORMS OF DISTURBANCE IN THE CASE OF THE PERFORMANCE “NOISE FROM THE MATRIX.”

Nicol Rivera Aro

Nicol Rivera Aro (Chile) is a performance artist, dramaturg, and researcher. She is an actress with a speciality in playwriting (Universidad de Valparaiso, 2015) and a PhD candidate in Philology at Leipzig University. Her work focuses on the relationship between the body and technological interfaces, delving into gender discourse and post-porn with sextechnologies.

Reading Material:

1) Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie, 2013, New York, Feminist Press. 

2) Aro, Nicol Rivera. “Sexotecnologías. Performatividades tecnofeministas, formas eróticas de perturbación en el caso de la performance noise from the matrix.” RUNAS. Journal of Education & Culture 4, no. 8 (2023): 4.

Venue: Zoom meeting link and the texts will be shared with the registered participants.

Inspired by… reading club meetings are not recorded to create a safe space for guest artists and participants to talk about their practice.