Antonia Hernández, PhD

I cultivate a practice where concepts have a potential for action. A disposition toward movement allows for the encounter between ideas and methods, which I apply to theoretical inquiries, artistic research, and academic settings. Formally, I engage with abstract matters through practices that disrupt habitual meanings, using humor, play, poetry, or performative interventions as methods, re-signifying the seemingly stable through unexpected uses or contexts. Through an original combination of critical inquiry and creative practice, I have contributed to media studies and artistic research by investigating technologies of intimacy, the poetics of governance, and research-creation methods. These contributions have been expressed through publications, artwork and media outcomes, presentations, the establishment of international research net-works, and community engagement.

Technologies of Intimacy.

• Materiality and genres of online pornography. I first addressed the technologies of intimacy through a net.art project, Corazón de Látex (2000). With this project, I participated in The Art andPolitics of Netporn (Amsterdam, 2005), the first academic conference on netporn criticism. Between 2005 and 2009, this art project evolved into a popular media blog and a radio show in Chile.

• Domestic Pornography. I've investigated the overlaps of pornography and domesticity using video performance. This exploration was the subject of my MA research-creation project, in which I examined the online video roulette site ChatRoulette and proposed an alternative engagement to network sexuality using fungi as its model of reference. I furthered this line of investigation during my doctoral degree, analyzing domesticity on sex webcam platforms.

• Genealogy of the webcam. I traced the lineage of early personal webcams to contemporary sex webcam platforms, identifying the genealogy of camming conventions. As most of these conventions pertain to perceptions of authenticity and closeness, I recognized the array of automated technologies that convey these impressions on a larger platform scale.

Poetics of Governance.

• Erotic labor on sex webcam platforms through a social reproduction lens. To recognize informaleconomic practices in the field of platform studies, I considered the idea of reproduction in threedifferent ways: 1) as maintenance, highlighting the relational aspect of infrastructure; 2) as reproductive labor, emphasizing the importance of work that it is not recognized as such; and 3) as partof the cycle of capitalist production that relies on cheap labor.

• Digital gentrification in sexual platforms. Through my investigation of OnlyFans, a subscription-based platform for erotic content, I identified digital gentrification as one of the consequencesof financial discrimination toward online sex workers. I made this claim based on the recursive nature of popularity on OnlyFans, which perpetuates pre-existing biases and advantages those actorswith greater possibilities for outreach—such as social media influencers.

• Visibility as governance. Through artistic research, I explored the ways in which visibility is man-aged on sex webcam platforms. In collaboration with Dutch artist Lotte de Jong, I created CurrentlyOff-Sight, a desktop narrative video foregrounding the testimonies of webcam performers. Thiswork was exhibited at the UN Internet Governance Forum (Katowice, 2021).

• Poetics of Commodification. I investigated the genealogy and impact of water privatization in thecurrent crisis affecting Chile’s central valley. I linked this crisis to the neoliberal ideas developed atthe Chicago School of Economics that directly influenced Chilean water policies. I presented thisinvestigation as an art installation composed of short poems, a video performative intervention,and sound design at the transmediale festival (Berlin, 2023).

Research-creation methods

• Maintenance practices as platform research. Drawing on my doctoral investigation, I have emphasized how maintenance practices can inform a relational approach to the study of infrastructuresand the recognition of reproductive labor in the platform economy. This approach has been sharedthrough public presentations, articles, and book chapters.

• Constructing research devices for creative work. In my doctoral research I used a dollhouse asboth as a figure and a research device for feminist and queer creative praxis. I theorized the researchdevice as a conceptual and practical instrument for the development of creative projects. It has theadvantage of being self-contained, allowing projects to grow and evolve within a structured environment that facilitates their completion. At the same time, it is flexible, and invites the exercise ofcuriosity and worldmaking imagination. I have systematized this idea and shared a set of principlesin workshops aimed at researchers and artists.

My investigation into the poetics of governance and the technologies of intimacy continues under the following three lines of research. Cutting across them is my inquiry into research-creation methods.

1. Critical fabulation for damaged environments

This research direction applies creative methods to the study of damaged environments, taking into account that new environmental conditions produce new contexts and disrupt sense-making habits. Following queer and decolonial authors, I plan to develop choral and multilayered storytelling—capable of holding and transmitting the complexity, intensities, and convergent temporalities of such environments—and collaborate with local and activist organizations to develop creative tools for public engagement

The first project in this direction is Dry Water. Building on my research on the Chilean water crisis, I am creating a multilayered account in the form of a poetic libretto, addressing the impact and genealogy of water privatization in the region. More than a denunciation, this project zooms into a mottled landscape where desertification coexists with unexpected blooming, dispossession with wealth, and where avocado toast requires a seasonal migrant workforce and massive water supplies. Subsequent stages of this project include developing it into a video opera installation.