CREDITS

Gaze Makes the Glitch began in January 2020 as a School for Poetic Computation Code Societies’ final project. The ideas there stuck with me and continued to serve as inspiration for other artistic projects such as my Black Projections Projection (2019) and In Pursuit of Black Noise (2020). In Fall 2020, I took a seminar class titled Music, Power, Mobility, Worldhood with Brigid Cohen in the Music Department at New York University. Our readings on comparative empire studies, world history, Afro-pessimism, migration and diaspora studies, globalization studies, and decolonial approaches furthered my work and inspired me to create this collection of thoughts, spells, and spirals that you see now. I am forever indebted to the conversations had in that weekly container. Because of that, I am a better witch. Thank you.

The website design takes inspiration from Press Press and The Institute for Expanded Research’s online Toolkit for Cooperative Collaborative Cultural Work.

The art on the home page is original work by me, Cy X.

I'd also like to thank Legacy Russell's whose book "Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto," pushed me to think further about my own work and how I relate to the glitch, Neta Bomani for an inspirational / organized github which I have used for inspiration for my github page, and Elizabeth Perez and Daniel Shiffman for reminding me that coding can be both a fun and useful communicative + artistic tool.

ABOUT ME

Cy X is a black queer non-binary storyteller and cyber witch merging sound, video art, installation, and performance. Their practice is grounded in the art of synthesis: truth generation and sound generation which is used to create portals that may aid us in exploring black queer futures and abolitionist possibilities. Fusing art and technology with the practice of witchcraft, they are inspired to use spells, rituals, and alchemic practices to fundamentally alter the world around us. Cy earned a BA in Film and Media Studies from Colorado College and is a MPS Candidate at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Currently, they are working on an audiviosual album and collection of writings entitled Conjuratio that calls for a re-enchanting of the world and healing against “collective hypocrisy” through an intentional pact with ourselves, eachother, and the world. Conjuratio initiates us into magic by thinning the veil between worlds and revealing the presence of “dark magic.” Accompanied writings will offer maps on how to work against dark magic and break out of the enclosures it has created.

SOURCES

00 Introduction

1. Ruha Benjamin, Captivating Technology, London: Duke University Press, 2019, p.9
2. Christina Elizabeth Sharpe, In the Wake on Blackness and Being, Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2016, p. 3, 4, 10

01 Masters Projection

1. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, Grove Press; Revised edition, 2008.
2. John Law, “What’s wrong with a one-world world,” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, Volume 16, 2015.
3. Legacy Russeell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, Verso Books, August 2020.

02 Existing with the Glitch

1. Definition of Ocularcentrism here is taken from the Oxford Reference online.
2. Wyatt Manson, “Kerry James Marshall is Shifting the Color of Art History,” New York Times, October 17, 2016, nytimes.com
3. Sampada Aranke, “Material Matters: Black Radical Aesthetics and the Limits of Visibility,” e-flux 79, February 2017.
4. Tom Vanderbilt, “Darkness Visible: Superblack, the blackest black of all,” Cabinet Magazine, Fall/Winter 2003.
5. Jared Sexton, “All Black Everything,” e-flux 79, February 2017.
6. Ibid.
7. Pauline Oliveros’ definition of Listening is taken from her work in “Sonic Meditations,” and can be found on the Center for Deep Listening website.
8. Ibid.
9. Body Scan definition taken from Headspace, headspace.com

03 Toward Magic

1. Suzanne Césaire, “Tropiques,” Martinique, 1941-1945.
2. Suzanne Césaire, “Surrealism and Us,” Martinique, 1943.