talks

This talk explores the digital unconscious as a distributed process of symbolic production emerging across platforms, algorithms, memes, and networked participation. Rather than locating meaning within individual subjects, it examines how contemporary digital cultures generate collective symbolic formations through recursive circulation and transformation.

Vienna Digital Cultures

coming online soon!

Book Launch with Mikkel Rorbo

Presenting Digital Occultism, a collaborative investigation of contemporary esoteric cultures online. The discussion addressed meme magic, hyperstition, network spirituality, conspiracy cultures, and the transformation of occult practices through digital media.

Cukrarna, Ljubljana

Ludic Soiree: Bearing the Unbearable

A lecture exploring absurdity, transformation, and persistence in digital cultures through the unlikely figure of Magikarp. Moving between internet folklore, games, memes, and cultural theory, the talk considers how seemingly insignificant entities acquire collective significance through repetition and circulation.

Experimental Game Cultures, University of Applied Arts Vienna

Book Launch

Based on the article Swiping Right on God, this lecture performance unfolds as going down the rabbithole of network spirituality and the aesthetic strategies through which digital communities circulate belief, desire, and belonging. Particular attention is paid to online esotericism, angelcore, and post-ironic spiritual cultures.

panke.gallery, Berlin

Strategies for Reclaiming Algorithmic Subjectivities

This lecture explores the Girl Online as a fluid digital subject emerging across platform cultures. Through feminist theory, posthumanism, and contemporary internet aesthetics, it examines how online identities negotiate algorithmic visibility, self-fashioning, and collective belonging.

with Charlotte Reuss

Art - Research - Gender

University of Applied Arts Vienna

Fragmented Subjectivity in the Collective Unconscious of the Feed

Investigating the recurring figure of the schizo across memes, shitposting, and platform cultures, this talk analyzes fragmented subjectivity as a defining condition of contemporary digital life. The lecture examines how contradictory identities, information overload, and participatory media produce new cultural archetypes.

Karens, Tradwives and MechaHitlers

DIMAS, University of Regensburg

Maedchen-Sein als digitale Praxis

From Barbie and Girl Dinner to girlblogging and female rage, this lecture examines the Girl Online as a contemporary cultural figure that destabilizes fixed notions of identity and gender. The talk explores how digital femininity functions as a collective and participatory mode of world-building.

with Charlotte Reuss

DonnaStage

Lentos Kunstmuseum and Katholische Privatuniversitaet Linz

Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, this lecture investigates schizoposting as a cultural form characterized by fragmentation, contradiction, and proliferating meanings. The talk proposes schizoposting as a useful lens for understanding contemporary internet cultures and their modes of collective expression.

17th Deleuze & Guattari Studies Conference

Konstfack, Stockholm

On Posthuman Subjectivities and Algorithmic Epistemologies

Presenting becoming-girl as a posthuman strategy of subject formation, this lecture examines contemporary digital femininities, platform cultures, and algorithmic systems of recognition. The accompanying workshop invited participants to experiment with avatar creation and girlblogging as critical practice.

with workshop: Choose Your Avatar - Girlblogging as Posthumanist Practice

with Charlotte Reuss

Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana

Using theories of sympoiesis and collective emergence, this talk examines brain rot memes as collaborative cultural formations. Rather than treating them as meaningless content, it explores how they generate participation, transformation, and shared symbolic worlds.

The Life of Signals? Networking Meeting for POM in Japan

Humboldt University Berlin

Memes im US-Wahlkampf 2024

Nhi Le und Sophie Publig eroertern im Gespräch die Rolle von Memes im US-Praesidentschaftswahlkampf und erklären die bisher einflussreichsten Beispiele. Was verraten uns diese Memes über die Strategien der beiden Parteien? Wie nutzen die Kandidat*innen den digitalen Raum, um ihre Botschaften zu verbreiten und Waehler*innen zu mobilisieren? Und was bedeutet eigentlich "Operation Coconut" und JD Vance' ominöse Liebe für Couches? Am Ende wollen wir das Potential und die tatsächliche Wirkung von Memes im Wahlkampf kritisch beleuchten. Können sie wirklich Wahlen beeinflussen, oder sind sie eher ein Nebenprodukt der modernen digitalen Kultur?

re:publica Hamburg

Vom Cyberfemnismus zum Girl Online

In unserem Vortrag analysieren wir die politische Kraft der Verweigerung und ihr Potential, neue gesellschaftliche Realitaeten zu schaffen. Bezugnehmend auf Sara Ahmed’s Text "No" auf ihrem Blog feministkilljoys.com, werden wir untersuchen, wie Blockade und Verweigerung als Taktiken genutzt werden, um die Annahmen einer männlich dominierten digitalen Welt zu hinterfragen, wie dies seit spätestens den 1980er Jahren in queer-feministischen Kontexten geschieht.

mit Denise Helene Sumi

re:publica Hamburg

Considering the increasing importance of the digital sphere in contemporary occult and esoteric practices, this paper explores the interplay of virality and hype as activated in the disruption of cyberspace and the physical world. We consider the dissemination tactics of #BRG (Based Retard Gang) and DKMU that, despite different beliefs and frameworks, make use of similar tactics and approaches to interactions with digital cultures: incorporation of pop culture references, visual cues, transversing classic hermetic demarcations and emphasizing the generation of a primarily online-mediated community. We ask what media-specific visual tactics can be found in contemporary esoteric practice as exemplified by #BRG and DKMU and whether they present an elaboration of classic esoterica?

with Mikkel Rorbo

part of the conference Esotericism in Global Visual Culture

University of Tokyo

Feministische Potentiale in algorithmischen Strukturen

Von Barbie bis zu #girldinner, von rosa Schleifen bis zur female rage: Auch wenn 2023 und damit das Year of the Girl vorbei ist, ist die fluide Identitaet des Girl Online ein fixer Bestandteil diverser digitaler Kulturen geworden. Hinter den zahlreichen Auseinandersetzungen mit Girl Culture, z.B. als girlblogging, steht das Girl Online, ein von der Popkultur hervorgebrachter Avatar, der traditionelle Geschlechternormen durch seine ambivalente Präsenz im Cyberspace in Frage stellt und Nutzer*innen durch Diskurse miteinander verbindet.

with Charlotte Reuss

part of DANK Images Research Network

University of Cologne

Welcome back to Girl Employee! We're thrilled to have a very special guest joining us today—an exceptional researcher and a dear friend, Sophie Publig. In this episode, Sophie will dive into some of her latest groundbreaking research projects, offering us her insights on the concept and aesthetics of "the girl online."

Girl Employee podcast by Morgane Billuart and Carmen Lael Hines

listen here

with Nora O Murchu, Nelly Y. Pinkrah, Michelle Pfeifer, Johannes Bruder, Clemens Apprich, Denise Helene Sumi and Mikkel Rorbo

Die ASchool verfolgt das Ziel eine kritische Paedagogik durch die aktive Einbeziehung von Kuenstler:innen, Aktivist:innen, Student:innen und Forscher:innen zu foerdern. Durch den Einsatz von Open-Source-Infrastrukturen, experimentellen Ansaetzen und der aktiven Einbeziehung lokaler Partner wird die ASchool Rahmenbedingungen fuer neue Lehrplaene und Lernumgebungen schaffen, die spaeter an Partnereinrichtungen des Netzwerks umgesetzt werden.

as part of transmediale 2024

HKW Berlin

with Charlotte Reuss

We encounter discourse on the girl online on the daily: From bimbo feminism, a movement subverting intersectional feminism with the female stereotype of the 'dumb blonde', to the playful depictions of girlhood in Greta Gerwig's film Barbie (2023) to the revealing narratives of TikTok trends such as Girl Dinner, we want to analyze 'The Girl Online's' ironic facade challenging gender social norms through ironic naivete, hyperfemininity, and self-determined sexuality.

University of Applied Arts Vienna

what do internet memes have to do with climate change? we will discuss dilemma rhetorics and the media language of memes, their relation to the field of biology, digital consumption, and whether memes can be tactically used to raise awareness for environmental issues.

moderated by Laleh Pourkhatee Monsef

as part of Klima Biennale Wien

Festivalareal Nordwestbahnhof

Talking Animals and Anthropocentric Bias

Based on the TikTok phenomenon of Talking Pet Buttons, this lecture deals with the human desire to be able to talk to animals. Historical predecessors of the binary language of pet buttons are presented and the concept of Cute Aggression is discussed, which further intensifies the anthropocentric view of animals. Finally, the question arises as to whether the desire for talking animals also includes the possibility of listening to them.

University of Applied Arts Vienna

Memes im US-Wahlkampf 2024

Nhi Le und Sophie Publig erörtern im Gespräch die Rolle von Memes im US-Präsidentschaftswahlkampf und erklären die bisher einflussreichsten Beispiele. Was verraten uns diese Memes über die Strategien der beiden Parteien? Wie nutzen die Kandidat*innen den digitalen Raum, um ihre Botschaften zu verbreiten und Wähler*innen zu mobilisieren? Und was bedeutet eigentlich “Operation Coconut” und JD Vance’ ominöse Liebe für Couches? Am Ende wollen wir das Potential und die tatsächliche Wirkung von Memes im Wahlkampf kritisch beleuchten. Können sie wirklich Wahlen beeinflussen, oder sind sie eher ein Nebenprodukt der modernen digitalen Kultur?

re:publica Hamburg

Vom Cyberfemnismus zum Girl Online

In unserem Vortrag analysieren wir die politische Kraft der Verweigerung und ihr Potenzial, neue gesellschaftliche Realitäten zu schaffen. Bezugnehmend auf Sara Ahmed’s Text "No" auf ihrem Blog feministkilljoys.com, werden wir untersuchen, wie Blockade und Verweigerung als Taktiken genutzt werden, um die Annahmen einer männlich dominierten digitalen Welt zu hinterfragen, wie dies seit spätestens den 1980er Jahren in queer-feministischen Kontexten geschieht.

mit Denise Helene Sumi

re:publica Hamburg

Considering the increasing importance of the digital sphere in contemporary occult and esoteric practices, this paper explores the interplay of virality and hype as activated in the disruption of cyberspace and the physical world. We consider the dissemination tactics of #BRG (Based Retard Gang) and DKMU that, despite different beliefs and frameworks, make use of similar tactics and approaches to interactions with digital cultures: incorporation of pop culture references, visual cues, transversing classic hermetic demarcations and emphasizing the generation of a primarily online-mediated community. We ask what media-specific visual tactics can be found in contemporary esoteric practice as exemplified by #BRG and DKMU and whether they present an elaboration of classic esoterica?

with Mikkel Rorbo

part of the conference Esotericism in Global Visual Culture

University of Tokyo

Feministische Potentiale in algorithmischen Strukturen

Von Barbie bis zu #girldinner, von rosa Schleifen bis zur female rage: Auch wenn 2023 und damit das Year of the Girl vorbei ist, ist die fluide Identität des Girl Online ein fixer Bestandteil diverser digitaler Kulturen geworden. Hinter den zahlreichen Auseinandersetzungen mit Girl Culture, z.B. als girlblogging, steht das Girl Online, ein von der Popkultur hervorgebrachter Avatar, der traditionelle Geschlechternormen durch seine ambivalente Präsenz im Cyberspace in Frage stellt und Nutzer*innen durch Diskurse miteinander verbindet.

with Charlotte Reuss

part of DANK Images Research Network

University of Cologne

Welcome back to Girl Employee! We’re thrilled to have a very special guest joining us today—an exceptional researcher and a dear friend, Sophie Publig. In this episode, Sophie will dive into some of her latest groundbreaking research projects, offering us her insights on the concept and aesthetics of "the girl online."

Girl Employee podcast by Morgane Billuart and Carmen Lael Hines

listen here

A lecture on the history of memes highlighting the intertwinement of creativity and collaboration. Are memes a new form of coming-together in the virtual world?

Memes, Digital Cultures, and the Epic Quest for Social Change

as part of the conference Virtu(real) Playgrounds: How to Digitally Expand a City at University of Applied Arts Vienna