Digital Studies Research Meetings

Yvette Granata will present her current project, How (not) to Grow an Abortion, an extended reality and transmedia art project that focuses on DIY abortion and the digital culture of online forums where knowledge about herbal DIY abortions is shared. The project meditates on the complex history of herbal abortions from colonialism to today, and how DIY methods can be ambivalently framed as simultaneously an act of resistance, as part of colonial exploitation, as an ancient practice passed on in secrecy, and as a current trend on Reddit forums and elsewhere online, especially proliferating within the last few years amid the current political and anti-abortion legal climate in the US. The presentation further questions the potential uses of XR technologies and the role that they may play in the long epistemic arch of secret-recipes. How (not) to Grow an Abortion opens on Feb 10 at New Art City https://newart.city/ as part of the exhibition Unbounded Unleashed Unforgiving.