Particular Truths
The Internet is American: Selfies, Sex Work and American Fascism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Camille Waring
The Internet is American examines how women sex workers use self-portraits as political protest and visual activism in response to online oppression, censorship, and the rise of fascist ideologies on social media. Since the enactment of SESTA-FOSTA in 2018, which intensified the marginalisation of sex workers globally, these activists have developed visual strategies to resist de-platforming and reclaim digital spaces. These laws, alongside patriarchal algorithms, align with fascist efforts to regulate bodies and suppress sexual autonomy. This paper argues that censorship has led to innovative visual tactics, drawing on codes of femininity from fashion, art, advertising, and influencer culture. These strategies reflect an evolving landscape of sex work visual culture, where individuals and communities push back against the gentrification of the Internet, which increasingly pushes sex work back into invisibility. The power of these self-portraits lies in their creation, circulation, and resistance to censorship. Sex worker visual activism, particularly through selfies, challenges social norms and asserts the right to exist online. Beyond traditional labour rights protests, these images represent a fight for digital presence against hegemonies and fascist ideologies that aim to control marginalised identities. The rise of far-right movements on social media parallels SESTA-FOSTA, with both working to silence sex workers through harassment and algorithmic exclusion. Through selfies, sex workers reclaim agency and defy authoritarian impulses that seek to erase them. Their visual activism not only confronts censorship but also resists the fascist agenda of exclusion, asserting their right to exist and thrive in digital spaces worldwide.
Giving Order to Chaos: Meaning in the Arts
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Callaghan
Uniquely among human communications, the arts upend the expectation that communicated meaning will be clear and unambiguous. Instead, the arts – being far more than the mere communication of fact - are rich in meaning, impact, and significance, not all of which are apparent at first blush. While much effort has been expended upon discussions of meaning – generally reducible to the meaning of meaning – little has been done to examine how meaning (however defined) is generated in the arts. More specifically, what do we express when one states that a work or element of art – broadly defined – “means” something, and how is meaning generated and (ideally) understood? It has often been observed that the arm movement of “The Three Graces” in Botticelli’s "Primavera" is a linear rhythm that is also a “lovely gesture of concord.” But how does a linear rhythm become a “gesture of concord,” and interpreted and understood as such? In previous studies, the author has shown how artists – painters, poets, composers, choreographers, and others – in creating a work of art manipulate both the material and the immaterial – the real and the semiotic - resulting in a semantic atmosphere conducive to understanding; an understanding of - paraphrasing the poet, Boccaccio - “particular truths.” In this latest study – leveraging studies in semiotics, metaphor, and literary theory (among others) - the author proceeds further, showing how artists use the material and the semiotic to illuminate particular truths, and to generate meaning.
Retro Aesthetics in the Digital Age: Lost Memories and the Expression of Liminal Aesthetics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Manxi Du
The resurgence of techno-nostalgia has emerged as a defining characteristic of contemporary digital culture, particularly among younger generations for whom the early stages of digital democratization, such as the personal computer or the early Web, have become mediated collective memories or even simulated experiences. This shift has given rise to new visual imaginaries articulated through aesthetic currents such as Dreamcore, Y2K, and Vaporwave. These aesthetics commonly inhabit spaces between familiarity and strangeness. They are characterized by recognizable yet displaced or fragmented visual elements and often construct a surreal and fragile aesthetic. Retro aesthetics operate across generations: what was once a lived experience for one cohort is now re-encoded as aesthetic simulation for another, producing a visual logic rooted in loss, persistence, and temporal disjunction. By inhabiting liminal spaces of memory and mediation, these cultural expressions blur the lines between personal recollection and shared nostalgia, between obsolete technologies and their contemporary reinterpretations. This paper investigates how contemporary image-making reclaims the past in order to reimagine the present, by analyzing artistic practices that reengage with retro-digital codes through strategies such as remediation, citation, recontextualization, and affective layering. This paper examines how retro-digital images function within visual culture, questioning why these forms of expression have shifted from niche subcultures to dominant cultural modes. Ultimately, these practices contribute to a renewed democratization of visual production, shaped by the emotional resonance of a lost digital future and the aesthetic potential of our shared liminal imaginaries.
