We Need Sanctuary

Kate Cooper turns image technology against its own norms. No longer sentenced to represent an idealized reality, her digital creations have been emancipated. They lead independent existences as entities in a virtual world. Presented as harbingers of affect, these fictional liminal bodies are presented as forms of weaponry to unpick and reject contemporary modes of exploitative labor. These computer-generated figures, with their ability to withdraw and hijack representation, are positioned as tools to negotiate our own understanding of the bodily effects of capitalism. Though inextricably linked to methodologies of digital image production, blood, disease and decay remind us of the fleshy potential of the bodies she creates. Sanctuary sites are spaces of refusal that take place in the body—they are unreachable areas, where danger grows unable to be penetrated by drugs or biochemicals. Cooper's work draws on the biological logic of inoculation, the infecting of a host with a virus with the aim of generating antibodies to destroy it.