m. woods
a selection from the res nihil
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I am most interested in the ways nothingness manifests in multiple phases of non-existence; the way it powers economy, politics, and all socio-political relations. My work is a cartography of this negation, similar to the work Fanon, Moten, Baudrillard, and Mbembe, and this nihilism traces its particular source to the inception of global Capitalism (primarily the triangular slave trade). This same nihilism, that devalues a human and replaces humanity with trade value and object hood, is the white supremacist power structure maintained by the RNC and DNC, the explicit negative architectures of white generational wealth, and the UK/US/EURO imperial necropolity.
I am currently completing a book and accompanying exhibit, The Oxoniae Photographae, to accompany my feature film and multi-media installation, Commodity Trading. Within the exhibition, spectators will reflect on the simulacra at the heart of Oxford University, its role in the development of the triangular slave trade, and the ways in which abject whiteness uses institutional and heritage structures as a means of solidifying its parasitic control of time-space.
The unfinished is everything, the archive, the escape from despair into new despair. The unfinished is in fact that which is remarkable despair, and after seventeen years, I know I will never be finished, but I will close certain lines of inquiries and open others. I’ve accepted all of it as unfinished and I hope the artifacts leave crumbs to decipher - not only information but experience. Motion picture is often presented in a codec - an algorithm applied to a digital file that compresses and decompresses. Art often operates that way, but for the infinite, and it sometimes takes a while before the infinite can be expressed in such fullness so as to transgress the nihilism at the heart of our human expression and use us as conduits for something more full than our absurd finitude can often muster.
M. Woods (They/Them/He/Him) is the principle media drug designer at DISASSOCIATIVE PRODUCTIONS www.thedigitalsickness.com M is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and activist based in Chicago. They graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (BFA 2010) and received the Erna Plachte Award at the University of Oxford (MFA 2021). They have exhibited their work internationally for the past 15 years, including at IFFR, the Flaherty Seminar, The Royal Society of British Artists, The Oberhausen International Film Festival, the Bodleian Library, Prismatic Ground, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, where they also served as special curator. They have received support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Light Cone Paris, and Collectif Jeune Cinema.
Woods’ work is a cartography of malignant nihilism, founded upon global Capitalism, and expressed through all available media.