Abstract In 2021, Oo Condit approached Kar Kucia with the suggestion to make a collaborative work and experiment together at the intersection of two distinctive artistic research approaches. Oo was researching technogenetic becomings – how various technosocial arrangements produce and organise bodies and affects. Kar was working on the notions of monstrous agency and parasitic noise as tactics within the process of neoliberalisation of art institutions. At the same time, our home campus was undergoing a process of reorganisation affecting staff working environments (including ours). That process became the context of our engagement.

We devised a playful remote interview format to conduct a series of interviews with members of staff affected by the ongoing changes. To channel these muffled voices and ‘hidden transcripts’ (James C. Scott), we created a character to scuttle along the abandoned campus corridors, leaving a trail of slime behind it. It became an embodiment of affects created by evasive and opaque institutional communication, and of the kind of speech that only becomes heard as a whinge. Through its built-in surveillance system, the character collected footage, forming the base for a video work.

We are proposing a workshop led by our character and its operating system. The workshop will include screening the video work, followed by group work and discussion. We want to provoke a moment of collective thinking around how bodies at work are communicating within institutional policy changes and semiconductive (Michel Serres) structural shifts dictated by austerity politics, streamlining, and increased efficacy. What precarious forms of knowledge emerge from embodied minor expressions, experiences of complaining (Sara Ahmed) and inarticulate forms of resistance?