'on being allergic to onions'... we read Susan Leigh Star

Nina Wakeford

In this new video work, the artist and drag kings King Frankie Sinatra, Sigi Moonlight and HP Loveshaft perform a translation of American sociologist Susan Leigh Star’s (1954-2010) contribution to a feminist understanding of science and technology.

This video work reflects Star's critique of the way in which mainstream science and technology used white, middle-aged men as the standard for all populations.

Alongside her friend Donna Haraway, Star pioneered the study of what she called the ‘distribution of the conventional’ and its links to power, and the messiness of lived experience. These ideas laid the foundations for feminist science and technology studies. Star studied the work involved in surviving outside mainstream conventions, whether dealing with an allergy to onions at a fast food chain, or living in the ‘high tension zones’ of marginalised races and sexualities.

Informed by current research at King’s College London, this video work references 1980s community television broadcasts, created by media activists. These broadcasts mixed popular culture with academia, politics, and performance to provide an alternative view of scientific progress.

As part of the research and development of the work, King Frankie Sinatra and Dan Load hosted a drag workshop for staff and students of King’s College London.

About the contributor(s)

Nina Wakeford is Reader in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London where she also convenes the MA Visual Sociology. She makes work that begins with the unfinished business of past social movements, and the challenges of revisiting the energies that these movements created. She has also made contributions to Science and Technology Studies. Nina is interested in how identification and disidentification occur, empathy and inhabitation, and the risks of staying loyal or respectful to the kinds of materials that initiate her work.