About

Because as scholars we realize the demands for change in today’s intellectual community atmosphere. People are continuously doing philosophical discussions and sharing links on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, and yet all of that remains sporadic. On the other hand, the mainstream, non-sporadic way of classical academic journals seem more and more to be lacking the speed to adequately keep up with the pace of our digital culture it aims to analyze.

Cyborg Subjects is an attempt to fill in the void by taking the best of both worlds. It aims to provide a space for quality intellectual discussions and link sharing within the fields described above. Additionally, interdisciplinary discussions lacking in offline academia will be encouraged. Quality will be controlled by peer review, and focus will be maintained by the publication of a journal with its themes.

By bringing academia and the “2.0” suffix of today’s culture together, we hope to not only establish an academic exchange of positions but a vibrant ecology of intellectual discussion of these positions.

Perhaps best known for his 2008 work of random theoretical articles and political opinions collaged in a blog, Bonni Rambatan a.k.a. The Posthuman Marxist is an independent artist and cultural theorist. His primary field of research is the role of technology in shaping contemporary human subjectivity, sexuality, and new forms of society. He is also passionate with physics and mathematics and often draws analogies and philosophical inspiration from both fields. Bonni has a B.A. of English Literature from the State University of Malang.

In 2010 he finally left his blog to do various artistic projects (“conceptual work”), including writing and designing for children transmedia narrative Anni Zola, co-founding conceptual art space Idea Circuit, and finally co-founding this transnational entity of critical thinkers. Always in pursuit of his passion for artistic and medium explorations, Bonni has also worked in music, film, dance, and fashion.

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Jacob Johanssen, 25, was born in Hamburg, Germany. He studied Communication Studies, Sociology and Classical Philology at the University of Salzburg, Austria.  In 2010 he moved to London and is currently enrolled in the Media and Communications MA programme at Goldsmiths, University of London. His academic interests include British cultural studies, critical theory, psychoanalysis and media, psychoanalysis and therapy culture.

Since a long time, Jacob has been frustrated with the speed and cost by which academic discussions go by, taking months or even years without satisfying results. After meeting Bonni Rambatan, the two of them had this idea of an online transnational community built around a journal, and things started rolling from there.

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Since October 2010, Christian Fuchs is the chair in Media and Communication Studies at the Department of Informatics and Media Studies, Uppsala University. In February 2008, he was granted habilitation at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Salzburg with a work on Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age (Routledge 2008). From October 2005 to April 2008, he served as an Assistant Professor for Internet & Society at the ICT&S Center: Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society, University of Salzburg. His research interests include social theory, critical theory, critique of the political economy of media, communication, information, technology, culture; information society research, information society theory.

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Lucille Holmes, PhD, is a lecturer in Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and a psychoanalyst in private practice. Her main research area is Lacanian psychoanalysis and the production of dialogues with visual arts and education. She is an executive member of the Centre for Lacanian Analysis and member of New Zealand Forum of the School of the International Forum of the Lacanian Field.

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Leung is a practicing artist, curator and researcher who received a Honorary Fellowship of Bachelor
of Fine Arts degree at the New Media Art Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. His passion in exploring issues concerning
contemporary art began during his time in college. During 1998-2008, his artworks were exhibited
in over 30 venues across the globe. His projects were featured on National Public Radio (USA), and
in Agence France-Presse (France), Chicago Tribune (USA), NY Arts Magazine (USA), Chicago

Readers (USA) and The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong).

In 2002, Leung was appointed as the Program Director of the media art organization Videotage.
During the past years, he has initiated and participated in projects that included exhibitions,
workshops, lectures, publications, online projects and symposia such as, 40 Years of Video Art in
Germany and Hong Kong, (Hong Kong and Germany), Venice Biennale International Architecture
Exhibition (Venice, Hong Kong), Perpetual Art Machine (New York), ISEA Festival (San Jose),
Microwave International Media Art Festival (Hong Kong). Apart from the video documentary
that was awarded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, his current interdisciplinary
project “Queering Sex Machines: The Re-articulation of Non-normative Sexualities and
Technosexual. Bodies” is being actualized as a Mphil academic thesis at the Lingnan
University. Leung is currently a PhD researcher at the School of Creative Media, City University of
Hong Kong.

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Todd McGowan teaches critical theory and film at the University of Vermont.  He is author of Out of Time (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan (SUNY Press, 2007), and other works.

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André Nusselder is a Dutch writer and lecturer in philosophy. In November 2009 he published his first book at MIT Press, in the Short Circuits series edited by Slavoj Zizek. Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology deals with the role of fantasy in the technological interfaces connecting man and digital worlds. A book that elaborates the notion of fantasy in the French stream of psychoanalytical thought is to follow. He worked as a lecturer at several educational institutes in The Netherlands, and most recently as Visiting Professor in Information Management at the University of Amsterdam. He is working on a career as an independent writer in philosophy and is currently finishing an aphoristic style book “on” Georges Bataille.

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With a background in psychology and the liberal arts, Dinu is currently writing his doctoral thesis under the sponsorship of Nottingham Trent University’s School of Arts & Humanities. His academic endeavors have been eclectic and interdisciplinary, ranging from youth culture and media studies, to sartorial history (read: lingerie) and the psychology of the digital age. He is currently analyzing idiosyncratic forms of online ‘nostalgia’, using several tumblr-s as cases in point. He enjoys exploring ambiguous dimensions of postmodernity, such as the (de)construction of ‘memory’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘individuality’. He dislikes Hegel, likes Nietzsche, and almost understands Derrida.

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Dr. Aziz Douai is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada, since 2009. He received a Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, in addition to an M.Sc. in Advertising from Boston University, Massachusetts. His research interests include social media and social change, new media and activism, cyberthreats (e.g. cyberterrorism), Arab media and democracy, global media and international conflict, among other areas of international communications. Dr. Douai’s publications have appeared in The Journal of International Communication, The Global Media Journal, The Arab Reform Bulletin, The Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, and The Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research.

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Dr. Matthew Flisfeder has a background in Cultural Theory, Film Theory and Communication Studies. He is an instructor at OCAD University, Wilfrid Laurier University and Ryerson University. His recent work has focused on the relevance of Slavoj Žižek for film theory. Dr. Flisfeder’s research interests include ideology critique, Marxism, psychoanalysis, visual culture, new media and cinema, consumerism/commodity studies, social networking and political activism. Currently, he is investigating the relation between new media and cinema, realism, and ideology. Dr. Flisfeder also has an interest in discourses on the body, humanism/posthumanism, and identity/subjectivity studies.

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Alison Harvey is a PhD candidate in the Joint Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture at York and Ryerson Universities in Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on youth, performances of gender, and digital culture, focusing in particular on video games, social networking, virtual worlds, and mobile devices.

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Panayiota Tsatsou is a lecturer in Media and Communication at Swansea University, United Kingdom. She specialises in the areas of information society, media policy and regulation, political communication, media and gender, new media and children.
She conducted her doctoral research in media and communications at the London School of Economics (LSE). Previously she was awarded a MSc in Media and Communications (LSE), a MA in Political Science (University of Birmingham) and a BA in Political Science and Public Administration (University of Athens, Greece). Her academic study was supported by various fellowship schemes and organisations, such as the Hellenic Republic State Scholarships Foundation and the N.A.T.O Science Fellowship Program.

She is involved in international research on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), with an emphasis on regulation and policy creation, as well as on the role of ordinary people (e.g. women, children) as users and actors in the Information Society. Her research work and publications aim to develop innovative and evidence-based solutions to issues arising in the Information Society. She currently holds an AHRC award to study digital inclusion among minority communities in Wales.

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Nick Jensen is a Doctoral candidate in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at the University of Cardiff. He is studying for a PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory under the supervision of Professor Ian Buchanan. Nick was awarded a Starters Research Bursary to commence his candidature.
Nick works at the University of Hull’s Scarborough Campus teaching 2nd and 3rd year Undergraduate modules in Audience and the Psychology of Internet Behaviour. He is Course Leader for the Foundation Degree in Applied Digital Media at East Riding College in Beverley.

Nick holds a BSc honours degree in Media Technology, a Professional Graduate Certificate of Education in Post-Compulsory Education and Training and a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from the University of Northern Iowa. He is a member of the Institute for Learning, the British Sociological Association and the Internet Society.
His research interests include, but are not limited to: Schizoanalysis and Deleuze Studies, Media Studies/Media Effects, Sociology, Psychoanalysis, Anthropology, Philosophy and Posthumanism

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Dustin has an MA in Media Studies from the University of Western Ontario. He has a non-academic day job, but by night he is working on papers and reading about history and philosophy of science in technology. He also writes a blog called Cybject.

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Since 2008 Alvis Choi has been with Videotage, the only non-profit media art organization in Hong Kong, where she serves as Assistant Manager. She curated a video screening [20/20] as part of the closing event of ‘October Contemporary 2009’ and has collaborated with a number of art and technology institutions including Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interactive Design (ACID). Exhibitions she curated include ‘Second Life’ (2008, Videotage), ‘Framing Vision’ (2009, Hollywood Road Police Married Quarters) and ‘Cattle Depot 101′ (2010, Videotage).

In 2009-2010, she was selected as a participant in the Hong Kong Jockey Club Curatorial Training Programme organized by Para/Site Art Space. She interned at the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT6) and co-curated the exhibition ‘Fugue in the Key of Understanding’ in Osage Gallery.

Alvis is a founding member of Dorkbot-HK and is currently co-curating a free culture festival ‘Wikitopia’ and an online participatory video project ‘REMAKE HK’.

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Jon Epstein currently is on the sociology faculty at High Point University in North Carolina where he teaches Visual Sociology and Social Theory. He holds a PhD in Social Theory from Kent State University. He has published widely in the fields of cultural studies and popular music studies in journals such as Symbolic Interaction, Deviant Behavior, and Popular Music and Society. In addition to his work in academia, Epstein is a professional rock musician and has recorded and performed extensively.

His critical multimedia work with Haymarket Riot erodes the boundaries between rock music video production and social theory. Since 1992, the critical media group haymarketRIOT has been interrogating culture through their use of graphics, video, interventions and interactive media. Topics have included the unreal nature of televised media, the digital divide, the First Gulf War, and the dissolution of memory in the digital age.
These have mainly been realized through series of innovative music videos, integrating the subject and its medium of dissemination. Haymarket Riot’s work has been shown at numerous international film festivals and conferences.

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Heather Kelley a.k.a. moboid is a media artist and video game designer. Most recently, she was Artist in Residence for Subotron at Quartier21, Museums Quartier Vienna, where she created “SUGAR,” a cross media collaborative event featuring an original game, scent-generating networked electronics, and couture fashion. She is co-founder of the Kokoromi experimental game collective, with whom she produces and curates the annual Gamma game event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context. Previously, Ms. Kelley was Creative Director on the UNFPA Electronic Game to End Gender Violence, at the Emergent Media Center at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont.

Heather’s twelve-year career in the games industry has included AAA next-gen console games, interactive smart toys, handheld games and web communities for girls. In Spring 2008, she was Kraus Visiting Assistant Professor of Art, and Adjunct Faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center, at Carnegie Mellon University, where she organized The Art of Play symposium and art game arcade. Her biographical sex game concept with Erin Robinson, “Our First Times,” won the 2009 GDC Game Design Challenge, and her game concept “Lapis” based on female masturbation won the 2006 MIGS Game Design Challenge.

As moboid, she has created interactive projections using game engines such as Quake and Unreal. Her experimental art game work with Lynn Hughes, “Fabulous/Fabuleux,” was created at Montreal’s Hexagram Institute and integrates gameplay into a full-body interactive installation using custom “squishy” interface hardware. For seven years, Heather served as co-chair of the IGDA’s Women in Game Development Special Interest Group. She holds an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she is an alumna of the Advanced Communications Technologies Laboratory.

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Yes! Cyborg Subjects is an open platform that welcomes proposals from anyone and everyone who believes they have something to contribute to the community and the rest of society along with it. You don’t have to have PhDs and published books or coded 10 games involving Immanuel Kant musing on Large Hadron Colliders, but a portfolio (rather than CV) would be appreciated.

We mostly seek out new members and contact them, but we are also open to proposals. If you are an expert on a field you think needs to be tackled, if you have resources whether financial, promotional, physical space, or server space to support us and would like to do so, or if you would just like to express your interest in becoming a team member of Cyborg Subjects, please e-mail Bonni and Jacob direcrly. Be advised that we might not get back to you for a couple of days, and that there is no guarantee that we will work anything out, but if we can do something it will surely be worth your try!