i spend my time moving in and between contemporary practice, research, and journalism. 

practice ︎ my current focus is THE YOUNG BODY UNIVERSE, a multi-year series of enactments spanning new media, performance, video, and interactions, exploring the spaces that the deviant avatar can occupy. i also do collective work with AFSAR. my practice was initially in photography, using experimental documentary and ethnography to consider, in particular, how femininity and queerness are articulated. i then wrote, made films and performances, before embarking on the UNIVERSE in 2021. from the ages of 12-19 i was an actor and performer; these early experiences have led me to come full circle in my practice. for a full list of my projects, see here.

research ︎ my practice complements my research, which currently takes the form of a phd at freie universität berlin. my research examines digital manifestations of the asian feminist, queer body, orienting itself by way of eastern philosophy, techno-orientalism, and cyberfeminism. i am interested in cases in which this body deviates from patriarchal expectations and capitalist agendas to pose alternative pathways by means such as digital lethargy, resistance and agency. i contextualise my research within the territories of the late 20th century asian economic “little dragons” of japan, south korea, taiwan, hong kong, and singapore, territories wedded together by confucianism, technological development, and neoliberal economies. the research threads links between such developments and feminist, queer theory, media and performance studies, mapping the sensibilities and relations of the techno-body. key material takes the form of works by contemporary artists working with media and performance as well as my own practice-led series, THE YOUNG BODY UNIVERSE, which looks at the way the body speaks back, circumventing, obfuscating and redirecting systemically violent gazes and impositions. through this, i contemplate the way cosmotechnics can offer spaces of possibility and agency. i am in the early stages of my research, so i expect this area to grow much more extensively. my b.a. was in international relations and communications and media studies at tufts university, and my m.a. was in visual and media anthropology at freie universität berlin.

journalism ︎ in 2022, together with sudhir vadaketh and tsen-waye tay, and in response to the lack of independent media in singapore, we co-founded jom, a long-form magazine. you can find my journalistic and documentary work in the form of essays, photography, and video for both jom and others, here. i’ve been particularly engaged with the topics of gender, queerness, inequality, ecology, technology, mental health, the media, and surveillance. for any jom-related inquiries, please email me at charmaine@jom.media.

i’ve also worked as a university lecturer and in a commercial studio, among various other forms of labour; my C.V. is here.

please reach out via email at psxcharmaine@gmail.com. i am also on instagram at @psxcharmaine.