Albertine Thunier

PhD candidate ● mèmes researcher ● ésoterique média artiste

About me

Hello World!  I study and teach in the Department of Communication at Université de Montréal. My thesis, as well as my research-creation practices, focus on memes whether they are found on or off the WorldWideWeb.


    Through a series of playful experiments, my work question the techno-fetishistic attitude that reduces the relations of interactivity and cooperation to the so-called new digital media. I explore the possibilities of displacement between analog and digital interfaces by connecting and remixing different occurrences of memetic interactivity past and present. For example, the performances of TikTok challenges and 19th century parlour games. Or the internet memes generated from AIs and the humorous improvisation shows that staged artificial lives (or puppets) in the fairs and street theaters.

   Also, and most importantly, I'm the admin of the esoteric memes page @montreal.affirmations.


Memetically yours,
xoxoAlbertine

Portfolio

My research-creation projects invite to reflect on the mechanisms of circulation and re-mediatization of memes across time and technology. I am looking to highlight the logics underlying memes, present and past, by reconstructing and recreating transhistorical memes.I like to think of my researchs and work as hyperstitions post-ironic affirmations – that is to say, post-modern beliefs that bring about the future they predict.

#girlboss affirmations

Girlbossing our way in and out of academia through uncanny affirmations

presentations

affirmations

This collaborative project was co-authored by Florence D Routhier, Hubert Alain and Albertine Thunier.

homocommunist specters

     Guided by Midjourney's Discord bot, I generated images that leave a lasting impression of a parallel world; a world that exists in the artificial imagination of the algorithms somewhere between clouds and big data that fuel concrete dystopia of contemporary digital capitalism.

    With Midjourney's blend function, I hybridized photos of my close friends and acquaintances with transpédégouines archive images gleaned from the very cool Insta page @homocommunist. It seems to me that the result is something approaching a trace, an omen, an aura Benjamin evoked. These false images, illusions or simulacra, offer visions that are both spectral and premonitory. They give us a glimpse of an alternative reality, possibly a post-capitalist one, where queers play with cats and guns without injunction to work, produce or reproduce.

Teaching

Educational material created as part of my teaching activities

Thank You