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Michelle Marie Forrest

Bristol
Artist and researcher.

My practice revolves around a "scattered methodology"—a constellation of objects, images, contextual references, and processes—in which the impact of interconnected structural forces and the psychological reorientation that is needed to try and comprehend the things that feel impossible to talk about or touch upon directly—can be orbited around.

 

In response to the seamless flow of algorithmic curation, I explore the friction between wide-ranging matters, which I process as matter: from the intimacy of a broken heart to systemic financial instability and existential cosmic collapse. By emphasising the idiosyncrasies of interpretation, I foreground the materiality of the editing process itself.

 

I define this approach as psycho-techno-archaeological: a "mashup" that requires active listening to tune into the intentional friction between physical and digital processes. Here, weighted architectural fragments and weightless digital snippets—sourced from games, film, and literature—converge. They reverberate between an archaeological past and a techno-future, where "digital excavations" uncover the hidden tensions of our technological lives.

 

Working with the permeability of boundaries—where "porosity" describes the ease with which thoughts, emotions, and external influences circulate—I refer to my body of work as "matters of dispute" which oscillate between clinical detachment and inevitable emotional spillovers. While no individual object offers a final answer, collectively they move from object to system, forming a series of propositions in which the fragmented nature of lived experience and the systems that shape it are simultaneously celebrated and shattered.

 

Featured in

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