Ameera Kawash

My practice-based doctoral research developed digital retooling as an artistic methodology that ties together socially engaged practice, speculative design, and the arts to create original artworks and projects that rescript how media acquires meaning and form as it moves in the world.

For my thesis, I developed several artistic projects, including: ‘Virtual Keffiyeh’ a digital wearable and research project that examines Palestinian digital rights in virtual and metaverse spaces; 'Black Body Radiation: Rescripting Data Bodies' a collaborative project with performance artist Ama BE which deploys body sensor networks and blockchain architectures to explore artistic agency and alternative value creation in performance artworks; and ‘Orbital Bloom’ which repurposes sustainability data into responsive artworks.

Digital retooling is a propositional, practical, creative, and critical method that transforms existing technologies through artistic practice to break from hegemonic structures rooted in digital capitalism, ambiguated consent, and data colonialism. Staying with embodiment and vulnerability, my research and practice locates architectures of agency, care, and co-vulnerability in emergent mediascapes.