»Otherkin – A Social Software« is a role-played experimental radio performance that takes place through the lens of a fiction theory narrative centred around the idea of Otherkin and the notion of companion species – human beings entangled with other animals, organisms, landscapes, and technologies. The work brings up questions of new animism, translocality, and how to leave behind the notion of human exceptionalism.
Through the language of Otherkin, the piece opens the door to a collective investigation into the possibilities of identities between being human and something else. The work aims to raise awareness to the complex entanglement of direct physiological effects of frequencies and the psychological effects of narratives, role-playing, and Othering. By speaking in tongues, the players subvert and mutate reality, opening alternative and transformative landscapes of existing together.
The work is sonically presented within CTM Cyberia as a radio play. The characters' voices and calls have been extracted from a live role-played session where participants explored new identities and collectively generated methods to perform their companionship species / technologies. The narrative is honed by Omsk Social Club and Portals Cashmere Radio, with audio mixed by Alexander Iezzi.
In May 2021, Otherkin will again be streamed through core characters amongst critter kins and public humans at a local Berlin petting zoo. The work will also be broadcast as an experimental radio piece by Deutschlandfunk Kultur and ORF Austrian Broadcasting Service in spring and autumn 2021 respectively.
Commissioned for CTM Radio Lab by Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Radio Art/Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst festival, Ö1 Kunstradio, The Wire magazine, and Goethe-Institut.