We are hosting artist Cassie Thornton in Loughborough this November as an IAS fellow through the Open Fellowship programme, in connection to the Rehearsals programme. As part of her visit Cassie will participate in a roundtable discussion hosted by IAS, and lead a hands-on workshop exploring artist-led collective healthcare model, The Hologram.  

During their IAS Fellowship, Cassie is collaborating with Loughborough colleagues Dr Jade French from the Department of English, Dr Catherine Coveney from the Department of Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy and Dr Rachael Grew & Dr Victoria Browne, both from Department of International Relations, Politics and History. 

 

About The Hologram:  

The Hologram is a peer-to-peer protocol practiced from beds and couches around the world. One part social practice, one part technology of revolution, and one part feminist science fiction come to life, The Hologram is a lightweight, replicable, autonomous protocol for human cooperation which produces a rare form of de-institutionalized stability that comes from seeing and being seen, caring and being cared for and supporting while being supported, in the long term. By making this form of viral communal stability, we believe that hologrammers and their communities may be able to use their stability to produce new ways of living that don't rely on or reproduce the toxic systems that are killing us. 

 

Bio:

Cassie Thornton is an artist, writer and organizer who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity. In her recent work she explores the struggle of reorganizing and using privilege in the apocalypse. She uses social practices including institutional critique, insurgent architecture, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. 

Cassie has invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service for the survivors of gentrification, has hypnotized hedge fund managers, has finger-painted with the grime found inside banks, has donated cursed paintings to profiteering bankers, and has taught feminist economics to yogis (and vice versa). She is currently a co-organizer of a bar that is an undercover clinic in Berlin. Her 2020 book, The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, is available from Pluto Press.