Projection Activism as Spatial Practice: Words and Gestures for a Feminist City

On March 3, 2023, during a talk by right-wing internet celebrity Jordan Peterson at the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan, The Care Bois Collective — a group of transmasculine media artists — projected messages of love and support for trans communities through projection mapping and playful performance art.  At 7 p.m., the same time that Peterson was scheduled to begin speaking, the façade lighted up with the following messages: “Trans People Are Beautiful”, “Trans Women are WOMEN”, “All Pronouns Are Valid”, and “Trans JOY Forever”. The messages cycled at ten-second intervals and “marked” the facade of the building for a total of six minutes. The Collective asked the Good Trouble Network YQR, a local anonymous activist group, to share videos and photos of the projection to their social media accounts.¹A video of the event can be found on the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/100089484532136/videos/489415113234784

Using this projection, henceforth known as Shining Joy, as an example of the dynamic interplay between human and non-human elements in activist practices, this article explores how posthumanist theories reveal the potential for projection as a feminist spatial practice, especially as a vehicle for activism. While the link between posthumanist theory and projection activism will be explored in the following section, the concept of feminist spatial practice is adapted from Meike Shaltz, Ramia Mazé, Thérpse Kristiansson, and Maryam Fanni, who describe it as encompassing “practices of ontological reframing, re-viewing (or re-doing) differently, and cultivating forms of creativity that emerge from an experimental, performative, and ethical orientation to the world.”²Meike Shaltz, Ramia Mazé, Thérpse Kristiansson, “Introduction: Anticipating Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice”, in: Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice: Materialisms, Activism, Dialogues, Pedagogies, Projections, ed. Meike Shaltz, Ramia Mazé, Thérpse Kristiansson and Maryam Fanni (AADR – Art Architecture Design Research, 2017), 15. In their enumeration of such practices, the authors identify “rewriting the city vision” and “urban curation” as methods for redesigning our present and, consequently, restructuring our future.

As a media scholar and cinema curator, I acknowledge that the process of exhibiting media content in the public sphere is intricate. Adhering to the rules and following procedures can sometimes be tricky and limiting, because screenings are often governed by a hierarchy of impositions that jeopardises the curator’s vision and the nature of the event. Therefore, I argue that managing projections beyond film festivals or traditional outdoor cinema events inherently involves a political operation. Or more precisely, such projections effectively highlight the intrinsic political responsibility of engaging with and shaping public space. By unanchoring the projection and its presence in space from commercial interests, one creates an authentic space for discussion, protest, reflection, and acknowledgment of the power of projection, beyond “audience fetishisation”.³In this respect, see Giorgia Rizzioli, Towards Cinematic Placemaking: Curating Cinema Spatialisation in a Framework of Postdigital Performativity (Ph.D. diss., Coventry University, 2024, unpublished). In this context the curator retains a privileged role in managing and coordinating the projection. However, as I will explain later, the creation of a space for (feminist) resistance involves actions distributed across a more-than-human network.

By projecting activist content, Shining Joy aims to foster a more socially just city. This aim is achieved through a dynamic integration between different bodies and materials, with the projection itself becoming a body in the process. While the activist group curated, designed, and enacted the projection presence in urban space, the latter took on an autonomous agency. As I will stress throughout this article, the projection is not only recognised as a digital tool, but is also aligned with the feminist agenda produced by the activist group in its performative action. Therefore, by pursuing an ethical goal, the projection becomes an integral part of activism, rather than merely a medium for disclosing, communicating, and altering the status quo.

A posthumanist lens of enquiry enables us to contextualise this movement: the projection passes from being a technical tool which assists the activist in their feminist agenda to an entity who actively participates in a feminist spatial practice. I argue that viewing the projection as an active entity within urban space offers a fresh perspective on the complexity of projection activism. It not only challenges the inequalities embedded in public spaces but also redistributes agency within a more-than-human network. In this reconfiguration, the projection, through its non-human components (projector, beam, pixels), becomes an integral part of the activist group, aligning with a feminist agenda. Shining Joy, then, can be understood as a feminist entity engaged in a feminist spatial practice. It actively contributes to the vision of a feminist city, as described by Leslie Kern, where spaces and services are reshaped around values such as care, equity, justice, collectivity, and sustainability.⁴Leslie Kern, The Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Male-Made World (Verso Books, 2021), xiv.

This approach, however, raises the question of whether a nonhuman entity such as a projector can have agency, potentially align with, and act within a form of feminist resistance.  It therefore urges a rethinking of our world though a posthumanist lens of enquiry. Hence, before considering the mechanisms of projection as a spatial feminist practice, it is essential to engage with the posthuman turn in feminist and media studies. This epistemological framework will facilitate a deeper understanding of issues related to bodies and subjectivities and elucidate how projection activism can function as a feminist entity, extending beyond merely presenting activist content by making a spatial and material intervention within urban space.

Reimagining agency: a composite body for feminist spatial gestures

In media studies, the entanglement of human and nonhuman subjects and bodies has been a recent concern. A ‘posthuman media studies’ approach envisages the relationship between media and the body in a problematic key, which emphasises the ongoing production of a subjectivity.⁵However, this account of posthumanism does not refer to transhumanism, which acknowledges the downfall of humanity as the transcendence of the human body into technology and information-based devices. Hence, the application of posthumanism to projection activism does not refer to the transformation of the viewer’s body due to the cinematic technology, whether in terms of physical, or immersive experience. On the contrary, it underscores the pragmatic and material transformation catalysed by a nonhuman agency and implemented by a more-than-human network of actors. Instead of assuming the presence of a static notion of subjectivity, the posthuman articulation between media and the body argues for a “nomadic subject”⁶J.J. Sylvia IV, “Posthuman Media Studies,” Journal of Posthumanism 1, no. 2, (2021): 142. that embraces what Rosi Braidotti calls a “dynamic process of unfolding subjectivity outside the classical frame of the anthropocentric humanistic subject,” relocating it into “fields of composition of forces and becomings”.⁷Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Polity, 2002), 229, cited in Sylvia IV, 2021, 142. This posthuman turn has found a significant place within feminist theory, challenging human exceptionalism and dismantling the hierarchies that privilege certain groups over others. Posthuman feminist theory, advanced by new materialist scholars, emphasises an expanded notion of agency, one that considers how agency is distributed across a network of more-than-human entities.⁸See Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs 28, no. 3 (2003): 801–31; Rosi Braidotti, “Posthuman Feminist Theory,” in The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, ed. Lisa Dish and Mary Hawkesworth, (Oxford University Press, 2015), 673–691; Samantha Frost and Diana Coole, New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (Duke University Press, 2010); Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke University Press, 2010). This perspective highlights materiality and embodiment, focusing on how both human and non-human bodies interact with technology and the environment to create new forms of subjectivity and agency.

The Shining Joy projection exemplifies the integration of human and non-human agency, blending the actions of both the activists and the projection itself. It challenges the traditional binary distinction between human and non-human, subject and object. Rather than merely serving as a medium, the projection becomes part of the activist process — a feminist one in this case. This is particularly evident in how the projection performed on the day of the event. According to a member of the collective, the messages were seen to “reach beyond the parking lot and over the trees, hanging brightly above Broad Street, one of the city’s busier thoroughfares between downtown and the University of Regina.”(A Member of the Care Bois Collective, “Care Boi Stare: Shining Joy in T4t Projection Activism,” RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review 49, no. 1 (2024), 147 https://www.jstor.org/stable/48791081. )) By performing as a digital-physical arm in its effort to reach the façade, the projection participated in the act of dissensus.  While operating in space, it illuminated the wall of the Conexus Art Centre and transformed the building’s façade into a screen. By occupying public space, it interrupted the daily flow of passers-by. In this way, the projection’s agency emerges, blending seamlessly with the actions of the activists, protesters, and those moving through the space. In a sort of composite body of humans and nonhuman presences, Shining Joy exemplifies a feminist spatial practice, which ontologically and morphologically transform an urban space into a place of resistance and protest.

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Indeed, it is not simply through delivering messages like “Trans Joy Forever” or “Trans Women are WOMEN” that the projection becomes an active entity in this kind of feminist activism. The participation in dissent goes beyond just sharing those words. Instead of solely delivering those messages, by reaching out to the wall, and traversing the space between the van and the façade, the projection performs a real yet ephemeral gesture of remonstrance. The projection became part of the activist protest for six minutes, during which it reconfigured the surrounding space. This dynamic unfolded through a time-based repetition (the duration of the entire event), with the gesture gaining meaning through its cyclical and embodied enactment. The projection — as a gesture of protest — can be seen as a “practiced duration”, a term used by Miriam De Rosa to describe the accumulation of meaning over time through continuous repetition.⁹Miriam De Rosa, “On Gestures”, 120. As such, gestures in this sense are not isolated or instantaneous acts but become refined through repetition, continuously evolving as they engage with the physical and social context in which they are performed. Each act of protest, each movement through urban space, adds to the gesture’s significance.

Embedded in a more-than-human composite body, those gestures deviate from the established norms, therefore aligning with what Erin Manning refers to as “minor gestures”. The latter often pass unnoticed in the mainstream. They are seemingly inconspicuous or small, yet they possess the power to subtly alter the field of relations around them. In Shining Joy, the minor gestures of the projection challenge conventional expectations of human agency, particularly within the context of projection activism. These minor gestures push the boundaries of what is considered politically meaningful or agentic. Through their quiet yet persistent repetition, they question normative understandings of action and agency, suggesting that political change not only emerges from grand and anthropocentric gestures, but also from ephemeral, almost imperceptible movements that temporarily reshape the dynamics within urban and social spaces.¹⁰Erin Manning, The Minor Gesture (Duke University Press, 2016), ix–x. Through their spatial practice, they help create a space for feminist resistance.

Making Places for Feminist Resistance

Using projection in urban space is not enough to create an alternative space. We must move beyond viewing it simply as a communication tool and instead recognise the projection as an active agent in the urban environment. As demonstrated by Shining Joy, the event carried two layers of meaning: one communicative (the messages on the wall) and the other more gestural (traversing space and altering the façade’s morphology). A posthumanist perspective allows us to appreciate the gestural aspect, going beyond the activists’ intended function. In other words, it helps us recognise the projection’s agentic power.

Reflecting on squatting, Claudia Cattaneo and Miguel Martínez assert that this practice is not merely an act of occupation but a form of placemaking and resistance. In their view, squatting reconfigures urban landscapes to reflect the needs of marginalized groups. In taking control of a specific place, Shining Joy example acts as a comparable form of resistance and eventually placemaking: it altered the space both materially and virtually, transforming the urban space into a site of resistance and protest. Although not in a permanent way, the space was designed by a more-than-human composite body to host a time-based set of gestures of dissensus in the surrounding space. One of the repetitive gestures was the transformation of the concrete wall into a majestic media façade displaying activist and feminist content. Andy Buchanan summarizes the reconfiguration process implemented by projection activism, arguing that “by integrating physical surfaces, digital images, and audiences, projection art establishes a new sociotechnical materiality that includes both its on-site presence and its ongoing digital life.”¹¹Andy Buchanan, “Projection Art and Projection Activism,” Architecture_MPS 20, no. 1 (2021), 7. This means that once projected, the images merge with the surface on which they are displayed, creating new composite visuals. When these are captured and shared online, they gain a new life in the digital public sphere, continuously recontextualizing, amplifying, and extending their existence.¹²Andy Buchanan, “Projection Art and Projection Activism,” Architecture_MPS 20, no. 1 (2021), 7. On the night of the Shining Joy projections, over hundreds of people engaged virtually with it, by sharing photos and videos on social media platforms.¹³A member of the Care Bois Collective, “Care Boi Stare: Shining Joy”, 155. Through its circulation across material and virtual space, the guerrilla use of the building’s façade “opened up new possibilities for resistance.”¹⁴A member of the Care Bois Collective, “Care Boi Stare: Shining Joy”, 155. Both outside the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina and worldwide, a placemaking process with feminist intent was made.

This virtual engagement through social media alongside the creation of an enlarged platform of feminist protest and dissensus expands the concept of placemaking beyond physical spaces and connects it to emerging concepts in feminist placemaking literature.¹⁵ Asma Mehan, “Artistic Activism and Feminist Placemaking in Iran’s ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ Movement,” Mozaik e-Zine 1, no. 4, (2024a); Asma Mehan, “Digital Feminist Placemaking: The Case of the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Movement,” Urban Planning 9 (2024b). For example, Asma Mahan and Ugo Rossi describe feminist placemaking as the development of inclusive and equitable urban spaces. Such a definition of feminist placemaking emphasizes the significance of intersectionality, social justice, and participatory planning in challenging traditional power dynamics, with the goal of creating environments that cater to the diverse needs and aspirations of marginalized communities, especially women and non-binary individuals.¹⁶Asma Mehan and Ugo Rossi, “Multiplying Resistance: The Power of the Urban in the Age of National Revanchism”, in Philosophy and the City: Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Perspectives, ed. Keith Jacobs and Jeff Malpas (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 233–244. It goes beyond simply ensuring their physical presence in public spaces; it involves a profound challenge to power dynamics and social injustices.¹⁷Asma, Mehan, Krzysztof Nawratek, and Farouq Tahar, “Beyond Community Inclusivity Through Spatial Interventions,” Writingplace 6 (2022): 136–147. By engaging with diverse communities on social media and through the free attendance of the projections, Shining Joy addressed intersectional issues and underscored the importance of intersectionality in feminist urban activism. Moreover, the guerrilla use of the building challenged traditional power dynamics and social injustices, connecting to the broader aims of feminist placemaking to disrupt patriarchal structures and create equitable urban environments.

In conclusion, the Shining Joy projection redefines the role of projection in projection activism, showing that the act of projecting messages into public space is not merely about disseminating information but about transforming the space itself, making it a site of resistance and reshaping the very nature of urban space. Viewed through the lens of feminist spatial practices and posthumanist theory, Shining Joy reveals the potential for non-human entities, such as projections, to become active participants in the activist process. Through time-based performativity, Shining Joy transforms urban space into a site of protest and reflection, where the repeated projection of messages and words becomes a gesture of dissensus. By transforming public space to embody values of inclusivity, care, and equity, Shining Joy firmly aligns its spatial practice with feminist placemaking. It carves out an authentic space for feminist dialogue and activism, presenting a fresh approach to placemaking that disrupts patriarchal structures and champions social justice. The projection’s agency, further amplified through social media documentation, shows how the physical-digital arm can transcend spatial boundaries, reaching far beyond the immediate environment.

Giorgia Rizzioli

Dr Giorgia Rizzioli is a researcher in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures in Coventry University, UK, where she is an active member of the ArtSpaceCity research strand. She delves into the realm of cinematic placemaking, investigating how curating and exhibiting expanded cinema through outdoor projections is a way of understanding cinema spatialisation as a material and spatial agency in (making) places. She contributed as junior curator to the Coventry Biennial Hyper-Possible 2021, with the projection Screening Coventry: Past is Now (April 2022). Her recent publications include ‘Introducing Open Montage: Material Performativity in Urban Media Configurations in Space’, co-authored with Mel Jordan and published in NECSUS- European Journal of Media Studies, Spring 2024.