Cybertwee is a contemporary foil to Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk of the 1980’s and 90’s was dark, dystopic, and rejected softness in favor of cold tough hybridity. Cybertwee, which adopts the twee suffix from the music genre of that same era, proposes that what we need now is a cyborg existence that embraces tenderness as a survival mechanism, that holds dear our vulnerabilities because they are what connect us to each other. It is a reclamation of emotional complexity and sweetness, characteristics that have been devalued by capitalism’s demand that we be tireless and patriarchy’s demand that we harden in self-defense. Cybertwee is cuteness as retaliation as well as pleasure. “Our nectar is not just a lure, or a trap for passing flies, but a self-indulgent intrapersonal biofeedback mechanism spelled in emoji and gentle selfies.”
– Emily Gaynor, “Artist Interview: May Waver“
Filed under: Art Tagged: art, cybertwee, may waver, the cybertwee manifesto
