Rebecca Close (b. London, UK) researches at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies and art. Their work considers how ancient and contemporary media, such as words, bodily gestures, sculptural inscription, video/film networks, maga/zines or the Internet, are taken up by people to alter reproductive possibility and life.
They are the author of two poetry collections: Valid, Virtual, Vegetable Reality (Melita Hume Prize, 2017) and Réplica (Canal, 2022) and edit Them, All Magazine for poetry and Net/Software/Code art.
Their PhD research on Post-Internet Queer Reproductive Work and The Fixed Capital of Fertility situated emergent computational landscapes of assisted reproduction in a broader history of reproductive struggle in Europe, and asked: how have artists responded to networked reproductive governance? The project was awarded the 2024 doctoral thesis award by the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture and key findings were published in The New Bioethics. They were a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University's ReproSoc in 2022.
Their recent film The Wife of Them All combines science fiction animation with collaborations with (non)actors to document un/waged reproductive work across the cities of Barcelona, Helsinki and London. The film premiered at the 27th LesGaiCineMad Festival and travelled to the 69th International Oberhausen Short Film Festival with support from HAMACA moving image platform.
They completed the Independent Studies Program at MACBA, Barcelona, in 2012 and have since contributed to many queer and anticolonial archiving and memory projects and translation initiatives, including diásporas críticas, Canal and Criticaldías. They were a lecturer in New Media and Experimental Practices (UArtes, 2015-2017), and have given classes and workshops on poetic and artistic ways of knowing for adults and young people at many universities and independent arts and activist spaces.
Short Bio.