Rebecca Close makes animation films, installations, writes essays, experimental texts, creative coding projects and poetry that weave together a digital arts practice with personal and collective narration to reclaim
‘social reproduction’ as a site of creativity and possibility.
Their work explores the role of digital/networked/computational cultures in shaping changing perceptions of family, households, sex-gender and sexuality norms, healthcare and borders.
They also focus on how identity categories and population concerns are enacted in the scientific study of reproductive biology, addressing the increasing participation of
financial actors and market forces in making reproductive knowledge.
They are currently based between Institut d'Història de la Ciència (UAB, Barcelona) and the School of Applied Social Studies (UCC, Cork) working
on Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project on the use of animation across bioscience and contemporary art.
They are the author of two poetry collections: Valid, Virtual, Vegetable Reality (selected by Anthony V. Capildeo to win the 2017 Melita Hume Prize) and Réplica (Canal, 2022) and edit Them, All Magazine for poetry and Net/Software/Code art.
Their PhD research on The Fixed Capital of Fertility situated assisted reproduction software (websites and algorithms) in a history of reproductive struggle in Europe/U.S since the 1970s. The project was awarded the 2024 Dissertation award by the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture and key findings were published in The New Bioethics and The Journal of Gender Studies. They were a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University's ReproSoc in 2022.
A recent film The Wife of Them All combining science fiction animation with collaborations with (non)actors premiered at the 27th LesGaiCineMad Festival and travelled to the 69th International Oberhausen Short Film Festival with support from HAMACA moving image platform.
Training includes at the Arts Institute Bournemouth (Diploma in Art & Design); a first class BA degree in Philosophy (University of Manchester) and participating in the Programa de Estudios Independientes (PEI) at MACBA Museum, Barcelona. They are a co-founder of the Barcelona-based collective research, performance, curatorial, new media arts, archiving and translation project Criticaldías. They were a lecturer in New Media and Experimental Practices (Universidad de las Artes Ecuador, 2015-2017), and have given short courses, 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.