Playlist
Felt Notes
As another semester and year come to a close, I am writing this letter as a note of thanks to all the folx who enriched the Just Futures Co-lab with their questions, research creations, organizing experiences, and emotional reflexivities in community. My heart is also full with gratitude for the people I met off campus in and beyond Bengaluru; individuals who offered an earnest ear to my translations of queer- and trans-feminist digital humanities (DH) work—and in whose care, I could feel the research and pedagogy of the lab expanding and enacting the meaning of collectivising for justice.
Thank you dears for trusting this space with your bodies and voice and for furthering my resolve to continue to make space for our bodies and voice into the new year and beyond. In your distinct and varied roles as student members, academic colleagues, research collaborators, lab visitors, friends, serendipitous connections, and mentors, you made the year 2024 deeply meaningful for me:
Ammel Sharon, Anjali JR, Anjali Naik, anu, Ayra, Bindu Menon, Divya Varigonda (Bavisha), Don Hasar, eyeshaan, Gayatri Shanbhag, Hiranmayi V, Indira Pathak, Indu Antony, Iz Paehr, Jayna Kothari, Jasmeen Patheja, Julia Wintner, Kim Munro, Krishnapriya, Margie Medlin, Maya Sharma, Narendra R, Namitha Moses, Navya S, Nil, Pooja Ugrani, Ramona Dias, Ruhani Chatterjee, Siddharth Narrain, Shambhavi Patil, Shinjini Asthana, Sowmya C, Susan Potter, Tatjana Schneider, Tash, Tanu, T. Jayashree, Urja Shah, Vaishali Mani, Vani Parmar, Vepa, Yajnaseni.
But as I write this letter, I want to also acknowledge a sense of challenge and weight I have felt all throughout this time (and in years past) about what it means to teach, learn, and research in and with the digital when so many of us are experiencing the effects of long COVID; witnessing settler colonial and genocidal atrocities ongoingly; enduring (and even exacerbating) climate emergencies; and surviving each of their entanglements with longstanding racist, capitalist, queerphobic, transphobic, ableist, casteist, and classist violences? Whilst I structure my classrooms around these questions to bear upon students’ learning the responsibilities and accountabilities we carry with us as artists and academics, this year I was able to also bring into these spaces a set of my own writings (here and here) to invite wider discussions on what it means to practice anti-colonial digital critiques, intervene epistemologically, and construct intimate alternatives with citational joy.
Today feels sombre—and yet, I want to hold within my heart something joyous: a selection of citations and annotations of songs, constituting a playlist that amplifies the orientation of DH research connected to born-digital queer-trans archiving practices. For those of you interested in reading these annotations, included below is a downloadable poster I created in the context of this semester’s transdisciplinary research, and where each lab member—anu, eyeshaan, Krishnapriya, Namitha, Ruhani, Shinjini, and yours truly—offers an analytical-embodied description of what it means to listen for queer-trans breathing in digital, online, and analog spaces all at once.
View or download the playlist poster (A1 size, PDF) and see below the playlist overview:
- anu -
Artist: Bshaa; Gana Vimala; Revaa // Song: “Manithakaari Sevvi” (Manithakaari Sevvi, 2024) // Writer: Bshaa; Kaniska; Revaa
- kush -
Artist: Janelle Monáe Robinson (featuring Brian Wilson) // Song: “Dirty Computer” (Dirty Computer, 2018) // Writer: Janelle Monáe Robinson and Nathaniel Irvin III
- eyeshaan -
Artist: Ethel Cain a.k.a Hayden Silas Anhedönia // Song: “Strangers” (Preacher’s Daughter, 2022) // Writer: Ethel Cain
- krishnapriya -
Artist: Shashank Arora and Mousumi Datta // Song: “Bikhre” (from the film Moothon, 2019) // Writer: Shashank Arora
- namitha -
Artist: Bijibal (Composer) and Sooraj Santhosh (Singer) // Song: “Pularaan Neram” (from the movie Android Kunjappan Version 5.25, 2019) // Writer: Bijibal (Composer), B K Harinarayanan (Lyricist)
- ruhani -
Artist: Nemo (CHE) // Song: “The Code” (The Code, 2024) //Writer: Linda Dale, Benji Alasu, NYLAN & Nemo (CHE)
- shinjini -
Artist: Kelly Clarkson // Song: “People Like Us” (Greatest Hits – Chapter One, 2012) // Writer: Kelly Clarkson, Blair Daly, Meghan Kabir
About
Felt Notes are monthly dispatches about the work of the Just Futures Co-lab, and the co-labouring worlds of research and teaching in art, design, and the digital humanities that it scaffolds, furthers, and amplifies. The letter writing translates the ever so negotiated nature of this space at Srishti Manipal Institute and the discourse and scholarship on equity and justice I produce with students and wider academic and non-academic community members through critical pedagogy; archival and database constructions; interactive digital storytelling; and inquiries into queer-feminist media technologies and infrastructures.
I hope reading this letter and its upcoming segments are a meaningful experience for you. If you aren’t subscribed yet, you may do so here. If you are already subscribed, I would love for you to share the link with friends and trusted networks as we make sense of our relationships to technology as well as our relationships to each other via technology. If you would like to write or co-write a letter in the future or share any announcements, please feel free to get in touch with me, and whilst you’re here, please also check out the Felt Notes Archive.
with love, light, and justice wishes for 2025,
Kush Patel