Spooky Action at a Distance
Stephanie Deumer

Spooky Action at a Distance is a digital film exploring the objectification of women by means of their disembodiment. The video links AI assistants that personify female identities (such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa) to a history of entertainment, labor, mythology, and technology that has consistently and progressively oppressed women through the dissolution of their bodies. By incorporating a wide range of found footage, from historical films, to magic tricks and smart technology commercials, the imagery creates a web of insight into misogynist fantasies of the eradication of women. 



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Stephanie Deumer is a visual artist currently based in Los Angeles, California. Connecting seemingly dissimilar content into a web of insight, her installations uncover the ways subjects are constituted through and by language, media, and technology. More particularly, she explores how scientific studies and technological developments are entwined with social reproduction and the oppression of women. Deumer completed a BA at the University of Guelph in Canada and an MFA at California Institute of the Arts. She was a fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York and had been awarded grants from the California Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Prospect Art, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, among others. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Washington, Seattle, where she teaches digital art and new media.



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