The Collected Girlstack

a user manual

Ciao kittens, 

Thank you for subscribing to GIRLSTACK. I started this last year with the intention of writing through girl-adjacent themes. Many of those ideas have instead landed in magazines, at symposiums, in grassy glades and on the big stage, and — most importantly — in your bibliographies, groupchats, and creative projects. So let’s begin again, together, with THE COLLECTED GIRLSTACK — a user’s manual for this minimum-viable construct¹ of subject-models and para-fictions that comprise The Girl (technological subject) and her Stack (parafictional environment). I hope you find it useful.

WHAT IS THE GIRL? 

The Girl is a Symbolic, Consumer, and Inhuman subject. She is not fixed to any one body or biological sex—instead, she is a set of social protocols and psychic operations that construct a legible subject, who happens to be the platform’s favored stylisation of the ‘human individual.’

Everyone is a Girl Online, WIRED (September 2023)

WHERE IS SHE?

The bare-bones ‘environmental model’ of the GIRLSTACK redraws how we see the transference between material and platform environments. The Girl operates across the ‘ultraprivate haven’ –  the spatial enclosure of the Symbolic-Consumer subject, drawing from Paul Preciado’s theorisation of Playboy mansion & bachelor pads – and ‘cybergothic environment’ – the classic cinematic / literary trope, where you are trapped in a closed set that looks & speaks back. Let’s get into it… 

GIRLSTACK on New Models (November 2023)

GIRLSTACK, Bodystack at London College of Fashion (October 2023)

HOW DOES SHE OPERATE?

As a Symbolic-Consumer subject, the Girl is a perfected tool of marketing and propaganda. Leveraging her Inhuman dimensions — the tendency to swarm, charm, maximize attraction and evade capture by apex predators (as in, other humans) — could inform counter-operations: moving discourse, representation or the relationship between subjectivity & representation beyond the human dailiness of cry, kill, buy. These pieces are case studies or narrower explorations into how the Girl is already at work in our world — underscoring how this ‘technology of subjectivity’ is, like any technology, politically ambivalent, and proposing imperfectly speculative alternatives. 

PREY MODE is a thought-experiment about using tactical passivity and total surrender to get what you want. One component of the (evolved) Girl is her aversion to competition — think of the clique as herd or swarm. How do you navigate the world if you are already on the underside of power — using all of your cunning, and zero brute force? 

Why are girls pretending to be cute animals online?, DAZED (November 2023) 

Prey Mode: Why predator vs prey discourse is everywhere online, Logged On (December 2023)

PREY MODE, Bodystacked at London College of Fashion (March 2024) 

In THE GORE LAYER, I take a closer look at how the Symbolic-Consumer Girl plays us all across user-generated war-streams, and use the horror trope of the Final Girl to propose an alternative deployment of the Girl inside the extreme exposures of ultraviolence. 

The Gore Layer, Spike (July 2024)  

GIRLRAGE with Ana Teixeira Pinto, Tropez (July 2024)

Similarly, SHE’S EVIL picks up the girly practice of DIY subliminal messaging to think about how we manipulate political realities with delusion and para-fiction. I collaborated with kawayoku queen Noura Tafeche in a performance for Transmediale 2024 — I guess the brainwashing worked, since everyone fell in love with us en masse. 

She’s evil, most definitely subliminal, ZORA (December 2023) 

SHE’S EVIL, Transmediale (February 2024)

WHY DO WE NEED HER? 

From my POV, any successful counter-operations require strategic intention… I often use the metaphor of a ‘mecha’ to talk about how we can climb into and pilot this already-existing subject that has the unique privilege of being greater than us all, yet thoroughly downplayed and underestimated. Girltheory originator Bogna Konior, in her Dark Forest Theory of Intelligence, describes how a true superintelligence wouldn’t declare itself — it would conceal itself, proliferating through charm, attraction, and cuteness. That idea that is maxxed out, in parallel, by genius cuties Amy Ireland & Maya Kronic in Cute Accelerationism. The GIRLSTACK project continues to track these supercute mutations to see how they interface with power, consumption and desire… She will necessarily evolve until she is unrecognizable. More soon. 

WHAT DOES SHE SOUND LIKE? 

HGE Summer / Spring / Winter / Autumn & Summer again (forever). 

i just wanna party with u, 

xoxo

alex

1. girlstack renders by Siir Bicer <3