Selia Marina Fischer

In her dissertation project, Selia Marina Fischer explores the performative and media-based representation of MerFolk as figures of difference. As embodiments and sites of negotiation for gender, race, class and age, these hybrid beings unsettle binary systems of order and bring moments of emancipation into debate. Fischer investigates these hybrid, transformative, and oppositional relations of identity, bringing current discourses into dialogue with the practice of scuba diving–which itself enables a unique terrestrial-aquatic experience of difference and adds another layer to the human fantasy of becoming a fish. Drawing on films, music videos, and audiovisual works in art and performance, she examines the historical and contemporary myth of the MerFolk in terms of its tentacular entanglements within aesthetic and political spheres, moving between the dry and the wet.

contact: selia.fischer@lmu.de