TCOET: Queer theory, pornography, science fiction

This thesis examines the encounter between experimental film, queer theory, pornography and science fiction, through my practice-as-research films collectively known as The Church of Expanded Telepathy (TCOET). These films are Kokakolachickenwings (2015), Superhomosexuals (2016), Paradise Lost + David's Sling (2016), Me gustas tú (2016), Take Me To Church (2016), TCOET # 7 (2017) and Succulent humans # 3 (2019). I conceived TCOET and the term "expanded telepathy" on the occasion of the conference "From Humanism to Post and Transhumanism" held at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, 2015.The tendencies of the world to seek completion and order are expressed as a force of oppression in TCOET. This research begins with the proposition that the destabilisation of binary, gendered, logocentric thought in the enactments of queer theory requires new critical attention to the notion of telepathy, one which defines telepathy not as the transmission of information from one person to another without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction, but as a transformative relation between bodies.Following this direction, one of the main focuses of my research lies in arguing that TCOET audiovisual works have a refractive telepathic capacity to articulate forms of queer theory and politics that go beyond the oppressive heteronormal regime of the body enframed by individualist metaphysics. The central question about the efficacy of the films comprising TCOET as a platform for queer theory and politics required re-examining and reformulating the notion of expanded telepathy in relation to pornography and science fiction with the aim to fabricate a queer body and set in motion new forms of envisaging audiovisual practices.