Document:Q11986
From Rhizome Artbase
John Russell's SQRRL is a dynamic hypertext fiction speculating on a future in which medical advances such as “wasp-parasite technology” allow humans to inhabit the bodies of one or more animals as a way to save or prolong their lives.
Russell structures SQRRL along two trajectories, allowing the user to toggle between a narrative poem and a series of footnotes which include meditations on specific terms, along with links to a diverse selection of citations: introductory Christian FAQs, the Cyborg Manifesto, and banal reporting on grocery store masturbation, as well as an in-depth discussion of the theoretical work of Luce Irigiray and its legacy. Moving fluidly between contemporary theory and futuristic narrative, the reader of Russell's text finds that this cynical and beautiful vision of a future society, in which a person's consciousness may be distributed among seven lizards, has strong echoes of the present.