The workshop Investigative Tactics to Dismantle Supremacist Cuteness takes inspiration from The Kawayoku Inception, a project delving into the political-artistic value of cuteness and the permanent status of performativity and hypersexualization on social media, as agents of a growing trend of aestheticization of violence.

The project aims to shape under new taxonomies contemporary digital evanescence, visual reformulation of violence, unconventional recruiting strategies and militarized entertainment. Areas of research explore Israeli and US military propaganda and recruiting strategies translated into dance choreographies and challenges, web alt-right incel imaginary intertwined with cute manga fan-art and gaming and 2nd Amendment, pro-gun, war enthusiasts or armies employing anime and kawaii aesthetics.

Out of this research, accomplished over three years on popular social media and remote online micro communities, an ongoing archive was built to catalogue nearly 30.000 files (screenshots, memes, posts, videos, etc) with a “geographic map” of digital platforms where the phenomenon proliferates. The workshop aims to provide a strategic toolbox to investigate and analyse fringe internet communities that are involved, in different ways and to different extents, in the production and reproduction of online violence.