This installation is an autoethnographic assemblage. It aims at radicalising the principles of autoethnography by performing – or bringing to life – a non-representational story of affective encounters, one which mobilises concepts and spatiotemporal experiences as playdough for visitors to interact with. “If that sounds too tentative, a little bit tortuous, or even rather portentous, then I am afraid that that is how it will have to be” (Thrift, 2008: 2).

This story is about a (former) PhD student’s desire to become an academic – a desire that becomes political as it bounces through neoliberal structures, feudal hierarchies, and migration-proof job precarity. It is life-affirming in that it unfolds through creative, anti-hierarchical ways of becoming ‘academic’, shaped by sensitive, minoritarian ‘protoacademic’ relations of power (Deleuze and Guattari, 1977; 1986).

We hope that the following story, combined with the 4D interactive design of the installation – the норка – will help us co-produce, with you, a freely accessible online music playlist that speaks the event of this installation, for everyone to enjoy. This will make the extended list of this installation’s guests potentially infinite – a Hilbert’s hotel of protoacademic desiring machines.