THE WET NET writing* room
workshop by Alice Yuan Zhang
find.select.transform
About the event
This workshop explores networked connectivity from an aquatic vantage point. Inspired by water’s own potentiality as a distortive and restorative medium, participants are invited to construct a speculative network together. We will introduce basic definitions of current-day networking, to be unpacked and reconsidered in light of the socioecological. Our creative process will take an expansive approach to collective writing, involving semiotic and somatic dimensions. Join us in taking the technological imagination for a distant swim...
Artist
Alice Yuan Zhang is a Chinese-American media artist. Her practice traces the relationship between technology and ecology, and how this constitutes humanness across time and space. Her work takes form across mixed reality, browser-based, and physical installation, addressing themes of somatics, memory, migration, networks, infrastructures and materialism. Her research unfolds into public engagement through talks, performances, gatherings, and writing.
Alice co-founded virtual care lab and taught Solidarity Infrastructures at the School for Poetic Computation. She has presented works and lectures through institutions including Gray Area, Oyoun, Transmediale, Goethe-Institute, Trust, NAVEL, The Music Center, and The New Institute. Her research has been supported by CultureHub, Processing Foundation, and 0x Salon, and her writing has been published by Outland, re:arc Institute, Are.na, The Digital Review, and Eohippus Labs.
Event Series
The exhibition Alt Nets is part of the project find.select.transform – Resilient Networks in a Wounded World, which responds to the pressing social, ecological, and economic challenges of our time. It employs artistic positions to critically examine how current technological developments and organizational practices can contribute to a sustainable transformation of our society.
The project aims to highlight alternative strategies, aesthetic positions, and networks that challenge the conventional understanding of growth. In doing so, it emphasizes the role of art in narrating such developments and seeks ways to address power imbalances and extractivism.
The focus will be on artistic positions regarding the climate catastrophe and community networks that promote democratic participation and equality.
The schedule for 2024 includes the symposium in June and September, the presentation of telepresent artists and a live streaming event in October as well as the exhibition and accompanying programs from September to October. The variety of formats promotes interdisciplinarity and multiperspectivity.
Partners
The realization of exhibition is made possible by funds from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
