Artist Talk: Digital Embodiments – 數位體現
Date: Saturday, December 9, 2023
Time: 6-7pm EST
Venue: PS122 Gallery, 150 First Avenue (entrance on 9th Street between First Ave. and Ave. A)
Zoom: https://ccny.zoom.us/j/82358871052?pwd=RVhnR1c5aVp2TTc5UWxaWGw4N0FQQT09
Meeting ID: 823 5887 1052 Passcode: 604326
Artists: lololol & eteam
Moderator: Alice, Nien-Pu Ko
Please join us for a talk with artists eteam and lololol on Saturday, December 9, at 18:00 EST, moderated by Alice, Nien-Pu Ko.
From experiencing through proxy bodies, shadowing a perfect motion, growing greater intelligences, to becoming one with technical objects, digital technologies are embodied experiences that not only transform the way we live but also shape our ideas of who we are. Despite the fast changing facades of latest and greatest tech products, at the heart of contemporary digital embodiment is our everyday attunement with the power of semi-conductors, the tiny chips in every technological object that influence how we perceive, connect, reason, experience and believe.
During the June 2021 Taiwan lockdown, eteam and lololol met in a Taipei park to ponder the role of our tech devices in our lives and their existence. Formerly, we were just users, relying on wireless phones to communicate, and these devices became part of our self-concept. We questioned if they could exist without us, urging us to pay attention and understand. In this artist talk eteam and lololol engage in a conversation with curator Alice Nien-pu Ko on the ideas of digital embodiments as related to their joint exhibition “Semi-Conducting Hand-Held Moons” currently on view at PS122 Gallery until Dec 17. Starting from the surface interactions of see, touch and gesture, we will delve into the “inner life” of tech devices and mutual learning to circle around the question: what are modes of connecting and relating to them?
Bios
Xia Lin & Sheryl Cheung
are a visual and performance artist duo from Taiwan lololol is a boundless laughter, an endless extension of lol (laugh out loud), an acronym that appears to be constructed by the building blocks of I-Ching and/or computer code. Founded by Xia Lin and Sheryl Cheung in 2013, the artist collective focuses on how emotions and body politics are informed by diverse technology cultures, with special interest in martial arts, materialist ontologies and Taoist-informed philosophies. “Future Tao ” is the group’s ongoing initiative to engage with Taoist mind and body practices as an alternative approach to technological exploration. lololol’s work, performances and collaborative projects have been shown at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (UK), Taipei Arts Festival (TW), Times Museum (CN), Vernacular Institute (MX), Flaneur Festival (DE), Liquid Architecture (ASTL) and Contemporary at Blue Star (USA) amongst others.
eteam is a two people collaboration (Franziska Lamprecht and Hajoe Moderegger) who use video, performance, installation and writing to instigate and articulate encounters at the edges of diverging cultural, technical and aesthetical universes. By being present, they trigger communication, collaborations and transformations between humans, nature, and technologies. They are drawn to those willing to experiment, cross genres and cultural boundaries, they forge proximity and make visible the interconnections we humans share with land, animals, plants, ghosts, deities and objects. eteam’s work is land- and process-based, often long term, situational and happens in places they don’t inhabit permanently. Practicing art is their way to pay close attention to the details, while trying to understand the whole. eteam’s narratives have screened internationally in video- and film festivals, they lectured in universities, presented in art galleries and museums and performed in the desert, on fields, in caves and on mountaintops, in ships, black box theaters and horse-drawn wagons.
They could not have done this without the generous support of Creative Capital and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Art in General, NYSCA, NYFA, Rhizome, CLUI, Taipei Artist Village, Eyebeam, Smack Mellon, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, the City College of New York, the Hong Kong Baptist University and the Fulbright Program, among many others. Their novel “Grabeland” was published with Nightboat Books in February 2020. In 2021 they received a Fulbright scholarship to conduct research in Taiwan.
Alice, Nien-pu Ko, who lives and works in New York, is a curator and writer on contemporary art, film, video, sound, and interdisciplinary projects. Her projects focused on how art creates a space of mediation re-evaluating different histories and contouring modes of perception through alternative aesthetic forms. At Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, she was the co-curator of the retrospectives Tony Oursler: Black Box (2021), Pan Austro-Nesian Arts Festival (2021), and the curator of Tomb of the Soul, Temple, Machine and the Self (2018) which was nominated for the 17th Taishin Arts Award, Taiwan. She was also involved in the curatorial team touring SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, organized by Mori Art Museum in collaboration with Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in 2019. She was a curator-in-residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York in 2022. Recently, she is the curator of the Brooklyn Rail’s Singing in Unison Part 8 Between Waves in 2023.
Previously, she worked with major art institutions and museums such as Taiwan National Art Foundation, Taipei; Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo; Bengal Foundation, Dhaka; Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism Architecture, Hong Kong; Hong-gah Museum, Taipei, among others. Her selected curatorial exhibitions include Flags, Transnational – Migrants and Outlaw Territories (Tokyo Wonder Site, 2016), Beyond the Borderline – Exiles from the Native Land (Howl Art Space, 2015), and Reverse Niche – Dialogue and Rebuilding at the City’s Edge (Hong-gah Museum, 2013).
Her recent writing includes catalogue and review on Au Sow Yee, Chen Chieh-Jen, Dumb Type, Ho Tze Nyen, Hilma af Klint, Shigeko Kubota, Jane Jin Kaisen, Lala Ruhk, Wang Hong Kai, Tony Oursler, Yin-Ju Chen, and etc. Her curatorial studies were presented at The 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars, ICAS, Amsterdam in 2019, and the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference, Seoul, Korea in 2017. She was the editor of the books – Tony Oursler: Black Box, Surviving on Time: Curatorial Report from Asia.