Jitr จิตร: extended gong ensemble
September 23, 2023
I moderated a discussion following Jitr จิตร: extended gong ensemble, an audiovisual live code and collaborative sound making performance by elekhlekha with guest performers easterner, and Luisa Mei Bressan, which took place at CultureHub.
Jitr จิตร extended gong ensemble is a performance rooted in Southeast Asian Indigenous cultural practices and tuning systems with a MIDI network of gongs that connects the performers. As in traditional gong ensembles, the audience is invited to join the performance by making sounds with found objects, creating a communal, hybrid sound.
View documentation of the performance.
Photo by Dan Gorelick
Model Minority and Model Majorities at SVA MA Curatorial Practice
November 7, 2019
I am a participant in Asia Art Archive in America’s annual Leadership Camp, a four-part closed seminar that addresses the complex subject of Asians in America, and the even more complex subject position of Asian-Americans, a term that encompasses diverse histories, languages, and ‘home’-country politics. This year's session, “Model Minority and Model Majorities,” is facilitated by Furen Dai and Christopher K Ho.
We were invited by SVA's masters program in curatorial practice to present a series of propositions responding to the strangeness of Asian and Asian-American lived experience in relation to historical meta-narratives and notions of “home”—country politics, history, and language. The event will take place on Thursday, November 7 at 7 pm and is free and open to the public.
Travels Through the Unreal
March 28, 2019
I will be moderating an artist panel on March 28, 2019 at Outpost Artist Resources which will take place as a part of Travels Through the Unreal, a video screening curated by Ann Haeyoung featuring artists Morehshin Allahyari, Frank Wang, Everest Pipkin, and Chen Wang.
The VR viewing and video screening will begin at 7PM. Afterward, Frank Wang, Everest Pipkin, and Chen Wang will join me for the panel at 8PM.
Black Stroke White Fill:
American Artist and Ryan Kuo
July 26, 2018
I organized Black Stroke White Fill, a conversation between American Artist and Ryan Kuo at bitforms gallery. The artists will discuss their complementary approaches to critiquing whiteness in the digital realm. Black Stroke White Fill will take place during The Pointer, a commissioned solo project by Kuo for the bitforms gallery office.
In The Pointer, Kuo utilizes “well intentioned” white interfaces such as Keynote, the macOS UI, and first-person game space—seamless, easy to accept at face value—and folds them back on themselves in order to reveal the whiteness that drives these platforms and social production. Kuo compares his approach to a “model minority” identity politic, in which the tools are accepted as a given and either successfully made one’s own, or enforce further assimilation into whiteness.
Artist’s recent body of work titled Black Gooey Universe examines the history of the computer interface and the establishment of whiteness as a “neutral” blank canvas for virtual innovation. Artist’s sculptural works consider an alternative Black screened device that has yet to materialize, and references an Afro-pessimistic logic for engaging with an interface that positions itself as inherently white.
Make Pictures: Casey Reas and
Jeffrey Alan Scudder in Conversation
March 24, 2018
I organized a conversation between artists Casey Reas and Jeffrey Alan Scudder at bitforms gallery. The artists will explore the intersecting histories of drawing, animation and coding systems. In addition to highlighting notable crossovers from computation, cinema, painting, and music, they'll be demonstrating a few of their own works from recent years, with ample time for discussion and questions from the audience.
This presentation is a part of Make Pictures, a collaborative pop-up exhibition that I facilitated between bitforms gallery and GIPHY Arts. Make Pictures features four web-based drawing and animation tools commissioned by GIPHY Arts: Sketch Machine by Casey Reas, Extinctr by Harm van den Dorpel, Eyemall by Withering Systems, and Boopy by Andrew Benson.
