Performance Artists
EZR@EZR@ is a DJ, multimedia artist, and computer nerd working at the intersection of art and technology. Their set incorporates elements of various electronic music genres, cyberpunk media, internet culture, and livecode technology as they explore sonic technology as a form of vulnerability and as an extension of the self. This set serves as an invitation to entertain the possibility of digital utopia. The future is yours.Katherine Bahena-BenitezKatherine Bahena-Benitez is a bicoastal Multidisciplinary artist. Their work is experimental, poetic, infused with movement and carry’s a lens of activism. They’ve been featured in Vogue, Apostrophe’s Digital Magazine ‘De La Tierra’, TenTree and Museum Guild. They are a Miranda Family Fellow, a LORT Aspire Fellow, a member of the Maker’s Ensemble and of Matriarchy Theater. Katherine says, “con mucho amor y cariño, I do this for us.”
A.Kazal x Magali, A CultFolk singer-songwriter A.Kazal and electropop artist
Magali, A Cult team up to drag you by the ear through the eForest at night.
ZAIZAI (He/Him) is a Black Trans Jewish punk rapper, designer and model born and based in New York. With popular songs like “The Purge” ft. Big Water, he has amassed a following of almost fifty thousand on Tik Tok (@kxngpixie). ZAI’s handmade, bespoke gender affirming designer brand is set to launch this March, 2023. Keep up with all his work @kxngpixie on Instagram and Tik Tok, and “ZAI” on all streaming platforms.
Cass YaoI am a doppelganger that haunts me.
The crime tool used for existence is broken. My conspirator and I are caught in dream. The punishment for the sinner is the inability to acquire belief. To overwrite the epistemic prison I duplicate my egos into membranes. I look for the rope of all intensity and ecstasy dance, I spin to where the ocean no longer moans the past valley…
Tench.nologySometimes I grow things,
Sometimes I code things,
Sometimes I make things.
Installation Artists
tāoI research and explore the phenomenon of self-reference. I believe that no matter digital or biochemical, conscious experience can emerge from recursive self-similarity.John LePoreI’m a former digital hermit that is painfully aware of the toxicity and escapism in our digital world. We are approaching a technological singularity that can either solidify the cages we’ve built for ourselves or set us free. I want to make tech that is open source and aware of our nature; that we can wield with intent rather than be compulsively controlled by.
Grace Jung - “Subduction Zone”Grace Jung is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and educator devoted to collective healing through the process of world-building. She engages in the symbiotic interplay of diverse beings to co-create new worlds, collaborating with fungi, plants, scientists, architects, and engineers. The materiality of her work is born of a regenerative process that involves working with original biomaterials, mycelium, algae, and discarded objects to create new living forms. Her practice manifests in sculptural, installational, and experiential moments that bring forth the inherent interconnectivity that flows through all bodies. The parallel cultivation of relationships across scales raises questions of what it is to be alive and grow together.
Aiyo - “1491”In 1995, Mycelium Network™ was founded by Antonio Fignes, a scientist studying the medicinal effects of S.Commune (Split Gill Mushrooms) in indigenous regions in Mexico. Through the backing of global partners, Fignes created Split Gill Mushroom™ Farm, a processing facility that employed farmers to sort dead logs, harvest mushrooms, and process Teapop!™, ‘the world’s first cure for cancer in a can’.
The Department of Archival Memories, a division of Mycelium Network™, was created by little-known researchers and AI archivists, determined to use Split Gill Mushrooms to find a link between human memories and mycelial networks. Through experimentation, the researchers and AI archivists created 1491 by assembling bio-composite material, soil from New York State, and pieces of the American™ flag into a memory capsule, forming what they dubbed as “a living memory.”
1491 is currently undergoing its transformation process in the Mycelium Network™ processing facility.
Lauria Clarke - “Untitled Life Study”Distinguishing between the living and the non-living is a core, evolutionary function of the human brain. Though we make this intuitive distinction on a daily basis, a unified definition of “Life” eludes thinkers throughout history. Today, the line between the living and the non-living is increasingly difficult to locate. Long held characteristics of plant and animal life are no longer strictly synonymous with the living, leaving a diffused boundary where we once believed harder lines. Throughout discussions of aliveness, the idea of inner motion is a key thread, describing concepts ranging from vital fluids in the body to emergent consciousness. Many believe, “life’s appearance rests on an embodied exposure of inner motion.”
Facing this uncertainty, how should we judge the validity of our intuitive understanding of aliveness and our similarly intuitive categorization of the natural world? What merit should these distinctions hold when they are, now, easily wrong?
Pepi Ng - “Execution”I am a multi-disciplinary artist who is passionate about exploring big concepts through the intersection of design and technology.
My project aims to prompt users to critically examine the ways autonomous weapons we create are now being used against ourselves, and how we can prevent this slide to digital dehumanization.
Riniifish - “Mind Is A Galaxy”As an introvert with many emotions, dreams, and stories constantly spinning in her mind, creating art is the way through which she speaks most freely and eloquently. In her work, Riniifish portrays fantastical versions of otherworldly life, depicting parallel universes and extraterrestrial civilizations full of tiny, translucent creatures. She is best known for her ongoing series of ’bugs‘ who populate the ’M7 Planet‘, through which she explores themes of life and death, emotional struggles and burnout, and sometimes, just everyday life.
Over the last year Riniifish has worked with fashion brands including Pull&Bear, Adriana Hot Couture and JIU JIE. Her M7 Planet series has been exhibited in Berlin, Tokyo, New York City, Madrid, Dubai, and Singapore.
Julia Daser - “Flooded House”I am an artist, coder and tinkerer who loves to blur the borders between creativity, science and technology.
My project, Flooded House, will prompt you to take uncomfortable decisions and re-discover the real threats of climate change.
Niki Selken - “Ghost Machine”I’m a mixed-race, immersive designer and media artist. Much of my creative work has been in search of social change, through education and raising awareness around issues of environmentalism and social justice. However, unlike the common avenues of activist design, I use a canvas of reused objects, fantastical mythologies, and new media to explore these issues.
As with most, in 2020 the pandemic hit and everything changed, but unlike most, I was homebound and unable to walk due to a serious injury. During that time, I started creating landscapes I could not see while staying at home. The process was born out of missing the opportunity to travel, and I found myself scrolling through vintage travel photos online. Realizing that many of them were within the public domain, I started manipulating and animating the images using image and video editing software and code. I made dreamscapes or unattainable landscapes that combine photos of far off places and layered with impossible weather patterns, waving rainbows, and even shimmering hair.
Hong Hua - “Metamorphosis”For whose design is the design? Is humanity exclusive to humans? Where is the boundary between artificiality and nature? Hong (he/him) is an industrial designer and creative technologist, who often questions the intentions of practice. He dresses these issues by the mediums that cross hardware and software, physical and virtual.
Yixuan Liu - “External Spines”Yixuan Liu (刘懿萱) is a Visual Designer, XR Storyteller, and Creative Technologist based in New York. Her works focus on speculative society, technology ethics, and body senses.