Eyebeam Exchange May 2024 at CP Projects Space, SVA (Day 1)

This spring, we are thrilled to present a series of conversations called Eyebeam Exchange, a time-honored program that we are revitalizing, hearkening back to the days of the Chelsea space offline-era of Eyebeam and now also launching online! We are pairing the ‘24 Democracy Machine Fellows with eminent technologists, artists, and activists; these exchanges will expand on the inquiries of Eyebeam’s current cohort and their projects, which they introduced to the Eyebeam community at March’s introductory event. The themes of this year’s Democracy Machine fellows reflect concerns and possibilities around the global use of technology in shaping a more livable and just world.

The third cohort of The Democracy Machine, our multi-year anti-disciplinary art & activism program shaped and led by artists, is two months into their six-month digital fellowship. In this short amount of time, the current fellows have already autonomously organized efforts and collaborations, focusing on building alternative infrastructures that counter the existing abusive tech whose uses perpetuate settler-colonialism and fuel genocides and crises worldwide.

We invite you to take part in Eyebeam Exchange showcasing the ongoing work of the 2024 artist fellows:

On Wednesday, May 22nd, at 6 PM EDT, brought to you in partnership with CP Projects Space at the MA Curatorial Practice Program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), Eyebeam will launch the panel series.

An e-mail RSVP confirmation must be shown at the door.

To RSVP to Day 2 (Wednesday, May 29th at 1 PM EDT) of the Eyebeam Exchange Series, which will be ONLINE-ONLY, RSVP here.

→ Moderator of 'The Makings of Alternative Infrastructures' Panel, is a designer turned educator and humanitarian technologist. She was involved in international development projects for the past twenty years, ever since her experience of surviving the Tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004 and organizing relief efforts from the ground. She has been teaching for almost two decades in different disciplines and to different age groups, from STEM and Robotics courses to K-12 students to Ideation & Prototyping, HCI, Physical Computing and Global Engineering classes to undergraduate and graduate students. Her design research practice focuses on applying participatory design methods, systems thinking and user-centered design towards the design and implementation of resilient networks, IoT devices, real-time monitoring systems and distributed infrastructure, to insure equitable access to life-sustaining resources. Benedetta is an Open Source advocate and is currently teaching and conducting research at NYU Tandon in the Integrated Design & Media Program (IDM).

→ Moderator of 'Archival Work as Countersurveillance' Panel, is an artist and creative leader whose work bridges education, visual storytelling, and community-based research. Ariana is a long-time member of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP), a data visualization and storytelling collective that reclaims technology as a means to embolden housing justice movements. She co-founded AEMP’s New York City Chapter in 2017. She has worked with The Center for Cultural Power, Cultural Engagement Lab, The International Center of Photography, Lower East Side Community Cultural Council, Youth Speaks, Urban Arts Partnership, and ProArts Gallery. Born and raised in San Francisco, she currently lives and organizes in Brooklyn, NY.

→ , featuring artists and , is a Bangkok-born Brooklyn-based collaborative artist practice focusing on research that examines and decoded past histories by creating, using code, algorithm, multimedia, and technology to experiment, explore, and define decolonized possibilities. อีเหละเขละขละ is a Thai word that means dispersedly, chaos, unorganized, all over, and non-direction to break free our practices from labeling. Asserting that “for us, tech = tool of expression” and “that we have to hack tech, the art of hacking is very human”; the collective is interested in subversive storytelling using non-dominance sound and visual archives, historical research decoding, and unlearning biases.

→ at Community Tech New York (CTNY), is an artist and educator who believes a classroom should be visceral, safe, and collaborative. At CTNY, Enriquez focuses most of his energy designing & refining Portable Network Kits (PNK) and its accompanying curriculum modules to demystify the basics of wireless networking, local servers, the internet, and solar battery power.

→ is a Los Angeles-based artist and organizer examining the political nature of technical infrastructure and the embodied connections between people, which are foundations of collective action. Through installation, poetry, performance, and world-building, Veeler exposes technologically mediated processes of individual and collective becoming. In 2023, Veeler founded the Virtual Access Lab as a non-profit research unit of New Art City, in collaboration with Gray Area. The Virtual Access Lab supports accessible digital culture through software, commissions, and digital preservation.

→ is a multidisciplinary technologist and creative based in New York City. He works at the intersection of counter-mapping, data visualization, investigative reporting, and oral history to challenge the boundaries of technology, making it more actionable to movement-based organizers and the public.

→ is made up of eight Iranian feminist artists and activists “invested in cultivating a transnational dialogue, particularly among the people of the Global South, and in solidarity with the uprising of the Iranian peoples, especially womxn, the LGBTQ+, and all marginalized communities.” The anonymous collective collects, labels, and chronicles the ongoing visual evidence of Iranian womxn’s embodied gestures of defiance shared on social media platforms.

Eyebeam builds on the extraordinary, foundational generosity of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Ford Foundation in bringing this innovative program to life.

The in-person gathering is possible through a partnership with CP Projects Space, MA Curatorial Practice Program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA).

Host or Publisher Eyebeam