Online Tuesday 23 January 2024, 11am-12pm Price: FREE

Join Arts Technologies Curator, Eva Jäger, independent curator Iris Long, artist HE Zike and media scholar Kevin Ziyu LIU as they present Under the Cloud, a new publication compiling research gathered during their field study in the Guizhou province of Southwest China.

This event will be streamed live on @SerpentineUK’s Twitch and will include a screening of HE Zike’s short film, Random Access (pictured above).

In May 2023 a group of artists, curators, media theorists, and anthropologists travelled to Guizhou. The province is one of the eight national ‘big data hubs’ under the ‘Data in the East, Computing in the West program,’ the Chinese strategic approach to data that aims to leverage the distinct advantages of each region toward technological growth. The group, led by curator Iris Long and artist HE Zike, visited key sites* of computational infrastructure (the hardware, software, and networking components that collectively enable computers to run and process data) that have emerged in Guizhou province over the last decade. These explorations investigated the real-world implications of techno-industrial policy that increasingly aims to optimize data and computing capabilities to adopt artificial intelligence.

For Iris and Zike, the goal is to develop and test a fieldwork methodology for artists within infrastructural studies–a discipline that draws from technology, ethnography, and environmental studies. The week-long trip, documented in a new publication (in English and Chinese) published by Serpentine Arts Technologies, shares details from the trip including this fieldwork and written reflections by the participants. More information about the project can be found at temporalstack.com.

*Sites visited include Huawei Cloud Gui’an Data Center, Gui’an Supercomputing Center, Guizhou Provincial Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy and Data Processing, The Big Data Security Exhibition Centre, Guiyang Meteorological Bureau, Guiyang National Reference Climate Station, Key Laboratory of Information and Computing Science Guizhou Province, Guizhou Cloud Big Data Group, Big Data Expo Guyang, Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, Yunding Wind Farm of Power China Guizhou Engineering Co, LTD, Huawei Guizhou Cloud Development Innovation Center

Participants

CAO Fei, LIU Chuang, Kevin Ziyu LIU, Payne ZHU, SHI Qing, WANG Hongzhe, XU Haomin, YU Weiying, ZHOU Tao, ZHAO Xiaoxiao, Eva Jäger, XU Chuan, Tim ZUO and Gary Zhexi ZHANG.

Biographies

Iris Long is a writer and independent curator with a research focus on megastructures of science and technology in China, the psycho-geography of techno-science, and plural cosmologies. She iss a 2022-2023 Berggruen Fellow and a Swissnex Fellow. 

Kevin Ziyu LIU received his PhD in Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. His research focuses on media studies, infrastructure, and cultural politics in contemporary China. 

HE Zike is a media artist. By encompassing personal memories in her research and fieldwork, her practice illuminates the interplay of time, mundane lives and the technological environment. 

Curated and Produced by

Eva Jäger is Curator of Arts Technologies. She commissions artists working with advanced technologies and is a collaborator in teams designing novel approaches to, workflows for and philosophies of emerging tech. Eva is also Co-Investigator of the Creative AI Lab (Serpentine R&D Platform and King’s College London). 

Ruth Waters is a producer, curator and visual artist. She is currently Producer at Serpentine Arts Technologies and co-curator of moving image commissions at Shoreditch Arts Club with Tony Tremlett. She was previously Creative Producer of Outernet Arts commissioning immersive artworks for The Now Building, London

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