EcoTechnics Improvised: Activating Politics in Global Media Art

 

Departing from philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s revisionist notion of “EcoTechnics,” we will consider how Asian global media artists improvise with technology to counter dominant systems of surveillance and techno-sovereignty.  How might artistic experimentation with interactive technologies confront audiences to reflect on creative alternatives to the grand challenges of the moment --- from migration and global warming to transmedia and virtual warfare?

 

 

Timothy Murray is Professor of Comparative Literature and Literatures in English at Cornell University. He is curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art and Curator of the 2018, 2020, and 2022 Cornell Biennials. His recent books include Technics Improvised: Activating Touch in Media Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), Medium Philosophicum: para un pensamiento tecnológico del arte (Universidad de Murcia/ CENDEAC, 2022), Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), Xu Bing’s Background Stories (Mandarin), co-edited with Yang Shin-Yi (Beijing: Life Bookstore Publishing, 2016).

 

 

Wang Yung-Lin is a Phd Candidate in the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto

 

Jacob Zhicheng Zhang  is a PhD Student in the Department of Art History, University of Toronto

 

Elizabeth Wijaya (Moderator) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Studies and in the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto. She is the Director of the Southeas Asia Seminar Series and the Interim-Director of the Dr David Chu Speaker Series, Asian Institute. Wijaya works at the intersection of cinema, philosophy, and area studies. She is especially interested in the material and symbolic entanglements between East Asia and Southeast Asia cinema. Her work emphasizes a multimethodological approach, which is attentive to media forms, ethnographic detail, material realities, archival practices, international networks, and interdisciplinary modes of theorization. She received her PhD from the Department of Comparative Literature at Cornell University, where she was affiliated with the East and Southeast Asian  Programs.