Everything but the Silicon: Art, Tech, and Expanded Ecology

For this Spike event at Soho House, Alice Yuan Zhang talked with Adina Glickstein about art’s role in adopting a more ecologically attuned – and maybe even life-affirming – approach to technology.

What are technological grief rituals, and why do we need them? Is social media destroying the planet? And how can we reframe our relationships with our devices to devise a shift in the power structures of the networked world? From planting seeds to pirate radio; mesh networks to meditation, Zhang explored how “intergenerational technologies” can cultivate more hopeful, resilient, and embodied futures.

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Alice Yuan Zhang 张元 (* Dalian, China) is a first-generation Chinese-American media artist, researcher, and cultural organizer. Her transdisciplinary practice operates on cyclical time, bringing technology down to earth by devising collective experiments in ancestral remembering, interspecies pedagogy, and networked solidarity.