In early 2020, Jess Myers and I participated in Safar, a performative conversation in public space. Hosted by art duo aghili/karlsson, the event involved a live streamed conversation between us as we moved from the center of Stockholm to the duo’s studio on the edge of the city. In reflection of our physical journey, the trip found the two of us conversing about margins, technology, architecture, blackness, and the spaces that we —and others like us— find ourselves constantly moving within and between.
The Robot Suit
This conversation is a follow-up to that one. This time, rather than taking a physical journey, Jess and I will set ourselves up on a Brooklyn to discuss themes of our work over tarot cards. The journey that our conversation takes will be tied to the major arcana of the deck. By staying in one place, we reference numerous things: the international moment created by Covid-19 that has forced so many people to stay in one place; my recent work The Future Is Here!, which focuses on machine learning labor carried out within domestic spaces; and the power-geography of the world that has shaped our own work, individually and collectively.
As we stay in one place, we will address questions of migration, coloniality, space, and what it means to work under conditions that are curtailed ―and made possible― by all of these.
Video
Project Credits / Acknowledgements
These video commissions are co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union in the framework of the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab.
Biography
Mimi Onuoha is a Nigerian-American artist and writer whose work interrogates the power dynamics and global hierarchies contained in acts of data collection. Her multimedia practice uses print, code, installation and video to call attention to how people are differently abstracted, represented, and missed by digital systems.
Onuoha has spoken and exhibited internationally. She has been in residence at Studio XX (CA), the Data & Society Research Institute (US), the Royal College of Art (UK), the Eyebeam Center for Arts & Technology (US), and the Arthouse Foundation (Nigeria, upcoming).
