conversas34

Antonia Hernández is a Montréal-based visual artist and PhD candidate in Communication at Concordia University. Her current research looks into a sexcam platform and explores from there work in the context of the platform economy. Both as a performative space and research device, she uses a dollhouse for enacting and learn about the role of habits and maintenance practices in the incorporation of new economic and technological infrastructures. It is, at the same time, an affective exploration of an speculated, yet inhabited, networked domesticity: the domesticity of the online self.

Rotterdam Art And Radio was initiated by Joshua Thies in 2016 as the audible element for a festival of art and music in the south of Rotterdam, The Netherlands. RAAR continues as a monthly narrowcast with focus on live performance of audible artworks by Rotterdam based artists. In collaboration with multiple venues RAAR maintains a nomadic, public presence in the city. Each episode of 3-4 hours features 3 artists and 1 amateur DJ mix. Episodes are occasionally thematic such as the Climate Change and Art show. Other times, RAAR is a free and open platform for artists to experiment with media they are not accustomed to. How the medium is approached is up to each individual and has included, sound experiments, noise, voice and storytelling, poetry reading, radio plays, music and a mix of everything audible. RAAR is loosely curated and hosted by Joshua Thies, MFA Piet Zwart Institute 2009, with occasional co-hosting support by Patricia Qi and Mihai Gui.

John Lee is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring drawing, dance, text-based art, and performance. Lee has been working on a series of works called “Bodygraphy,” in which he draws from his experience as a mover and transforms his body to blobs of ink or strokes of texts using simple costumes and video editing. Based on his exposure to various languages including his native Korean, short lessons in Chinese logograms, mandatory English, and recent move to Berlin, Lee is interested in loss in translation, opacity of language and alienation to assimilation. During Conversas Lee will talk about his work Arirang Half. The work is a transmedia piece including video and prints, exploring the idea of translation between text, image, and body movement. The original text is performed by ten thousand North Korean students in 2012 during the annual Arirang performance, also known as Mass Game in the West. Arirang is also a title for various regional Korean folk songs without clear origins, often speaking for the sentiment of "Han," a deep resentment.