Across Access Autonomy: Re-thinking Hybrid CultureAcross Access Autonomy: Re-thinking Hybrid Culture

In a post-pandemic setting, centralised and commercial platforms and providers that have taken over the “online” lives of cultural institutions, and often offering limited options for access, inclusivity and participation. During this evening, we will think together how might we work through and with free and open-source tools before, during, and after an event - stepping away from speculative technologies and into realising digital culture in alternative ways. In recognising that platforms also become epistemic and infrastructural institutions affecting cultural production, we will question what other hybridity is possible, highlighting past, existing and potential avenues.

The event will feature contributions from Klasien van de Zandschulp and Minnie Bates from affect lab and Riad Salameh from Salwa, in a setting that counters audience/speaker spaces but can be seen as a knowledge sharing session. Following the topic, this event is hybrid — you can attend physically (limited space) or online. We will be purposefully testing out what works/what doesn’t about these formats, and blur differences between IRL and URL.

Speakers

Klasien van de Zandschulp

Klasien van de Zandschulp is an Amsterdam-based interactive artist and creative director at studio affect lab: an award-winning research practice and creative studio. In collaboration with an international artistic network, affect lab uses design research, experimental fieldwork, and immersive storytelling to inspire a more inclusive future. affect lab is run by dr. Natalie Dixon and Klasien van de Zandschulp. Together with The Hmm and MU Hybrid Art House they are currently designing the Toolkit for the Inbetween: a how-to knowledge base offering tools, frameworks, and inspiration for designing a succesful hybrid experience where online and on-site audiences come together. Klasien created a hybrid food installation and a cooking show called 'EAT TECH KITCHEN' (in collaboration with Emilie Baltz, winner IDFA Immersive Non-Fiction award), the immersive performance on intimate neighbourhood surveillance ‘Good Neighbours’ (by affect lab, winner Dutch Design Award and nominated for the Gouden Kalf Digital Culture at the Nederlands Filmfestival) and the hybrid Metaverse Cha-Cha-Cha dance party together with Babusi Nyoni and the Toolkit for the Inbetween.

Minnie Bates

Minnie is a design researcher at affect lab. With an academic background in Architecture and Urban Planning (BA) and Urban Studies (MSc), Minnie is interested in translating important social debates into accessible information/experiences for diverse audiences. Equally, she is concerned with how experimental fieldwork and storytelling can be used to centre lived experience, amplify marginalised voices and add greater nuance to public debate. As part of affect lab, Minnie is currently researching visitors’ experiences of experimental hybrid events as part of ‘the Toolkit for the Inbetween’ - a project by affect lab, the Hmm and MU Hybrid Art House. She is also designing an on-site audio tour exploring the impacts of flash delivery on neighbourhoods, as a part of the project ‘A City Eating Itself (in under 10 minutes).

Riad Salameh

Riad Salameh (Lebanon, 1995) is a researcher and art practitioner with a graphic design, art mediation and media arts cultures background. His work often follows a praxis method that uses micro-transformations as to respond to the urgency of collective socio-economic transformations. Looking into the ownership of bodies in cyberspaces, investigating internet capital and physiological needs of the everyday, he critically investigates economies and its interlink to biopower. His interests relate to the abstraction of the physical and digital self through performance, web-navigation, irony, humor, migration and intimacy. His method of working and researching is often ethnographic and it consists of meetings, walks, culinary performances and conversations (both online and offline) that are often transformed into an online database that documents the creative process through poetics and digital storytelling. It is important that his work evolves around creating safe, inclusive spaces that invite many people into art and design settings and giving them accessibility to learn and explore from it.

Please note that there is limited capacity to join this event live from the Nieuwe Instituut.