The ElectroPoetics
Enlivening Decay, 2023
Video and Audio
The project incorporates AI assemblages and online archival data as a digital substrate for speculative mattering. The animated work interweaves the historical events of Gertrude Street, highlighting its large-scale demolition or “slum clearance” in the post-war period, with a Chan(Zen) ethico-aesthetic practice that resonates and becomes with the strange and impure, orchestrating the lingering shades of material memories and transformative events at Gertrude. The Ode to Decay attunes to promiscuous and pluralistic becoming, the cycles of emergence and disappearance, and decaying matter's potential as sites of re-emergence. The project is The Electropoetics’ continuous experiments with AI and algorithms as dynamic architectures (as an alternative to AI as control technology or corporate magic tools), exploring algorithmic assemblage’s potential for exploring unexpected mattering and untold stories as praxis of care
GSPF Location: 188/196 Gertrude St, Fitzroy (Plus Fitness 24/7)
6PM - 12AM
Artist Bio
Bixiao Zhang (Frankie) is a digital artist and Ph.D. candidate at RMIT University living in Naarm. Her practice-led research, a fluid entity termed “The ElectroPoetics,” proposes a performative approach to digital media and algorithmic architecture driven by the intersections of Chinese Shanshui(mountain-water) Thought, feminist eco-poetics, and electro-dynamism. Her practice of "performative Shan-shui" situates dynamic digital substrates for transversal modes of engagement, and co-current mattering, an approach that accentuates tacit resonance as primordial modes of care. Bixiao won the 2021 Dean’s Award for her research project; Her latest projects include an artist residency at the Centre for Projection Art (Australia), a research residency at Post Humanist Art Network (San Francisco), and exhibitions at Bunjil Place, Footscray Community Arts, and Blindside Gallery (Australia).