Hyphae: In Conversation with Lee Tzu Tung (SMACT ’22) and Yukiko Shikata

Are you interested in ecology, digital technology, open-source biz, flows of water and information between Taiwan, Australia & Japan? Or in becoming the owner of one milliliter of the South China Sea? Or some increasingly ridiculous struggles to build a solar-powered server for hyperdrive-distributed online journal? Join ACT Graduate Student Lee Tzu-Tung (SMACT ’22) for a conversation: Sunday, December 20 | 9pm EST (Boston) Monday, December 21 | 10am UTC +8 (Taipei) | 11am JST (Japan) Register here Hyphae presents a discussion between Lee Tzu Tung and Yukiko Shikata: on building alternative socio-technical frameworks through art, collective production, and the digital commons. As pandemic conditions enforce new, digital systems of sociality, how can we seize this opportunity to transform technological infrastructure towards modes of production that are generative, rather than extractive? Building on their recent work together as part of Forking PiraGene, Shikata and Lee discuss complementary themes in their work, ranging from free and open source software and decentralized protocols, questions of cultural identity and Indigenous sovereignty, and collective and decolonial methods of addressing ecological crisis. — LEE TZU TUNG is a conceptual artist whose practice combines academic research with political activism. Her/Zer recent works focus on how one can survive, manipulate, and regain autonomy through political identities, with a special focus on the hegemony of Chinese Sino-centrism, the trauma of modernity and current epistemological injustice. She/Ze surfs with performances, web-art, installations, fictional and experimental films and plays along the borders of contemporary art, academia, and politics. YUKIKO SHIKATA is a curator and critic based in Tokyo, with a research focus on borders and interrelations. She has curated exhibitions and projects at Canon ARTLAB (1990-2001), Mori Art Museum (2002-04) and NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] (2004-10), and independently. Recent works include SIAF (Sapporo International Art Festival) 2014 (Associate Curator), KENPOKU ART 2016 (Curator), AMIT (Director, 2014-). Currently, she is visiting professor at Tama Art University and Tokyo Zokei University, lecturer at Meiji University and IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences), and planning director of Tokyo Biennale 2020. HYPHAE is a journal on the peer-to-peer web, seeded from a solar-powered server in Kinjarling (Albany, Western Australia). The first edition presents the work of writers, artists, activists and technologists from Taiwan and Western Australia, seeking speculative approaches to witnessing and addressing environmental devastation. — ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project takes place online, and across multiple unceded Indigenous Lands. Hyphae acknowledges the Minang people of the Noongar nation as the custodians of the lands on which we work. We pay our respects to Indigenous elders, past, present and emerging. Asialink Arts made this happen. Funded by the Western Australian Government through the Department of Culture and the Arts. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Supported by the City of Melbourne COVID-19 Arts Grants.