A bit, a prompt, how to create void on cyberspace

  • Artist Keynote
  • Cinema
  • Wednesday 21.05 — 10:30 - 11:45

In this discussion titled "A bit, a prompt," we will focus on the eponymous exhibition by artist aaajiao, held in 2024 at SETAREH Gallery in Berlin. The exhibition, spanning video, painting, and installation, explores the internet as a direct manifestation of computational power—how algorithmic mechanisms rooted in the attention economy and ideological tensions gradually alienate our behavior, turning everyday life into flickering, fragmented bits of information. Within this system, aaajiao seeks the void (gaps in the internet)—fluid spaces not yet fully occupied by systemic power, capable of soothing our wounds and dismantling the structures shaped by distraction and hatred.

aaajiao

Aaajiao (Xu Wenkai) is a media artist, blogger, activist, and programmer, born in 1984 in Xi’an,
China. Operating under the online alias "aaajiao," he is based in both Shanghai and Berlin. His
work critically examines the influence of digital technologies and internet culture on contemporary
society, often highlighting themes of data processing, censorship, and the dynamics of the online
world. Notable projects include Deep Simulator and Minority Algorithm, which explore the
intersections of technology and human experience. aaajiao's art has been showcased
internationally at institutions such as the Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Turin,
the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe.

Dahai Zhang

Dahai Zhang is a queer transnational culture critic working in the areas of critical theory, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, political aesthetics, and Sinophone studies. His current research focuses on East Asian modernity, Sinophone transnationalism, and contemporary Sinophone art. He also hosts a podcast titled State of Exception (例外状态).
Dahai holds a BA in Philosophy and Linguistics from Simon Fraser University in Canada and an MA in Cultural Studies from KU Leuven. He’s set to begin his PhD at the University of Antwerp in 2025.

Jiao Feng

Privacy Salon

FENG Jiao is a Ph.D. candidate at VUB, as well as an independent curator and researcher based between Belgium and China. Her curatorial work explores the politics of aesthetics, the potential of micro-histories, and the complex interplay between place, history, and poetic resistance. Currently, she is conducting a doctoral project titled “Big History, Small Histories – The Urgency to revisit Chinese Contemporary Art”(tbd) at VUB, alongside a survey-based study on artistic practices immersed in the techno-social landscape of the Pan-China region.

Ferre Vander Elst

PS

After achieving his Master in Architecture at Sint-Lucas Ghent, Ferre graduated from the Advanced Master of Research in Art & Design at Sint Lucas Antwerp. Here he has been developing research that investigates how new narratives about ‘surveillance’ are created through character-design within a (non-)fictional magical world. Ferre is fascinated by the impact of technology on society and the additional processing of data. He creates a fictional world where magical creatures help us re-imagine surveillance.