#RetroColectiva
Gallery QI exhibition opening
Thursday, April 28, 2022
Host: Ricardo Dominguez
Time: 5 p.m.-8 p.m. PST

Opening Night Agenda

• 5 p.m. Calit2 Auditorium Presentations with Ricardo Dominguez, Amy Sara Carroll, Doreen Rios and  Brett Stalbaum
• 6 p.m. Panel Discussion and Q&A
• 7 p.m. Courtyard Reception and Gallery QI open

Gallery QI events are free and open to the public. RSVPs requested to galleryqi@ucsd.edu

The opening event will include a live stream option, found here, as well as a virtual webcam in the gallery.

An important note: The Gallery QI adheres to current UC San Diego guidelines regarding COVID-19 and public safety. Complete guidelines are available on the Return to Learn website.

• Students, staff, faculty, and UC Affiliates must show their daily symptom screener and must have green thumb to attend.
• Non-affiliate attendees are encouraged to test within 24 hours of the event.

#RetroColectiva will be on display Thursday, April 28 through Friday, June 3, 2022 at the Gallery QI.

Gallery QI

First Floor, Atkinson Hall
9500 Gillman Drive
University of California San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093

Gallery Hours

April 28-June 3, 2022
12 p.m.-5 p.m. PST, Monday-Friday
https://galleryqi.ucsd.edu

Curator Statement

All machines are time travel machines.

The current social condition exists in a liquid state. The markers of stability of past centuries have fallen into the black hole of scepticism, dissolving the situated identifcation of subject or object. Meaning flows simultaneously through a process of proliferation and condensation, while slipping into the contradictions of apocalypse and utopia.

The place of power - and that of resistance - rests in an ambiguous, borderless zone. How could it be otherwise when power flows in the transition between nomadic dynamics and sedentary structures, between hypervelocity and hyperinertia?

The last decades have been characterised by the imminent digitalisation (and instrumentalisation) of life. And it is precisely in this virtual architecture that a new geography of power relations has been created: people reduced to data, hyper-surveillance on a global scale, minds fused into a screen reality and authoritarianism emerging from the cracks of fake news. Digital media are simultaneously:

social devices + pervasive communication tools + strategic infrastructure + mediators of behavioural conditioning.

However, this is also where a space has opened up for resistance guided by transversal thinking that does/thinks/acts with others.

I first heard about tactical media around 2015 in Monoskop. And, later on, I remember reading about it while browsing Rhizome's Net Art Anthology and, until then, the idea that it was possible to merge art with activism, the internet, poetry, performance and hacking in one space had never crossed my mind. As I made my way through the subject I discovered the work of Electronic Disturbance Theater and, with it, the work of Ricardo Domínguez.

Domínguez's body of work, besides being housed in diverse spaces of reality, is a continuous back and forth between:

body / collectivity                poetry / code

inside the screen / outside the screen             useful art / non-utilitarian art

on-street demonstrations / sit-ins                    protest / performance

This curatorial exercise explores the in-between spaces of these layers to connect them to their historical and aesthetic context while borrowing Monica Mayer's idea of the retro-collective gesture, connecting the nodes back to a situated practice, always from within radical collectiveness. Here we invoke Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater, The Thing, *particle group*, b.a.n.g.lab, Fakeshop, among (many) others to trace various points of departure.

By simultaneously inhabiting the internet and the space away from the keyboard, this exhibition is a timeline, a path that forks innumerable times, an expedition to the ruins of various websites, an open letter to the new generations of internet users, and a navigable desktop for this network that is all of us.

Curator Bio

Doreen A. Ríos (Mexico, 1992) is an independent curator and researcher. Her work focuses on digital art, post-digital practices and new materialities. Founder and director of [ANTI]MATERIA, an online platform dedicated to the research and exhibition of art produced through digital media. She was chief curator of the Centre for Digital Culture from 2019 to 2021. Doreen graduated with a Masters in Contemporary Curating from Winchester School of Arts, specialising in digital cultures, and with a degree in Architecture from the Tec de Monterrey. Currently she is developing a collective research project for the British Council Collection, is part of the international selectors committee for Lumen Art Prize, does experimental research at Unidad de Conciencias Colectivas Terrestres and teaches at CENTRO and SAE Institute.

Doreen A. Ríos (México, 1992) es curadora e investigadora independiente. Su trabajo se centra en el arte digital, las prácticas postdigitales y las nuevas materialidades. Fundadora y directora de [ANTI]MATERIA, una plataforma online dedicada a la investigación y exposición de arte producido a través de medios digitales. Fue curadora en jefe del Centro de Cultura Digital de 2019 a 2021.
Doreen es egresada de la Maestría en Curaduría Contemporánea por Winchester School of Arts, con especialidad en culturas digitales, y licenciada en Arquitectura por el Tec de Monterrey.
Actualmente desarrolla un proyecto de investigación colectiva para la colección del British Council, forma parte del comité internacional de seleccionadores del Lumen Art Prize, realiza investigación experimental en la Unidad de Conciencias Colectivas Terrestres e imparte clases en CENTRO y SAE Institute.