Our species has always taken the material world for granted, depending on it for safety, sustenance, and meaning. Just as climate crisis unravels this relationship, we find ourselves in a digital zeitgeist, increasingly inhabiting ‘material-less’, representational environments. In this ASSEMBLY, we juxtaposed the two phenomena, using accessible digital reality tools to recreate, distort, eliminate, or replace various ‘material’ from our daily lives. Along the way, we discussed their value and reflected on our current and potential future relationship to them, with the intention to clarify what we really need in order to lead sustainable, meaningful lives.

Organized by Alice Yuan Zhang | aliceyuanzhang.com | intrinsicolor@gmail.com

Documentation / Resources

Group exhibition: Screen St.: Our Habit@t of the Now

Welcome to Screen St., our digital home in a time of physical separateness and the only material reality we share. As we experience the societal currents of both a pandemic and social unrest from the constraints of individual domestic spaces and neighborhoods across urban California, Screen St. coincides as an honest archive. Objects anchor locale, senses, hopes, and habit, weaving for its inhabitants a safe haven of strange familiarity.

Consult the group’s collective research in this Miro board (with archival help from Zeph Swart)

Group members

Alice Yuan Zhang, Elenie Chung, Kate Ladenheim, Laura Stinger, Sara Suárez, Zeph Swart, Terence Brasch, Beth Fiedorek, Alex Kaye, Helena Ohman and Huntress Janos.

Guest speakers

Lee Tusman, Paula Strunden, Doreen Rios (consult the Miro board for more info about them)

Microgrant

The Digital Matterealities ASSEMBLY group used their microgrant ($225) to pay honorariums for guest speakers and the organizer.