The panel discussion initiated by Hang Li, our Curatorial Writing Fellow at Chisenhale Gallery explores the ways in which technological optimism, power and sovereignty are reproduced on transnational scales. Hang will be joined by communication and media researcher Jing Zeng, sociology and public policy researcher Canhui Liu, writer and curator Su Wei, and curator and scholar Joni Zhu.

The discussion will analyse the construction and exchange of technology between China and other countries whereby technology as social and cultural phenomena will be examined. Moreover, the panellists will expand on ideas of labour organisation, ideologies and the imaginations of power, amongst others, contributing to the maintenance and transformation of nationalism, financialisation, and governance.

This is the second event in a series of online programming for Hang's Fellowship project 'Remote Affinity: Working Together From a Distance' and will precede her final project outcome in November 2021.

The event will take place online, via Zoom.

To book tickets, please click here.

Canhui Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. With interdisciplinary training in Sociology and Public Policy, his research seeks to make a contribution to understanding the social roots and mechanisms of contemporary technicism in policymaking.

Su Wei is an art writer and curator based in Beijing. His recent work focuses on re-depicting and deepening the history of Chinese contemporary art, exploring the roots of its legitimacy and rupture. In 2014, Wei was awarded first place at the first International Awards for Art Criticism. Between 2017 and 2021 he was the Senior Curator of Inside-Out Museum Beijing.

Dr. Jing Zeng is a senior research and teaching associate at the Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Switzerland. She is currently co-leading two international projects that research online conspiracies and AI imaginaries funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Joni Zhu is a curator and scholar whose work explores visual cultures considering socio-techno-economic development, minoritarian politics, and machinic conditions. She has held a postdoctoral position researching arts in digital and networked surveillance at the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.