theory

Hamza Walker, director of LAXART, a nonprofit art space in Los Angeles, and an adjunct professor at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, will be in conversation with Jessica Vaughn, a Brooklyn and Philadelphia-based multimedia artist whose practice is a dedication to understanding materials and images and how they function politically, socially and conceptually in the world. Her most recent artworks in sculpture, video, and photography interrogate questions of labor, race, architecture and modularity in space.

I am exploring what it means to choose to disconnect from a digital presence in today's post-digital environment. I question whether the possibility of experiencing a sense of connection or transcendence is directly correlated with disconnecting from an online presence.Human connections are no longer limited to face-to-face encounters, mouth to ear, or the subtleties of our shifting limbs. The digital world fosters new and different communication as it continues to expand our interactions daily constant, ever-present, threading itself through the most intimate moments we experience. We use these digital frameworks of interaction for the same purposes as physical interaction, because this realm is real. No longer a secondary virtual existence, the web is now a cultural and existential norm. From this viewpoint I explore the notions of disconnection in relation to ubiquitous digital culture and presence. This work focuses on the conscious decision to disconnect working towards informing a future reconnection with combined cultural and societal existence. Technology's fluidity, complementary to our existence, facilitates a personal self-awareness, or presence, but disconnecting oneself from these connective tools facilitates the feelings of connection and presence in nature.