During this session In-Grid delved into its second sub-theme of Shadow Subversions with artist and environmental engineer Tega Brain.

Eccentric engineering

In the open crit with In-grid, Tega Brain and the residency artists discussed how corporate software like video conferencing apps and project management tools could be used critically by revealing the edges and ideologies of these technologies, making them open for re-imagination. This is a practice that Tega Brain calls eccentric engineering; it is also at the core of In-grid, the desire to seeks and subvert the same tools that it has been built through (Slack, Zoom and YouTube) during the quarantine and social distancing.

In-grid was the creation of a collective residency between artists from Goldsmiths Computing Department, in collaboration with arebyte Gallery and AOS (arebyte on screen), in 2020.

Through artistic intervention, performance moments, a public programme of events and a live platform that continuously reinvents itself, In-grid questioned and repurposed how we exchange concepts and communicate as individuals and as collectives.

In-grid commented on the potential of the digital, while also acknowledging that threats to privacy, agency and digital equity are increasingly commonplace. What happens when the system fails, or you make it fail with us?

In-grid was formed of artists Dania Alsaleh, Rebecca Aston. Baqi Ba, Megan Benson, Jingyi Chen, Johanna de Verdier, Batool Desouky, Panja Göbel, Rob Hall, Veera Jussila, James Lawton, Yasmin Morgan, Lauma Muizaraja, Karen Okpoti, Gabor Paszti, Hazel Ryan, Anna Sang, George Simms, Katie Tindle, Ziwei Wu, Hristo Yordanov and Yishuai Zhang.

Livestreaming produced by Rob Hall.

In her works, Tega Brain has subverted existing systems in multiple ways. In New York Apartment , she and Sam Lavigne collected the totality of New York real estate into a single listing; in the workshop series Bushwick Analytica, Tega Brain invited local middle schoolers to study data driven advertising and build their own targeted campaigns, ranging from “No School on Mondays” to “Play Fortnite”. Tega Brain is also an Assistant Professor of Integrated Digital Media in New York University.