Reworlding the Unimaginable


Research Exhibition
Dream Farm Commons, Oakland, CA
August 17 - September 7, 2024

︎︎︎ Opening Reception: August 17, 2-5 pm
︎︎︎ World-Builder Teach-Ins: August 24, 2 - 6 pm
︎ In person or attend online Sign up on Zoom
︎︎︎ Closing Reception: September 7, 2-5 pm
︎︎︎ Tickets: FREE


World-Builder Teach-Ins: August 24, 2 - 6 pm

Teach-ins:

⭐️ How Tech went Right: The Rise of Reactionary Politics in Silicon Valley and Online - Becca (Stanford & Tech Workers Coalition)

⭐️ Toward a People's University: Reprogramming Power in Tech - Boink & Cat (Stanford Tech For Liberation)

⭐️  Building with Blinders: Tech Complicity in Militarism and Labor's Ability to Combat it - Mark (Former Google Engineer, No Tech For Apartheid)

⭐️ Remaking Tech from Below: Collective Action School - Emily Chao (Collective Action School)


Closing Event Artist Talk: September 7, 2-5pm

⭐️ Dorothy R. Santos, Ph.D. (she/they) is a Filipino American writer, artist, and media scholar. She earned her Ph.D. in Film and Digital Media with a designated emphasis in Computational Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Art Department and Principal Faculty for the Creative Technologies program the the University of California, Santa Cruz.

⭐️ Xiaowei R. Wang, PhD is an artist, writer, organizer and coder. They are the author of the book Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech In China's Countryside, a 2023 National Book Foundation Science and Literature Award winner. Their multidisciplinary work over the past 15 years sits at the intersection of tech, digital media, art, and environmental justice. As of 2023, they are one of the stewards of Collective Action School (formerly known as Logic School), an organizing community for tech workers, a faculty member at ELISAVA’s Master in Design for Responsible AI and a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center on Race and Digital Justice.

⭐️ Kelley O’Leary is an interdisciplinary artist based in El Cerrito, CA. She received a MFA in Art Studio from University of California, Davis and a BA in Art with a minor in Anthropology from University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work has been exhibited at San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Root Division, Jan Shrem & Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, 120710 Gallery, Well Well Projects, Pallas Gallery, Incline Gallery, and Studio 106 LA among others. She has been an artist in residence at Kala Art Institute, Bullseye Glass, Irving Street Projects and VR Art Camp. She was the recipient of the Dean’s Research Fellowship, the Mary Lou Osborn Award and LeShelle and Gary May Art Purchase Prize at University of California, Davis. Kelley is a member of Imaginaries of the Future Collective, a self-organizing nomadic collective of artists and thinkers founded by Beatriz Cortez. She is co-curator of the Bay Area-based new media art salon, Living Room Light Exchange.



Reworlding the Unimaginable draws connections between big tech and the global impact of modern-day technology while highlighting ongoing work to create alternative futures. This project goes beyond the influence of science fiction-based themes of future dystopian and utopian narratives and platforms future world builders of today. Reworlding the Unimaginable challenges the myth of technological solutionism (Tech will save us) by examining the militarized history of the tech industry and exposing its deeply intertwined relationship to community destabilization, digital colonialism, and late capitalism.

Reworlding the Unimaginable focuses on cultural workers, disruptors, activists, and organizers who are radically reimagining the world through their current praxis as a foundation for fighting oppressive systems and envisioning a world that prioritizes people over profit. Through a research-based approach to art making, Macro Waves invites the community to collaborate on an interactive installation that weaves together technology’s connections to war, labor movement uprisings, technological advancements, and environmental climate catastrophes while highlighting tech justice activists,  paving the way for alternative futures. Reworlding the Unimaginable zooms in on present-day visionaries designing solutions and building for a future world that centers collective liberation and freedom over profit as a way to challenge the status quo and propel us toward a more equitable and sustainable future. During the duration of this project, Macro Waves invites viewers to add to the installation and will host a series of world-builder teach-ins and discussions focusing on alternative futures.

Additional Links
Press Release Media Kit







Collective Futures


Edge on the Square
SF, Chinatown, CA
Multi-Sensory Installation
Collective Space
12 ft x 12 ft
2023




“Self-care,” a terminology turned lifestyle that became increasingly more popular during the start of the pandemic, has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry. Co-opted by big corporate media for profit, many of us find ourselves in search of care, only to be fed algorithmic advertisements for subscription meditation apps, AI therapists, and social media influencers promoting corporate wellness programs. But how did the term self-care make its way into American culture? The term self-care was integrated into medical ethics teachings in the 1950s by primarily western psychiatric hospitals for institutionalized patients and was later expanded upon by the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement, with a focus on community care. The Black Panthers understood the critical role that community care played for the rights of Black and marginalized communities, seen through the many resources they organized, including free medical care, food security, childcare, and elderly safety programs. Today, through late-stage capitalism, self-care has transformed into a commodity that is consumed for profit and further perpetuates productivity culture. 


In response to our collective experiences navigating the ongoing global pandemic, Macro Waves reimagines a future that centers healing through community care.  As we have re-emerged from shelter-in-place, back to the hustle of in-person life, how do we pause and re-gather what we have collectively experienced? The notion of collective care has been practiced by non-Western communities for generations before self-care found its way into American culture. How can we become critical of the rhetoric around care when it is being used for profit? While caring for the self is fundamental to our collective well-being, when does the term self-care cause more harm than good?


Macro Waves dives deeper into the practice of care through, Collective Futures, a multimedia art experience and collective space that focuses on the act of re-gathering, the point of re-entry, and the process of collective transformation. Through a multi-sensory installation and a series of collaborative healing-based workshops and performances, this project challenges our perceptions of individual experiences and transforms them into a shared process. Collective Futures invites viewers to re-gather through a multimedia-based interactive installation that utilizes haptic vibrational technology, known to invoke relaxation and alleviate stress. Visitors are welcome to collectively pause by sitting, laying, sharing, and interacting with the vibrating tactile installation while listening to accompanying audio that synchronizes with each vibration. The vibrations offer a holistic experience uniting the senses of touch, sight, and sound. By cultivating a collaborative culture of exploration, inquiry, and play within the healing process, this multimedia art experience will also act as a workshop space for collaborators to facilitate alternative healing modalities focused on sound, breathwork, meditation, and intergenerational wellness practices.



Additional Links
https://www.edgeonthesquare.org/within-others/macro-waves






Flora 5000


SFMOMA Soapbox Derby McLaren Park, San Francisco, CA
2022




Flora 5000 is an inflatable vehicle from a post-apocalyptic future when planet earth is no longer habitable for plant life due to global warming. Macro Waves, a team of mad botanists, travels back to earth in the Flora 5000 on a mission to repopulate the planet with plant life. Flora 5000 serves as a traveling greenhouse preservation robot, scaling the globe, conserving plant species and seed life, and aiding in the earth's reforestation.

SFMOMA’s Soapbox Derby returned to McLaren Park for the first time in more than 40 years! The original artists’ derbies from the 1970s are legendary events in our history. Between the two races in 1975 and 1978, the museum commissioned cars and trophies from more than 200 artists — including Ruth Asawa, Robert Arneson, Ant Farm, Viola Frey, Mike Henderson, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Richard Shaw, and Carlos Villa — and thousands gathered to watch the races unfold.

Additional Link:
SFMOMA’s Soapbox Derby




















A Cinematic Schematic of Chinatown Resilience



Representing Chinatown Group Exhibit co-curated with the Center for Asian American Media and SFMOMA

SFMOMA, Koret Education Center
Interactive Mural / 38 ft x 10 ft
2022


A Cinematic Schematic of Chinatown Resilience is an interactive mural commissioned by SFMOMA’s Koret Education Center that honors intergenerational experiences and Pan-Asian solidarity within and around San Francisco’s Chinatown. By examining a selection of independent films presented by The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) over the past 40 years, this mural weaves together images and movements of resiliency captured through the lens of joy, intergenerational stories, placemaking, and community building.

This work celebrates the role of cinematography in archiving histories, reframing our narratives, and shaping our own cultural identities as a collective diaspora. This mural utilizes interactive sensor-reactive technology to activate specific thematic areas of design across the span of the mural. Visitors can hover their hands over specified areas and experience Chinatown through audio-visual content. When the sensor gets triggered, colored spotlights slowly highlight areas of the mural, activating background audio and immersing visitors in archival sounds that built the foundation of what Chinatown is today.


This mural pays tribute to the legacy of cinematic accomplishments across the selected films presented in this mural. Visitors are encouraged to experience the following films in the original format:

  • Forever Chinatown, James Q. Chan
  • Chinatown Shorts: You Are Here, James Q. Chan
  • Fall of the I-Hotel, Curtis Choy
  • Chinatown Rising, Josh, and Harry Chuck
  • Chinatown, Felicia Lowe










breath.io


Multi-Sensory Installation
SWIM Gallery
San Francisco, CA
June 5 - June 17, 2022



As featured artists for APICC’s United States of Asian America Festival, Macro Waves presents Breath.io, a multi-sensory installation that serves as a futuristic community healing space.  Through a sensory experience, breath.io celebrates the power of collective care through the practice of guided breathwork. Breath.io features acupuncturist, Paolo Flores Chico in a guided microcosmic orbit breath experimental video collaboration. The project will have an opening reception on Sunday, June 5th, featuring a Guided Movement with Jin Lee Baobei, and will close out the project on Friday, June 17 with Breathwork for Collective Consciousness with Chanel Durley and a live sound performance with Sharmi Basu.

Breath.io follows a science fiction narrative in an alternative future where the breath is revered as sacred. Visitors are invited inside the space to participate in a futuristic meditative breath experience. Entering the installation, visitors are greeted by an instructional video of the microcosmic breath made in collaboration with Paolo Flores Chico.  An interactive light sculpture in the center of the installation space leads the visitors through a collective breath exercise. Participants will be encouraged to breathe together in synchronization, symbolizing community union as a form of radical healing. This light sculpture synchronized with the audio-guided meditation will slowly fade bright to dim, mimicking human breath.

By introducing breath meditation within the framework of art, we aim to embrace collective care as an essential aspect of our daily lives. Our goal is to create accessible and free space for people to focus on alternative mental health modalities and frameworks for healing justice.


Additional Links
APICC USAAF 2022 Festival
Press Kit





© Macro Waves Est. 2015