Conversation with Shu Lea Cheang

On March 2nd 2022 an online conversation with the artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang took place. It was moderated by Tallinn Art Hall curator Corina L. Apostol and artist and writer Kristaps Ancāns.

During the conversation, the following questions were discussed: How can we look more critically at the internet and social media as technologies of body and gender politics within neoliberal capitalism? How may technology be used to shape performances of gender, enable gender play, and transform bodies beyond conventional sensualities, sensitivities, towards new horizons beyond power structures which we are already used to? In what ways can queering tools of the digital and virtual condition create alternative spaces for other potentialities, more radical futures to be possible?

The conversation deepens the reflections on the virtual condition and its spatial aspects in art production at the core of the Beyond Matter project by emphasizing practices of queer and queering virtuality and present-day networked spaces. Can these artistic practices unleash the potentiality of virtual space from being merely an institution of heteronormative capitalism towards re-made spaces of experimentation that gesture towards liberated queer futures?