Hiba Ali is a new media artist, writer, DJ, experimental music producer and curator based across Chicago, IL, Austin, TX, and Toronto, ON. Her performances and videos concern music, labour and power. She conducts reading groups addressing digital media and workshops with open-source technology. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queens University, Kingston, Canada. She has presented her work in Chicago, Stockholm, Toronto, New York, Istanbul, São Paulo, Detroit, Dubai, Austin, Vancouver, and Portland.
What does a poor, Black, brown and queer internet look like? Networks are not arbitrarily put into place, they have funders, users, buyers, beneficiaries, and losers involved. Therefore, they are porous flows, exchanges, and axioms, always open to change. How do we build multiplicity and equity in systems?
I investigate this inquiry through performance, sculptural installations, reading groups, and workshops that focus on the role of technology. I investigate the history of objects such as the satellites and shipping containers and make immaterial streams tangible. The sections of this text are not necessary meant to be read sequentially, there are organized like nodes. In the first node, I will examine the role of satellites in my projects, Satellites and TELL A STAR. Satellites project examines Our World, the first global transmission (1967) through a sculptural installation, video and website. This project critiques the notion of techno-utopianism, a idea that technology will resolve all inequalities plaguing humanity. Then, I will review TELL A STAR, a 3-channel installation, where I divert the history of the first American satellite, Telstar (1962) through the lens of Afrofuturism, archival research and multiplicity of identity.
In the second node, I will review my project, Con-tain-er, its installation and performative elements and the role of “flows” within global shipping networks. Near the ending node, the role of networks, “junk,” and the use of workshops in my work. Demanding the creation of more accessible and divergent networks is central to measures of equity and porosity.