Talks
Data Fluencies: Tributaries
Virtual Artist Talk
9 July 2025
5:30 pm
Installation view of Data Fluencies: Tributaries, exhibition at Or Gallery, May 29 - July 19, 2025. Photograph: Dennis Ha.
Participants: Lani Asunción, JAZSALYN, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Kristoffer Ørum, Caroline Sinders and Roopa Vasudevan
Please join us on Wednesday July 9, 2025, for a virtual artist talk with artists Lani Asunción, JAZSALYN, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Kristoffer Ørum, Caroline Sinders and Roopa Vasudevan to explore the inspiration and process behind the works featured in Data Fluencies: Tributaries.
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Data Fluencies: Tributaries, on view at Or Gallery from May 29 to July 19, 2025, this program is free and open to all.
Data Fluencies: Tributaries features the work of six contemporary artists, alongside experimental research supported by the Data Fluencies Project, based out of the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University. The exhibition aims to provide open public engagement with the research outputs emerging from the larger project and place them next to cutting-edge and critical work of artists examining the same themes and ideas. Together, the artists and researchers featured here offer us ways to (re)consider our relationships with the data that surrounds and drives our everyday lives—and perhaps find new routes to agency once we are able to do so.
The Data Fluencies: Tributaries exhibition and public programs are presented with support from the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University.
With Support From
Participant Bios
Lani Asunción
Lani Asunción is a multimedia artist who holds a Master of Fine Arts from UConn School of Fine Arts. Recipient of 2022 Public Art for Spatial Justice Grant from New England Foundation for the Arts. Asunción is a visiting lecturer at Massachusetts College of Art and Design teaching public art, performance, and Interdisciplinary Studio.
JAZSALYN
Jazsalyn is an artist exploring data loss, memory restoration, and Ancestral Intelligence through alternative media and re-indigenization. Her work has been supported by Serpentine Arts Technologies, Pioneer Works, and more. She is the Artistic Director of Black Beyond and teaches at The New School, where she has written coursework on African and Diaspora rituals as speculative technology.
Lai Yi Ohlsen
Lai Yi Ohlsen is an artist and Internet researcher. Her creative work has been supported by NEW INC, Pioneer Works, Movement Research, Triple Canopy, BRIC and more. She is an adjunct lecturer at The New School and a Senior Product Manager at Cloudflare.
Kristoffer Ørum
Kristoffer Ørum is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the intersection of technology, memory, and imagination. Through innovative uses of AI and digital systems, he explores alternative narratives that challenge social and political norms. His internationally exhibited practice invites audiences to reimagine the possibilities of human-machine collaboration and collective storytelling.
Caroline Sinders
Caroline Sinders is an award winning critical designer, researcher, and artist. They are the founder of human rights and design lab, Convocation Research + Design, and a current BRAID fellow with the University of Arts, London. They have worked with the Tate Exchange at the Tate Modern, the United Nations, Ars Electronica’s AI Lab, The Information Commissioner’s Office (the UK’s data protection and privacy regulator), the Harvard Kennedy School, and others.
Roopa Vasudevan
Roopa Vasudevan is a media artist, computer programmer, and scholar investigating sociotechnical defaults and protocols, and how they intersect with larger cultural and economic power structures. She has been supported by the Processing Foundation, Eyebeam, and NEW INC, among others, and is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.