He Zike | 2023 Residency
Switzerland | Visual Arts
2023 — Visual Arts
Nationality: China
Residency location: Digital
He Zike (b. 1990, Guiyang) is an artist and writer. Her works focus on personal and temporal perception in the flow of information and the technology milieu. By working on specific databases, material repositories, archives, and memory, her recent projects are developed with researches ranging from digital space and machine learning to infrastructure, deep time, and electronics. Walking on the edges of different frames, narrative approach often takes the central place. Most of her works take the form of video, writing, installation, and computer programs. She’s also the co-initiator of the visiting and art project Under the Cloud, which focuses on science and technology infrastructure in the mountainous region of southwest China.
“Since 2020, due to the epidemic and travel restrictions, I got to reacquaint myself with my home city Guiyang and to extend my art project and thinking more from the end of database and screen to a wider understanding of infrastructures, systems and environments. This place, now known as ‘China’s Data Capital,’ is home to Apple’s first iCloud data center in Asia and is part of the Asia Zomia highland region in the heart of southwest China’s Karst landscape. Previously considered isolated and barren, this region has surprisingly been the site of comparative studies between Guizhou and Switzerland since 2013, alongside ‘big data’ construction, based on multicultural, geographical and ecological considerations and common grounds, which even become part of the paths for local government planning for future decisions.
I think an online residency might be a way to connect the two distant places, in which we can explore the role that mountains may play in human activity, ecology and climate, especially their relationship to technology and culture. Among them, I am very interested in the concept of ‘storage’, ‘diaspora’ and ‘shelter’. When ‘online’ becomes the norm, I hope to return to fieldwork in this way, and continue my ongoing narrative practice, including but not limited to writing, video, sound, and programs.”
