The digital age’s promises of unlimited access, transparency, and horizontality have been rapidly evaporating before our eyes. Layer by layer, the supposedly harmless digital technologies (the Internet, social media, smartphones, wearables, IoT) have revealed their true nature. One that has never been immaterial, weightless, infallible, accurate, sustainable, or immaculate, despite the efforts of technosolutionists to convince us otherwise. 

Amidst crises of climate change, resource scarcity, violent ideological polarization, and digital over-saturation—exacerbated by an era of computation obsessed with accumulating every interaction, data point, and file to fuel AI—the online exhibition Vanishing Acts asks: can we find alternative relationships with technology in the grey areas prompted by tactical instability, dissolution, and withdrawal?

Vanishing Acts features four newly commissioned net art pieces by Federico Pérez Villoro, Jung Hsu, Anna Ridler, and Olia Lialina. These works directly challenge the dominant ethos of accumulation by exploring this question through four thematic axes: Matter, Memory, Ghost, and Fragility. Together, they examine the weight, traces, absences, and vulnerabilities inherent in our digital world.

Curator/ Doreen A. RÍOS

Artist/ Federico PÉREZ VILLORO, Jung HSU, Anna RIDLER, Olia LIALINA