From: A.I.R. Gallery
Subject: The Scalability Project
Date: June 12, 2019

The Scalability Project is a year-long programming initiative that considers technologies and their implications for gendered, racialized, and class violence. The Project also addresses the possibilities of scaling up feminisms, and the strategies needed in order to confront our socio-political landscape.

The Project establishes feminism as a system of belief that has a wide spectrum of interpretations, exploring them through two exhibitions, eight public programs, and an online publication. “Scalability” is the capability of a system to handle a growing amount of work. We recognize many feminist politics are predicated on the perpetuation of dominant narratives. To explore this legacy and construct a different future, we will focus on technological tools that are presently available to make multiple feminisms scalable.

Download the Press Release here

Exhibition 1: For Information
June 28 - July 28, 2019

Artists: Lex Brown, A.K. Burns, Daria Dorosh, Mary Beth Edelson, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Felipe Meres, Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Aliza Shvarts, and Julia Weist

Opening Reception: June 28, 6-8pm
Curated by Roxana Fabius and Patricia M. Hernandez
Curatorial Assistant: Josephine Heston
Graphic identity: Wkshps

For Information focuses on the role that narrative interventions have played in changing public perception. From Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, through Norma McCorvey in Roe vs. Wade, to Zoë Quinn in #Gamergate, individual stories have been employed to identify and mobilize collectives. While the act of circulating these narratives shaped policy and cultural norms through the forging of alliances, these actions have also generated movements of resistance. As such, mining past experiences serves the development of new strategies.

Technological advancement has created powerful tools, but also new forms of subjugation. For Information brings together ten artists whose work addresses the social constructions in which our reality is generated. Through their practice, the artists embed themselves in dominant narrative configurations to expose dodgy cultural norms and rewrite the story.

Contemporary access to technologies allows for narrative interventions to reach a wider audience, providing opportunities to respond to conditions of oppression on a larger scale. This exhibition researches these possibilities.

July 9, 7pm:
The Unforgettables Reading/Working Group, session led by curator Christian Camacho-Light

July 24, 7pm:
Lynn Hershman Leeson, !Women Art Revolution, 2010, Film Screening at A.I.R.

To access the exhibition publication, click here.

Public Programs: Open Research
September 2019 - July 2020

Open Research will consist of a series of public programs divided between field trips and reading sessions. On each trip, an artist and an expert in different technological and scientific fields are in conversation. They will share their research with the public in an open exchange. These conversations will take place at the expert’s workplace and will be recorded for the archives of The Scalability Project. The reading sessions are part of The Unforgettables Reading/Working Group and will be dedicated to thinkers in the humanities, who will facilitate discussions on relevant resources.

Exhibition 2: For Decision
July 30 - August 23, 2020

Based on the findings achieved in For Information and Open Research, For Decision closes The Scalability Project and includes works that have stemmed from collaborations between participating artists and field experts.