Hito Steyerl is a filmmaker, writer and middle aged single mom. Steyerl’s films and essays take the digital image as a point of departure for entering a world in which a politics of dazzle manifests as collective desire. This is to say that when war, genocide, capital flows, digital detritus, and class warfare always take place partially within images, we are no longer dealing with the virtual but with a confusing and possibly alien concreteness that we are only beginning to understand. Today the image world, Steyerl reminds us, is far from flat. And paradoxically it may be in its most trashy and hollowed out spots that we can locate its ethics. Because this is where forms run free and the altogether unseen and unrecognized toy with political projects at the speed of light. It is where spectacle and poverty merge, then split, then dance.

Nguyen Tan Hoang is a video artist and academic whose work interrogates forms of desire in queer Asian male identities, Vietnamese diasporic cultural production, and Southeast Asian cinemas. He uses “existing imagery—found footage considered to represent official records as well as out-of-date media detritus—to generate new narratives about race, sexuality, gender, and nationality. The re-presentation of this found material, often supplemented by original footage, situates the personal within larger social, political, historical, and aesthetic processes. [His] art making is animated by various pleasures: the pleasure of being touched and moved, the pleasure of being addressed and recognized, the pleasure of critical response, and the pleasure of practical intervention.”

Dr. Petula Ho Sik Ying is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong. Her main research and teaching interests are in the area of homosexuality, gender and sexuality issues. She has made important contributions to the development of a dynamic theory of gender and sexuality that will help problematize feminist theories and resist Western hegemonies through empirical casestudies that make connections between discourses, cultural practices, political economy, and social change.

Isaac Leung is a practicing artist, curator and researcher in art and culture. His passion in exploring issues in contemporary art began during his time in college. From 1998-2008, his artworks were exhibited in over 30 venues across the globe. 

In 2013, Leung was appointed as the Chairman of Videotage. During his tenure, he initiated and participated in projects that included exhibitions, workshops, lectures, publications, online projects and symposia. In 2005, Leung was appointed as the working group consultant of the award-winning international exhibition “Body Movies in Hong Kong” that was presented by the Home Affairs Bureau, HKSARG. Leung was appointed as Advisor of the Digital Community of Prix Ars Electronica. The creative practice in artistic and curatorial projects has prompted him to conduct substantial research on art and culture.