Community Conversation: Techno-Orientalism and Strategies against Violence

Artist Suhyun Choi with Asian American Feminist Collective, Roopa Vasudevan, Angry Asian Womxn, Red Canary Song, and Mindy Seu

In this community conversation, we will be asking: What are the conditions that produce anti-Asian hate crimes? How are these connected to larger frameworks of the West’s dependence on the East for technological production? How can we transform these conditions of violence? We will be talking about the historical and contextual bases on which these structures of violence are built, as well as strategies, tactics, and everyday practices on how we are working to transform the conditions that produce them.

Part of Memorial for Laptop On December 23, 2020, Suhyun Choi’s laptop passed away. They realized that they had developed a racial-emotional affinity towards their personal tech devices, even though the manufacturing of such objects propagates techno-Orientalism – a theory which posits a dystopic technologically and economically dominant East that serves as an antagonist to the historically hegemonic and heroic West. The viralization of East-Asian bodies has been and is inherently connected to the West’s fear of the East in technological advancement, as technological prowess has equated colonial and imperial brute strength. Suhyun Choi’s Memorial for Laptop proposes a humanizing relationship to technology as a means of humanizing Yellow femmes who are inherently read as objects. What would it mean if we changed our relationship to technology to one of care and humanity? Can the care for our objects decolonize technology?

Memorial for Laptop is part of Recess’s program, Session, which invites artists to use Recess’s public platform to combine productive studio space with dynamic exhibition opportunities. Sessions remain open to the public from the first day of the artist's project through the last, encouraging sustained dialogue between artists and audiences. Due to the process-based nature of Session, projects undergo constant revision and the above proposal is subject to change.