Liquid Spaces. Politics of the screen: An interview with Doreen A. Ríos

In the second edition of the Bienal Universitaria de Arte Multimedial (BUAM) in Quito, Ecuador,[1] Mexican curator and researcher Doreen A. Ríos invites the audience to think critically about our relationship with screens. BUAM aims to promote spaces for conversation and exchange around the production of knowledge that takes place in art, focusing on the relationship with new technologies, the digital world, and virtuality.

Through a series of artworks oscillating between painting, virtual reality, video, sculpture, performance, and generative code, with the current exhibition Liquid Spaces: Politics of the Screen, Ríos addresses the hidden and visible layers of these digital surfaces and their impact on contemporary culture. Rather than focusing on how the screen began to dominate our lives and according to some led to ‘sustained inattentional blindness’ (SIB), addiction, or saturation and hence could undermine the development of interpersonal connections, Ríos addresses the potential and reappropriation of the screen by artists to emphasise how our perceptions, connections, and the very definition of reality have been reconfigured by the devices that envelop us.