Art in General presents The Silicon Zone, a panel discussion bringing together leading artists and thinkers working across disciplines of technology, queer theory, art history, philosophy, and media studies. Each will discuss their own work in relation to themes present in the exhibition Zach Blas: Contra-Internet, touching on topics from aesthetic strategies in queer cinema, new trends in Silicon Valley, to contemporary manifestations of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism and more.

Speakers include: Zach Blas, artist, writer and lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, whose first solo exhibition in New York, Contra-Internet, is currently on view at Art in General; Ricardo Dominguez, artist, associate professor at the University of California, co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater, who developed virtual sit-in technologies in solidarity with the Zapatistas and created Transborder Immigrant Tool, an app which uses GPS technology to help immigrants find water stations in the Southern California desert; Lisa Duggan, queer theorist and professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, who is at currently at work on a new book about Ayn Rand and neoliberalism and an e-book series with University of California Press titled American Studies Now; Homay King, professor in the Department of History of Art at Bryn Mawr College and the Director of the Program in Film Studies, whose latest book traces the concept of the virtual through the philosophical works of Bergson, Deleuze, and Agamben to offer a new framework for thinking about time-based contemporary videos and films; and Brian Kuan Wood, writer, co-founding editor of e-flux journal, and teacher at the Masters in Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York.