Digital Art and Queer Utopias

Richard Rinehart (Bucknell University, Samek Art Museum)

Queer communities are heralding a cultural turning point. From recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, to “bathroom bills”, to the massacre in Orlando, queerness is central to current social and political debate. Current events can mire us in an unrelenting present that makes it hard to imagine a path beyond. However, a new generation of artists are asking; Where do we go from here? How are queer communities imagining and working toward a better world? How does digital art embody queer futurity? This talk looks at several art projects that take up digital modalities, queer coding, and the aesthetics of utopia.

Richard Rinehart is Director and Chief Curator of the Samek Art Gallery & Downtown Art Gallery at Bucknell University. He has served as Digital Media Director & Adjunct Curator at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and as curator at New Langton Arts and for the San Jose Arts Commission. He juried for the Rockefeller Foundation, Rhizome.org, and others. Richard has taught courses on art and new media at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Art Institute and elsewhere. He has lead NEA and NEH-funded national research projects on new media, art, preservation, and museums and he is currently working on a book for MIT Press on preserving digital culture. He served on the boards of the Berkeley Center for New Media, New Langton Arts, and the Museum Computer Network.