(Dis)consent: A Night of Performance and Interactive Installations

​MESH_ARTS & UAAD present

​(Dis)consent: A Night of Performance and Interactive Installations

​Featured artists: Katherin Helen Fisher, Mengna Da, Shihan Zhang

​Curated by Amy Xiaofan Jiang

​Through performance, interactive installations, and live generative
media, (Dis)consent explores how consent, in an age of algorithms and ecological crisis, is assumed, negotiated, withdrawn, and manipulated in real time. Audiences are invited to command bodies, contribute data, reshape algorithmically generated images, and participate in speculative ecological systems.

​Consent is often imagined as a clear agreement between autonomous individuals: an informed "yes" that authorizes participation and a "no" that withdraws it. Yet contemporary life increasingly unfolds within systems where agency is distributed across algorithms, interfaces, institutions, infrastructures, and ecological networks. Within these environments, consent rarely appears as a stable agreement. Instead, it is continuously assumed, negotiated, deferred, or manipulated in real time.

​The works featured in (Dis)consent make these tensions visible where agency is distributed among audiences, performers, machines, and environments. As participation unfolds, the question is no longer whether consent has been given, but whether disconsent remains available.

​Can we still refuse, withdraw, redirect, or renegotiate participation once we are already embedded within a system? Is disconsent something we actively choose, a capacity to interrupt the terms of engagement, or does it emerge as a disruptive force that exposes the limits of consent itself?

​Artists:

​Katherin Helen Fisher (@khfdance) — Cyborg Mirror II (Interactive Installation)

​What does it mean to be seen by an algorithm? This participatory generative media installation invites visitors to confront how algorithms reconstruct identity, desire, and femininity in real time.

​Mengna Da (@yumedaaa), with live music by Chienn Tai (@desigh.llc)— SOUR GUMMIES DON’T CRY (Performance)

​Where is our agency in the age of algorithms? This participatory lecture performance turns the audience into operators of the artist's body, exposing the politics of digital labor and AI.

​Shihan Zhang (@shihan.design) with Yilin Ye, Mingyong Cheng, Han Zhang, Ziwei Liu, and Jiaye Leng — Until the Bees Return (Interactive Installation + Performance)

​What forms of care and labor might emerge when humans are recruited to replace disappearing species? A live performance and interactive installation where the human body becomes ecological infrastructure for a world in ecological crisis.

​Co-organizers:

​Underground Art And Design (@uaad.art) is an artist-led curatorial platform and community based in NYC. It supports and amplifies change-provoking artists and designers who work across emerging technology, ecological futures and underrepresented cultures.

​Mesh Art Center (@mesh_art_center) is a cultural hub where art meets research, technology, and science. Based in Brooklyn, they operate as a networked ecosystem that connects organizations, artists, curators, researchers, engineers, activists, makers, and thinkers across disciplines and geographies.