And, what is required to move us towards a pluralistic commons—a space that might hold our multitudes and their potentials towards shared futures
In the fall of 2025, we announced the 2025/2026 season of programming, a warm, open invitation, Speculating on Plurality prompting artists, technologists and writers to playfully or critically imagine and instigate new frameworks, interventions, or inventions to address what concerns us the most: from state surveillance, the climate, digital fugitivity, the rise of techno feudalism/fascism. The new season of gatherings, making, and togetherness featured a pair of artist conversations at Secret Riso Club in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and will mark a return, for the first time since the onset of the pandemic, to Eyebeam’s nourishing and supportive physical residency in New York City.
In the fall, Eyebeam opened this series with Urgent Inquiries, two evenings of community-centered Eyebeam alum artist conversations inviting practitioners whose works incite us to imagine or instigate new frameworks, interventions, or inventions to address questions that concern us the most, bringing us to present Speculating on Plurality to our community. Urgent Inquiries brought our alumni community together to initiate an active dialogue that gets us to explore the conditions of artists, technologists, and communities play in responding to and shaping some of the most urgent issues in our society.
To coincide with the launch of the events at Secret Riso Club, we invited practitioners and supporters in the Eyebeam community, to join our discord server. For folks across the globe and unable to join any in-person conversations, we are hoping to continue the stream of critical thoughts and responses on our Discord community. We open our server to keep us all engaging (asynchronously) in conversations about frameworks, interventions, or inventions that move us to challenge the existing system of state surveillance, techno-feudalism/fascism, and censorial repression that is prevalent in and out of our digital spaces.
Timeline
At Eyebeam, we have been concerned with the ever-growing integration of algorithmic systems into our daily lives. Noticing that although we are more digitally connected than ever, we experience a deepening alienation. Our interconnected realities have become more opaque, as algorithms become a determining factor in how we experience the world and steer us further into conformity. This contradiction of existential separation and engineered compliance beckons us to abandon our multiplicities and each other.
Earlier this year, we issued a call to emerging artists whose practice not only interrogates this conundrum but also addresses how we might move towards a pluralistic (pluriversal) commons — a space that holds our multitudes and their potentials for shared futures. Following an extraordinary response from our community, we selected six New York City-based artists who, in the first decade of their careers, have already demonstrated their ability to consider and respond to these concerns with curiosity, play, and expansiveness.
Each artist receives a $4,000 stipend to support the development of their project, along with access to Eyebeam’s network of peers, mentors, and field experts. Residents will work out of NYU Tandon @ The Yard, a partner facility for integrative research in AR/VR/XR, virtual production, and experiential computing. There, they will have access to top-of-the-line production equipment and hands-on support from the talented practitioners enrolled in NYU Tandon’s Integrated Design and Media (IDM) Master of Science program.
