On the Future of Digital Art and Criticism
An Art, Technology, & Culture Colloquium event
with David Velasco, Writer and Former Editor-in-Chief, Artforum; hannah baer, Writer, Clinical Psychologist, and Contributing Editor, Parapraxis; and Tausif Noor, Critic, Curator, and PhD candidate, History of Art, UC Berkeley
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Monday, February 8, 2027
5:00 — 6:30 PM
Eugene Jarvis Auditorium,
Grimes Engineering Center
RSVP here! Save the event to your bCal here!
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Join three contemporary commentators for a fascinating roundtable discussion on the future of digital art and art criticism.
The primary difference between digital and analog art may have to do with the relaxation of certain physical limits — (seemingly) infinite storage, access, arenas for display. While some contemporary art-makers have embraced this perceived limitlessness, others have responded to it by re-engaging with tangible or imagined constraints. In a parallel sense, contemporary art criticism often functions as a stage for divergent, often competing trends: on the one hand, a disavowal of “old” constructs centering questions of authorship, social position, political engagement, and, on the other, a steadfast re-animation of those questions and their centrality to meaningful public discourse.
For David Velasco, the digital art that has tended to get his attention is that which imposes certain restrictions on its own logic or which tests the outer edges of digital constraints. In this way, he considers himself as old-fashioned as any modernist.
For hanna baer, the raw material of subjective experience to crowbar one's way out of relativism and alienation and into an embodied and enacted version of contingent but nonetheless usable intersubjective reality, towards more organized and hopeful political forms, is critical. In particular, she's interested in the dilemmas and contradictions of political life, relatedness, and interiority, which can be particularly vivid and sometimes acute in digital media; her approach is heavily inflected by her work as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic candidate.
For Taussif Noor, critic, curator, and PhD candidate in History of Art at UC Berkeley, the practices of artists, poets, and writers who are engaged with questions of historical change and the role of art and responses by artists therein, specifically with regard to postcolonial histories and the development of modernist and post-modernist art practices in the Third World, remain vital. Questions of character and the intimate workings of an artist's sense of self, especially that of women and queer artists, writers, and poets seeking to understand themselves and their milieu within moments of historical rupture, is of utmost importance.
About David Velasco
David Velasco is a writer based in New York. From 2005 to 2023 he was an editor at Artforum and was editor in chief for the final six of those years. He has contributed hundreds of texts to the magazine, including essays on friendship and mourning and features on artists ranging from Adrian Piper to Lorraine O’Grady. His early days were committed to elevating the status of dance and performance in Artforum’s pages, and in 2016 he was the creator of and series editor for “Modern Dance,” published by the Museum of Modern Art. David is the recipient of a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation (2024) and fellowships from MacDowell and Denniston Hill. He is currently at work on his first book, a memoir about the convergence of personal and political atrocity.
About hannah baer
hannah baer is a writer and clinical psychologist based in New York. Her first book is the memoir trans girl suicide museum. Her second book, about parties in theory and in practice, is forthcoming from FSG in 2027. She is a psychoanalytic candidate and a contributing editor to Parapraxis.
About Tausif Noor
Tausif Noor is a critic, curator, and PhD candidate in History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. His criticism and essays have appeared in journals and periodicals including Artforum, Art History, frieze, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker, among others, as well as in various exhibition catalogues and edited volumes. He is the recipient of the 2025 Holt Prize from Lambda Literary, the 2023 Grace Dudley Prize for Art Writing from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, and a 2022 Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Foundation Grant for Short Form Writing. Noor has worked in curatorial capacities at the ICA Philadelphia, the Whitney Museum, and the Imperial War Museum in London and currently works as part of the curatorial team at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).
About Art, Technology, & Culture Colloquium
Founded by Professor Ken Goldberg in 1997, the Arts, Technology & Culture lecture series at BCNM is an internationally respected forum for creative ideas. Always free of charge and open to the public, the series has presented over 200 leading artists, writers, and critical thinkers who question assumptions and push boundaries at the forefront of art, technology, and culture.
Accessibility
BCNM events are free and open to the public. This event will be held in-person, on the UC Berkeley campus. We strive to meet all access and accommodation needs. Please contact (raphaelcohen [at] berkeley.edu) with requests or questions.
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