CLOT Magazine | In conversation: Jaime de los Ríos & Brandon Tay discuss the meaning of new physicalities

"With this series of conversations, CLOT Magazine and so-far aim to promote debate between two different artistic and cultural realities, highlighting the need for closeness and open dialogue that is more urgent than ever in these complex times. For this second edition, we have brought together two aligning artists from our respective networks: Brandon Tay and Jaime de los Ríos. Based in Singapore and Spain, both artists’ work explores the relationships between the physical world and software interfaces.

The artists take their conversation into the realms of new physicalities, the transit of information and the meaning of reality when entangled with aggressive capitalism and neoliberalism. Their discussion reveals how socioeconomic power is embedded within cyberspace, and the need to focus on our immediate creative communities to nourish them outside the scope of the neoliberal agenda.

Time and space are the main coordinates that we as human beings use to navigate our environments, and the values of these parameters are being distorted by neoliberal economics. The impact of technology, geopolitics and the media on the circulation of information in a global society1, as well as the new situation caused by the pandemic have added even more distortion to the “like economy” on social media platforms that scroll down through our reality.

 

How we overcome these challenges both existentially and experientially will define how we move into what is now being called the “new normal”2. What best way to do it than listening to some of the most inspired voices shaping our current cultural and artistic landscape."