(Short)
Ven Qiu is a memory worker and creative technologist based in the Bay Area. They draw from their work as a researcher, curator, and tattooer to explore the textures of memory and new archival practices.

(Long)

Ven Qiu is a memory worker and creative technologist based in the Bay Area, co-parented by Chinese immigrants and the internet. Interested in how technology and institutions mediate cultural memory, they think about what gets recorded, how it is kept, and who gets to see it. Compelled by nostalgia, Qiu researches the aesthetic and philosophical notions of remembering. They draw from their work as a researcher, curator, and tattooer to explore the textures of memory and new archival practices. Qiu interrogates how memory is subject to hegemonic standards of rigor and institutional capture.

Qiu is the founder of Output Field, an organization gathering a database of people, collectives, & projects in experimental arts & research. As part of their memory work, Qiu stewards Dump Site, a submission-based archive of files pulled from trash folders. Qiu holds a BA in Industrial Design with a concentration in Intelligent Environments from Carnegie Mellon University. They have been featured for their work in experimental arts, new media, and network cultures at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California College of the Arts, The Lab, Gray Area, New Art City, Melrose Botanical Garden, and soon, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive. Their work has been publicized on TTTism, Collide24, and Clot Mag. This spring, Qiu will lead two seminars about expanded archives for Stanford University’s Art History department and UPenn’s Center for Experimental Ethnography.

Contact Ven for collaborations, lectures, or freelance experience design work: talk@venqiu.net