Artlab Editorial presents

Artlab Editorial presents three episodes centered around Art + Technology at LACMA, one of the museum’s unique programs that was revitalized through a long-term partnership between Hyundai Motor and LACMA, beginning in 2015. Our episodes explore the groundbreaking LACMA Art + Technology Lab projects of Sarah Rosalena, American Artist, and Gala Porras-Kim. This series showcases bold experimentation and cross-disciplinary innovation fostered by the lab and highlights the journey and impact of these visionary artists.

The launch kicks off on Monday, October 14, with Sarah Rosalena: In All Directions, followed by American Artist: Earthseed on Friday, November 1, and Gala Porras-Kim: Expansive Data Fields on Tuesday, December 5. Each episode will be available on this page upon release.

This film Sarah Rosalena: In All Directions, features Exit Points and Standard Candle by Sarah Rosalena. Rosalena’s practice is rooted in her lineage of women weavers who used a variety of looms and Indigenous technologies such as beaded looms, manual hand looms, and the digital Jacquard loom. Her LACMA Art + Technology Lab project Exit Points intertwines machine learning, coded language, and the loom to challenge technological norms through a feminist and anti-colonial lens. In her subsequent exhibition Standard Candle, woven textiles are informed by astronomical images reflecting the labor of women “computers,” highlighting their crucial role in shaping Western scientific knowledge and space imaging. With support from the LACMA Art + Technology Lab, Rosalena collaborated with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to conduct her research.

This film American Artist: Earthseed, features The Monophobic Response by American Artist, showcasing the exploration of technology, society, and speculative futures. Rooted in the legacies of Octavia E. Butler, an American science fiction writer, and African-diasporic communities in California, American Artist's work critically engages with technology, science fiction, and their lineage within America’s Second Great Migration. Their LACMA Art + Technology Lab project The Monophobic Response reimagines the 1936 GALCIT Rocket Motor Test through Butler's Earthseed community while their 2022 exhibition Shaper of God at RedCat draws from Butler’s life in Los Angeles to explore cycles of history and dystopian futures. Artist’s 2024 exhibition, The Monophobic Response, at LACMA coincides with this film, presenting original footage from the Mojave Desert, where the artist staged a rocket engine test fire, weaving together speculative fiction and real-world political concerns.

This film Gala Porras-Kim: Expansive Data Fields, features the LACMA Art + Technology Lab project Expansive Data Fields by Gala Porras-Kim. This project with encyclopedic museums is an exploration of the institutions cataloguing systems and how the way objects are registered affects how we understand cultural heritage. Porras-Kim interrogates the layers of interpretation imposed on these objects, examining the linguistic, material, and contextual information used to classify them. By rethinking the relationship between cultural objects and the institutions that preserve them, the project highlights the potential for alternative narratives and more inclusive ways of understanding cultural heritage. This aligns with Porras-Kim’s broader practice, utilizing museum archive research to inform her drawings, sculptures, and installations, for example the Chichén Itzá project depicting votive offerings originally found in the Sacred Cenote. Many of her projects attempt to challenge the politics of preservation, revealing gaps and erasures in institutional records and colonial legacies.