(Dis)consent: A Night of Performance and Interactive Installations

MESH_ARTS & UAAD present (Dis)consent: A Night of Performance and Interactive Installations Featured artists: Katherine Helen Fisher, Mengna Da w/ Chienn Tai, Shihan Zhang w/ Yilin Ye, Mingyong Cheng, Han Zhang, Ziwei Liu, and Jiaye Leng. Curated by Amy Xiaofan Jiang Through performance, interactive installations, and live generative media, (Dis)consent explores how consent, in an age of algorithms and ecological crisis, is assumed, negotiated, withdrawn, and manipulated in real time. Audiences are invited to command bodies, contribute data, reshape algorithmically generated images, and participate in speculative ecological systems. Consent is often imagined as a clear agreement between autonomous individuals: an informed "yes" that authorizes participation and a "no" that withdraws it. Yet contemporary life increasingly unfolds within systems where agency is distributed across algorithms, interfaces, institutions, infrastructures, and ecological networks. Within these environments, consent rarely appears as a stable agreement. Instead, it is continuously assumed, negotiated, deferred, or manipulated in real time. The works featured in (Dis)consent make these tensions visible where agency is distributed among audiences, performers, machines, and environments. As participation unfolds, the question is no longer whether consent has been given, but whether disconsent remains available. Can we still refuse, withdraw, redirect, or renegotiate participation once we are already embedded within a system? Is disconsent something we actively choose, a capacity to interrupt the terms of engagement, or does it emerge as a disruptive force that exposes the limits of consent itself? Artists: Katherine Helen Fisher (@khfdance) — Cyborg Mirror II (Interactive Installation) Mengna Da (@yumedaaa), with live music by Chienn Tai (@desigh.llc)— SOUR GUMMIES DON’T CRY (Performance) Shihan Zhang (@shihan.design) with Yilin Ye, Mingyong Cheng, Han Zhang, Ziwei Liu, and Jiaye Leng — Until the Bees Return (Interactive Installation + Performance) Co-organizers: Underground Art And Design (@uaad.art) is an artist-led curatorial platform and community based in NYC. It supports and amplifies change-provoking artists and designers who work across emerging technology, ecological futures and underrepresented cultures. Mesh Art Center (@mesh_art_center) is a cultural hub where art meets research, technology, and science. Based in Brooklyn, they operate as a networked ecosystem that connects organizations, artists, curators, researchers, engineers, activists, makers, and thinkers across disciplines and geographies.