Yufeng Zhao’s *all text in nyc* (2024) **is a search engine built from Google Street View data that enables users to search for any word or phrase to reveal every place it appears in the city, from shop signs and advertisements to graffiti and protest banners.

Yufeng Zhao is a media artist and technologist. His work addresses data, imagery / language processing, and experience design, exploring unexpected connections embedded in our techno-cultural landscape and the interactions between humans and machines. Through a blend of web-based experiences, video works, and tangible installations, Yufeng's practice investigates the intersections of data, computer graphics, and human interactions.

Alex Lukas’ Written Names Fanzine (2016-2025) is an ongoing documentation of unsanctioned acts of name writing across America. From coast to coast, Lukas documents names written in nails on train tracks, names written in abandoned streetcars from the ‘70s, names carved into aspen trees by sheepherders—text that would otherwise be lost, illegible, or invisible.

Alex Lukas is the Associate Professor of Print and Publication at UC Santa Barbara. His interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of place, human activity, and history; seeking to aggrandize the everyday, question historical narratives, and archive the individual. His fieldwork, research, and production reframes the monumental and the incidental through intricate print publications, sculpture, drawing, painting, video, and audio collage.

These two works rhyme. all text in nyc is a catalog of street text, presented online. Written Names Fanzine is a catalog of street text, presented in printed zines. Both works stage acts of looking—one through the spyglass of Google Street View, the other through the eyes of a wandering, embodied observer.

This salon brings these works into conversation. Instead of a traditional artist talk, we’ll gather for a collective act of interpretation and analysis. With the artists present, we’ll let the meanings of these two works surface through conversation, curiosity, and audience insight.

The salon will begin with a 45-minute dialogue between the two artists, facilitated by the host. They’ll present their work and speak about their motivations, processes, and methods. Together, we’ll explore the similarities, distinctions, and contradictions in how these works engage with place, text, urbanism, culture, and history, before segueing into an open-ended Q&A. Guests are invited to help shape the conversation.

Lylia Li is an artist, thinker, and event organizer based in New York. Her work centers on how we read, interpret, and inhabit culture. She organizes salons that bring artists and audiences together for open-ended inquiry driven by depth and curiosity. In addition to hosting events, she writes press play, an investigation of pop culture and creative identity, on Substack and helps run Dog Trot Writers and Artists Residency in North Carolina.

website

instagram

We get that things come up, but we rely on headcounts make our programs viable. If you request a refund...

More than 4 weeks before the program begins → 100% refund

More than 2 weeks before the program begins → 50% refund

Fewer than 2 weeks before the program begins → No refund

Thanks for understanding and for supporting our ability to provide cool offerings through your purchase.