Residing from the rust belt of Toledo Ohio, ceramic artist Allison Burch explores the idea of deindustrialized spaces and their separation with the developing world. Through the lens of weeds and various ruderal ecologies that grow upon these spaces, Burch explores the curation of plants permitted to be in lived spaces and the trimming of the “others”. Through the abatement of weeds and consistent development in the built environment, her work inquires upon the sterile spaces in day to day life and inquiries upon the societal apathetic view towards deteriorating spaces and how that may affect equitable speculative futures to come." "Mark-C. Hilbert explores new media techniques and their larger implications through strategies of humor and the uncanny. Often incorporating the works of philosophers and thinkers in the fields of technology, labor and futurology: Hilbert employs technology as a crucible to question and reinterpret the works of such figures and their ideas. With the encroaching subsumption of human experience by popular media and the internet as Imperialist, capitalist apparatii, what new patterns of thought might be beneficial to the physical, mental and emotional health and well-being of digital natives? The assertion of the artist is that this question must be answered by digital natives themselves."
