Infinite Scroll 荧屏沉溺 Symposium

The Infinite Scroll 荧屏沉溺 Symposium brings together a next generation of Chinese artists, curators, and digital platforms.

The Infinite Scroll 荧屏沉溺 Symposium brings together a next generation of Chinese artists, curators, and digital platforms working across screen-based, internet-native, and post-digital practices. Augmenting the exhibition Infinite Scroll / 荧屏沉溺, the symposium explores how contemporary life is shaped by continuous image circulation, algorithmic visibility, and platformed attention economies.

Across artist talks, conversations, a keynote lecture, and a curated screening program, speakers examine how humour, persona, cuteness, performance, world-building, and synthetic identity function as critical strategies within digital culture today. Moving between painting, moving image, online platforms, curatorial infrastructures, and experimental media, the program situates individual practices within broader technological, social, and affective systems.

Designed for both local and international audiences, the symposium operates across time zones, reflecting the transnational flows of images, labour, and culture that define the infinite scroll itself.

Program of Presentations

Saturday 7 March, Nelson Meers Foundation Auditorium

12.30-1.30pm AEDT

Artist Talk: Xia Han
In this artist talk, Xia Han reflects on his artistic practice alongside his work co-founding and running 33ml Offspace. The talk explores how intimacy, memory, and everyday gestures are shaped and reconfigured within digital culture. Xia Han will also discuss 33ml as an experimental platform that supports emerging artists and screen-based practices, bridging online and offline modes of production. Situating personal experience within wider media ecosystems, the session considers how small, intimate moments persist within the vast, continuous flow of images that define contemporary screen life.

1.30-2.30pm AEDT

Artist Talk: Gao Hang

In this artist talk, Gao Hang discusses his vivid, hyper-synthetic painting practice and how digital aesthetics, from gaming interfaces and CGI lighting to avatar bodies and virtual skin, shape contemporary perception and feeling. Working within a visual language of screens, simulation, and neon-lit virtual worlds, Gao’s paintings inhabit a space where the boundaries between human and synthetic, authentic and artificial, remain suspended. The talk explores how digital visual culture is translated into painting, addressing non-human bodies, colour as emotional atmosphere, humour and ambivalence, the “uncanny cute,” and the psychology of life inside networked visual environments.

2.30-3.30pm AEDT

Artist Talk: Ye Funa

Ye Funa speaks on life and art inside screen-based culture. Drawing from her work in Infinite Scroll / 荧屏沉溺, she reflects on how humour, persona, performance, and femininity operate within algorithmic systems of visibility and labour. Through digital aesthetics, online vernaculars, and the everyday rituals of the infinite scroll, she considers how subtle forms of critique, care, and resistance can emerge from within the screen itself.

Sunday 8 March, Nelson Meers Foundation Auditorium

1-2pm AEDT

Artist Talk: Li Hanwei (Slime Engine)

In this artist talk, Li Hanwei speaks about his artistic and curatorial practice and his role as co-founder of Slime Engine, an experimental online platform for digital art and contemporary culture. His talk explores how technology functions as a creative medium that reshapes perception, communication, and identity. Moving across screen-based art, internet culture, and curatorial experimentation, Li Hanwei reflects on how digital practices respond to emerging lifestyles, individual agency, and cultural diversity within an increasingly techno-utilitarian society shaped by continuous image circulation.

[Note: this talk will be translated]

2-3pm

Screening: Slime Engine
This curated screening by Slime Engine presents a selection of screen-based works exploring contemporary digital life through experimental moving image, sound, and online-native forms. Treating the internet as both medium and site, Slime Engine’s practice examines how technology shapes perception, identity, and everyday behaviour. The program brings together works that reflect emerging lifestyles, platform cultures, and hybrid aesthetics, offering audiences a glimpse into how artists respond critically and creatively to continuous image circulation. The screening expands Infinite Scroll / 荧屏沉溺 beyond the gallery, foregrounding the screen as a space of experimentation, tension, and possibility.