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Lena Chen

February 11, 2021 ·

Artist Lena Chen wears decorative headgear made with leather and chains in a photo studio setting.
Photo of Lena Chen. Photo by Molly Baber.

中文版本

Lena Chen is a Chinese American writer and artist creating performances and socially engaged art in live and virtual contexts. Awarded the Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award and “Best Emerging Talent” at B3 Biennial of the Moving Image (Frankfurt), she has exhibited and performed at Transmediale (Berlin), Die Digitale (Düsseldorf), Färgfabriken (Stockholm), and Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. She earned a B.A. in sociology from Harvard University and is currently completing an MFA at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art. She has spoken at Oxford, Yale, Stanford, SXSW, HOPE, and re:publica. She has been awarded grants and residencies from Millay Colony for the Arts, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Office of Public Art, Burning Man Global Arts Fund, Civic Media Lab, and Women’s Media Center. She is currently a Freshworks artist-in-residence at Kelly Strayhorn Theater, developing an interactive game about social media censorship and de-platforming of sex workers.

Artist Website: lenachen.com
Artist Instagram: instagram.com/elleperil
Artist Twitter: twitter.com/lenachen

Presentation Description

Since the 2018 passage of FOSTA/SESTA in the US, sex workers and erotic content producers have been systematically marginalized by mainstream social media and payment processors while increasingly becoming the subject of surveillance through facial recognition and data-scraping software. Numerous sites have shut down, disconnecting sex workers from clients and peer support communities and further exposing them to danger by forcing them to work in isolation.

In the game OnlyBans, the player assumes the character of a sex worker establishing their online brand and dreaming of lucrative paydays while living in fear of cyber creeps and account deletion by Big Tech platforms. As the player attempts to evade censorship and surveillance, the game reveals how “free” the Internet really is when you are engaged in stigmatized labour subject to policing and criminalization. Finally, the game offers a vision of how marginalized communities might band together to protest these unjust policies and create better alternatives.

Made on the Twine platform in collaboration with Maggie Oates and Goofy Toof, OnlyBans is inspired by the aesthetics of everyday digital platforms and devices. Incorporated into the gameplay are real images and videos sourced by open call and contributed by sex workers and erotic content producers that have been censored on social media.

Project Website: OnlyBansGame.com

Lena Chen will be speaking at Feminist Craft of Care for Times of Crisis, a presentation panel on May 13, 2021 from 6:30PM to 8:00PM PDT.

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Digital Carnival Z

Digital Carnival Z was created on on the occupied, traditional and ancestral territories of the Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking peoples, including the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) and other Coast Salish peoples.Copyright © 2025 · Cinevolution Media Arts Society - [site by goodyBank ]

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