SCILICET

Right before Venice, our studio went on a short trip to Milan, for the opening of a site specific installation of @sougwen Chung’s Body Machine (Meridians) series, at Palazzo Citterio, Brera. The work will be on display in the entrance hall of the museum, until July 14th. Thank you to Auronda Scalera, Clelia Patella, Alfredo Cramerotti, Angelo Crespi, Maria Paola Borgarino and Grande Brera teams. #bodymachinemeridians #sougwenchung #grandebrera #palazzocitterio

Venice! On Wednesday, May 6 at 17:00 Sougwen Chung will be sharing their new performance lecture Looming Operations at Berggruen Institute’s Palazzo Diedo, during the Biennale opening week. As part of Strange Rules, the exhibition curated by Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Adriana Rispoli, Chung’s performance lecture “Looming Operations” is the first public articulation of a next chapter: a three-body regulating loop between human, machine, and silkworm, in which each term conditions the others. The silkworm extrudes silk; the brain extrudes signal; the hand extrudes mark. Three bodies inscribing themselves, each producing an interior world (cocoon, drawing, computation) that is both protection and catalyst. Artists included in Strange Rules, alongside Mat and Holly: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Joshua Citarella, Primavera de Filippi, Simon Denny, Fabien Giraud, Young Kim, Agnieszka Kurant, Trevor Paglen, Lorenzo Senni, and terra0. After Chung’s performance lecture, Hans Ulrich Obrist will engage in conversation with all artists including Sougwen at 17:30. Thank you @berggruendiedo @hansulrichobrist @matdryhurst @holly_herndon @adrianarispoli_curator

Art Basel Hong Kong ~ find RECURSIONS, a new body of work by @sougwen Chung at booth Z01, in the Zero10 sector, as presented by @fellowship.xyz and @artxcode.io and curated by @eli_schein .

RECURSIONS at @artbasel Hong Kong Booth Z01 — Zero10 section RECURSION 0 — ink, silver, silk, linen, biofeedback and gestural data, robotic system W @fellowship.xyz @artxcode.io @studioscilicet Cc @eli_schein

More studio process ahead of @Sougwen Chung’s solo presentation RECURSIONS 遞迴 at @ArtBasel next week. The works extend Chung’s ongoing investigation into what the artist terms #OperationalArt: a framework for protocols, ethics, and conditions of co-creation between human, machine, and environment. Here, collaboration evolves beyond method, toward an ecology in which agency is distributed and coexistence becomes indistinguishable from authorship. Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 VIP Opening: March 25, 2026 On view: March 26–29, 2026

Busy few weeks at the studio, while @sougwen Chung has been working on RECURSIONS 遞迴 ~ a new body of work which will premiere in Hong Kong next week. Marking a pivotal expansion from live performance into painting, RECURSIONS 遞迴 brings together drawing, painting, and robotics within an installation, to ask where gesture begins when it is no longer authored by a single hand, but emerges through feedback between human and machine. #sougwenchung #drawingoperations #artbasel #studioscilicet #humanmachinecollaboration

It is here—the cover of The AI Art Magazine No. 3. Sougwen Chung is a Chinese Canadian artist and researcher whose practice intertwines drawing, robotics, and AI into what they describe as an “operational art practice,” structured through recurring operations of drawing, physical computing, sensing, performance, narration, and research-as-practice. Reclaiming a term from Cold War military doctrine, Sougwen shifts the meaning of “operational” away from strategy and warfare toward navigating complex terrains composed of bodies, tools, and environments. In their interview with Anika Meier, the conversation explores the role of performance, uncertainty, and drawing in understanding space as something that emerges relationally and temporally. From questions of documentation and embodiment to the future of human–machine collaboration, Sougwen outlines a vision of technological development grounded not in extraction but in empathy and shared becoming. At the same time, they reflect on the term “AI art”: “I have always found the term ‘AI art’ to be somewhat restrictive, with some specific political connotations that I don’t align with… I can see the value there, but I’m also interested in continuity and legacy. I’m inspired by drawing.” The cover features the installation Body Machine (Meridians), in which suspended biomimetic structures render the entanglement of bodies and computational processes as a spatial experience. Space here is not a neutral background but something that emerges between gestures, signals, and attention—a relational field that lies at the center of this issue’s theme, Spatial Intelligence. The AI Art Magazine No. 3 will be released on April 4 and is now available for pre-order at art-magazine.ai. Our thanks to @sougwen and @anika for their contribution to this edition. #number3 #spatialintelligence #thefirstartificialfrontier

January traditions! After speaking with Hans Ulrich Obrist exactly one year ago — at World Economic Forum Davos last year as a Cultural Leader — studio founder and director Sougwen Chung was invited to join the Serpentine Galleries director and curator again last week, at DLD Conference Munich, in conversation with fellow researcher and roboticist Carol E. Reiley. #sougwenchung #drawingoperations #humanmachinecollaboration #dld2026 #worldeconomicforum

Installation views — Ecologies of Becoming — solo exhibition @kunstvereinheilbronn @ipai_foundation “Our work serves as a durational laboratory for investigating these relational modes, through research on emerging technologies and bioscience, as well as critical theory and the philosophy of technology, and knowledge practices like qi gong and Vedic meditation. I physically paint alongside robotic system to maintain a tactile, embodied connection fo the creative process. To borrow and remix Wittgenstein, the limits of my line are the limits of my world. Tactility is not merely maintaining; it’s a recurrence of embodiment. It propels the computational back into the physical. It rewrites the rules.”

Lately at the studio 🌱 Film stills taken from a recent process film by @beterputterworth ~ more soon. #sougwenchung #drawingoperations #studioscilicet

The body is a generative system, 2025. Spatial data, custom robotics, led mesh SPATIALITY, D.O.U.G._6 Installation view Ecologies of Becoming exhibition at KUNSTVEREIN HEILBRONN, Germany, 2025 “I’m drawn to the de- and re-materialisation of aura through meditation and biomateriality. The investigation of aura, authorship, and artistic agency serves to foreground creative freedom and artistic intent. For me, aura becomes part of a spiritual necessity inherent in manifesting one’s interior worlds.” Excerpt from a recent conversation with @theisabellaarchive for @hube.magazine @kunstvereinheilbronn

Morgen, 17 Uhr, Führung durch die Ausstellung „Sougwen Chung -Ecologies of Becoming“. Eintritt und Führung frei #sougwenchung #studioscilicet #ipaifoundation #ipaiheilbronn Fotos: Frank Kleinbach