Talking Digital Colonialism with Morehshin Allahyari

Morehshin Allahyari has been capturing the imagination of art lovers the world over since her Material Speculation: ISIS series from 2015-16 propelled her into the spotlight. For that project, she recreated objects destroyed by the ISIS terrorist organization in Iraq. For that ambitious endeavor, she used the few images she could collect of the artifacts themselves and then 3D printed them in a beautiful translucent material that revealed a USB — filled with the related data — buried deep inside the new works. Her latest project, which is performance-lecture that was commissioned and presented by New Museum affiliate Rhizome, is titled Physical Tactics for Digital Colonialism, and it builds on her concept of digital colonialism in relation to the technology of 3D printing. The lecture was just released online by Rhizome, but I wanted to invite her into our Brooklyn studio to talk about the issues surrounding digital colonialism. A special thanks to Prince Harvey, who provided the music for this episode. Titled “Stay Gold” you can find more about the artist on his website at www.princeharvey.com.