Kelani Nichole is a New York–based curator, technologist, and founder of TRANSFER, an experimental platform dedicated to immersive and critical media art. For more than a decade, she has supported artists working with virtual worlds, networked environments, and emerging technologies, while curating projects with institutions including Haus der Elektronischen Künste (HEK), Pioneer Works, and Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Her current research focuses on how digital artworks can be sustained beyond the fragile ecosystems of platforms and proprietary technologies. Through the development of TRANSFER Data Trust – a decentralised, artist-owned archive and speculative design project – Nichole is exploring new models for preservation, governance, and cultural value exchange that enable experimental media artworks to be maintained collectively across generations.

In this conversation, she reflects on the role artists play in understanding rapid technological change, the urgent need for trust-based infrastructures in an emerging AI-driven ecosystem, and how institutions and artist-led initiatives might work together to shape more open and resilient futures for networked culture.

What’s sparking your curiosity in media art right now, and what journey might your talk take us on?

AI is rapidly transforming our fundamental engagements with technology, and artists are key to understanding these changes. Immersive time-based media artists are gaining visibility across museums, foundations, and the art market. Their work over the past decade has reflected on the politics of technology in ways that ground us now, as we collectively process what’s next. That cultural memory is an immensely valuable resource, and experimental media practices are where it lives.

There are many examples of emergent artist-driven, open infrastructure across this and related fields. Projects that have inspired me include experimental models like EPOCH Gallery’s captivating releases, Trust’s decentralised programmes and Secret Server Club’s artist-run hosting that imagine new possibilities. Museum initiatives like New Museum's NEW INC’s artist incubator model and Whitney Museum's Artport demonstrate what’s possible when institutions embrace openness. Educational spaces like Gray Area [in San Francisco], the NYU [master’s programme] Integrated Design and Media, and Onassis ONX Studio [both in New York] offer support to studios experimenting with emerging tech. What impact might artists and institutions have by coming together at this moment to model an alternative future for networked culture?

Why are trust-based infrastructures essential right now, particularly in a field shaped by technological precarity and platform dependency?

The infrastructure of the internet is rapidly moving from “Software as a Service” (SaaS) and centralised “platform” experiences to an agent-driven ecosystem – where AI systems act on our behalf, and the data they draw on becomes the real source of value.

Museums, archives, artist-run organisations, and the artist studios themselves hold a vast amount of deeply interconnected, contextually rich data. And they bring with them care and governance models developed across generations and movements. Trust grounded in care, accountability and transparency is essential to building mutually-beneficial exchanges in the emerging intent-driven technology landscape.

Looking to artists we find many alternative futures that are already taking shape. And the tools to do this already exist. Linked open data and decentralised storage offer a concrete path toward experimenting with and fully owning our data. Webpages become API endpoints – collection pages no longer simply display objects for human visitors, but are also an interface layer through which structured data can circulate across systems, agents, and contexts. The Met is already demonstrating this thinking brilliantly with their open-access collection. It’s time more cultural organisations recognise the increasing value of the data they steward, and pursue infrastructure that empowers them to own and manage it on their terms. 

From your perspective, what role does LI-MA play in the long-term preservation of digital art in the Netherlands and internationally – and why do you think this kind of infrastructure matters at this moment?

LI-MA has been central to both the practice and the discourse of experimental media art preservation. Their support of artists like Rosa Menkman, one of the founding members of TRANSFER Data Trust, reveals what becomes possible when an artist has institutional backing for conservation, and the space to engage with the depth and rigor that preservation actually demands. Navigating museological methods, interpretation, technical drift, and documentation equipped the artist to think seriously about the long-term life of their work.

As the infrastructure of the internet shifts toward agent-driven systems that depend on structured data, the kind of deep, careful work LI-MA has been doing for years becomes not just valuable but essential.

Without giving too much away, what’s one question or idea you hope continues to resonate after your talk?

The media art of the last decade offers one of the clearest cultural records of the historical transition we are living through. Not only because it reflects on that transition, but because it is produced through the same materials, platforms, protocols, and power structures.

After this talk I hope people are asking themselves: What role do we (cultural stewards, artists) have in shaping the evolution of technology? What does it look like to build sovereign cultural infrastructure? What does it mean to remain open and accessible while still protecting intellectual property? How can we think about the long-term value, care, and governance of our data, ensuring it sustains 100 years into the future?  

Header: Portrait of Kelani Nichole