Drawing on a series of recent curatorial projects, curator and writer Milia Xin Bi will reflect on a body of work that explores the material, cultural, and temporal dimensions of data and digital infrastructures. These projects consider how data has moved beyond an abstract computational entity to become a cultural and material condition shaping contemporary life, affecting how we understand memory, infrastructure, and the environments we inhabit.

The talk will then focus on Bi's current exhibition Can Meeple Escape the Neurophoria?, developed during her Curator-in-Residence programme at FACT Liverpool. She will share the research journey behind the project, outlining why tabletop gaming became a conceptual framework for the exhibition, and how our sense of agency is increasingly mediated by intelligent systems, algorithms, and automated infrastructures.

Looking ahead, Milia will also introduce early ideas for her upcoming residency at esea contemporary, which will explore unexpected adaptations, ‘accidents’, forms of agency, and everyday workarounds in our encounters with complex technological systems.