East of Borneo joins Now Instant to celebrate the publication of All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace.

The evening will feature a screening of Charmaine Poh’s in the shadow of the cosmic, followed by a discussion with Daniela Lieja Quintanar, Talia Heiman, and Kira Xonorika.

The publication All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2026) accompanies the research, exhibition, screening, and performance program presented at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) from September 12, 2024 - February 23, 2025 as part of the Getty's PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Rooted in indigenous belief systems and feminist, queer, and decolonial thought, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace addressed one of the most pressing issues of our time—the impact of artificial intelligence—by exploring ancestral alternatives for its future. Edited by Daniela Lieja Quintanar with Talia Heiman, the publication includes text contributions by Nora Al-Badri, Minne Atairu, Back to Back Theatre, Stephanie Dinkins, Annie Dorsen, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Interspecifics, Kite with Scott Benesiinaabandan and Jason Edward Lewis, Charmaine Poh, João Ribas, Sarah Rosalena, and Kira Xonorika, and documentation of performances and screenings by Arca, Nao Bustamante, rafa esparza, MUXX, and Manthia Diawara.

The publication marks the culmination of a multi-year research, exhibition, performance, and publication project. João Ribas, Steven D. Lavine Executive Director of REDCAT and Vice President for Cultural Partnerships was director of the project. The exhibition was curated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar with Talia Heiman. The performance program was organized by Edgar Miramontes, Katy Dammers, Daniela Lieja Quintanar, and Talia Heiman. The publication was made possible with the guidance of Adriana Widdoes and the East of Borneo team. The book design is by Ella Gold.

in the shadow of the cosmic is a performance-lecture exploring the multiplicity of the avatar. Expanding THE YOUNG BODY UNIVERSE series, the character E-Ching is placed in conversation with vocal clones, anime characters, 3D influencers, and other entities in a vast digital constellation. The performance-lecture traces a technological lineage from the East Asian economic miracle of the 1980s and '90s and the emergence of techno-orientalism, positing that the digital image of the East Asian femme body was borne at a confluence of these historical flows. Pertinent to the work is the recursive logic of Daoism, in which image, self and cosmology reverberate in endless loops. Combining video, live performance and sound, in the shadow of the cosmic is a call to re-open questions of being and becoming.

in the shadow of the cosmic was presented as a performance in conjunction with the exhibition Proof of Personhood: Identity & Authenticity in the Face of AI at Singapore Art Museum. At REDCAT the video was presented as part of the exhibition All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace.

HD Video (color, sound), 30:33 min, Motion graphics: Jawn Chan, Audio generation: Jawn Chan, Ashley Hi, Chatbot customization: Ashley Hi, 3D animation: Brandon Tay, Movement artists: Sonia Kwek, Chloe Chotrani, Music: “Mutualism” by Anise

East of Borneo is CalArts’ online magazine of contemporary art and its history as considered from Los Angeles. We publish new essays and interviews alongside a multimedia archive curated in collaboration with our readers. East of Borneo Books sees the extension of our mission into print, calling attention to a diverse range of critical writing on the visual culture of Los Angeles.

Talia Heiman serves as Associate Curator at the San José Museum of Art. From 2023-2025 she worked as Assistant Curator at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT), Los Angeles, in support of the exhibition and performance program All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (part of the Getty PST: Art and Science Collide initiative), and from 2020-2023 as Curatorial Assistant of Is it morning for you yet?, the 58th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Her writing has been published in numerous exhibition catalogues as well as in BOMB Magazine and Art21. Heiman holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and a BA from New York University, where she studied Art History and Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Studies.

Thomas Lawson is an artist with a diverse, project-driven output. He has exhibited paintings at Metro Pictures in New York, Anthony Reynolds in London, LAXART, David Kordansky Gallery, and AFProjects in Los Angeles, and in numerous other galleries and museums around the world. Surveys of his work have been organized by the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art at La Jolla, the CCA in Glasgow, and the Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas. He has created temporary public works in New York, New Haven, Glasgow, Newcastle, and Madrid. He has written extensively about contemporary art for various publications, including Artforum, Flash Art, and Afterall, and an anthology of his writing, Mining for Gold, was published in 2005 by JRP/Ringier. From 1979 until 1992 he, along with Susan Morgan, published and edited REAL LIFE Magazine, an irregular publication by and about artists interested in the relationship between art and life. An anthology of REAL LIFE Magazine was published by Primary Information, NY in 2007. Between 2001 and 2009 he was co-editor of Afterall, a journal of contemporary art based in both London and Los Angeles. Since 2009 he has been editor in chief of East of Borneo, an online art magazine and collaborative archive based in Los Angeles. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting and the Rabkin Award for Art Writing as well as three Artist Fellowships from the NEA. From 1991-2021 he served as dean of the Art School at CalArts.

Daniela Lieja Quintanar is Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Programs at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT). Her curatorial practice takes inspiration from everyday life, spaces of political struggle, and communal forms of knowledge production. For the 2024 PST Art, Getty Initiative she curated All Watched Over by Machine of Loving Grace at REDCAT and Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Lieja Quintanar served as Chief Curator and Director of Programming at LACE (2016–2022). For REDCAT she organized The Feminist Art Program (1970–75): Cycles of Collectivity and commissioned solo shows by Lisa Alvarado, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Hande Sever, Abigail Collins and Guadalupe Maravilla. She was awarded the Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship (2018) for Intergalactix: against isolation/contra el aislamiento (2021). Lieja Quintanar was part of the curatorial team of the MexiCali Biennial (2018–19). Since 2015, she has been part of Los Angeles Tenants Union collaborating with the East Side Local/Union de Vecinos.

Charmaine Poh (b. 1990) is an artist from Singapore working across media, moving image, andperformance to peel apart, interrogate, and hold ideas of agency, repair, and the body across worlds. She aligns herself with strategies of visibility, opacity, deviance, and futurity.

She has exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum, the Seoul Museum of Art, Blindspot Gallery, REDCAT LA, Huis Marseille, and the 60th Venice Biennale - Foreigners Everywhere, among others. In 2019, she was one of Forbes Asia’s 30 under 30 in the arts. Her work has been collected by institutions such as Vega Foundation, Sunpride Foundation, and KADIST. She was recently named Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year for 2025 and is a recipient of the Villa Romana Prize 2026. 

Based between Berlin and Singapore, she is a co-founder of the magazine Jom and a member of Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research (AFSAR).

Kira Xonorika is an interdisciplinary artist and author based in Tovaangar (Los Angeles, California), working across generative AI, film, robotics, fashion, sculpture, performance, and text. Xonorika’s work explores the connections between technoscience, interspecies and planetary intelligence, worldbuilding, Indigenous sovereignty, and ecology. They have received awards, residencies, and fellowships from the Vera List Center, Akademie der Künste, Dreaming Beyond AI, Momus and Eyebeam, Hyundai Artlab, the Max Ernst Museum and Ars Electronica. Kira's work has been widely exhibited across the Americas, Asia, and Europe, at institutions such as the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, E-WERK Luckenwalde, Honor Fraser Gallery, arebyte London, and the Mercosur Biennial. Publishing credits include e-flux, Momus, C Magazine, and Hyundai Artlab. In 2024, she spearheaded Future Memory Lab, South America’s first GenAI art residency, with support from the Swiss Arts Council. Kira’s work is in the collection of the Denver Art Museum, marking the first artwork in the museum’s collection to incorporate generative AI technology.

Please note: seating for the screening of Charmaine Poh’s in the shadow of the cosmic, followed by a discussion with Daniela Lieja Quintanar, Talia Heiman, and Kira Xonorika is limited. Doors open thirty minutes prior to the listed showtime. Your RSVP does not guarantee you a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served.