14:00–16:00
On 10th April MIARD welcomes trans*disciplinary artist-designer Ren Loren Britton, and writer, cultural critic, and curator of design and digital culture, james taylor-foster to share their recent and ongoing research projects.
Ren Loren Britton will discuss their project Access Server, an email server that anonymizes, collects, and financially compensates access requests sent by disabled people to cultural institutions. They will also share insights from their broader practice, where trans*feminism, technoscience, and radical disability justice take center stage.
james taylor-foster will present aspects of their practice, including ideas around the expanded field of design in connection to the episodic exhibition ‘Worldglimpsing: Role Play and the Design of Alternate Realities’, opening in October 2025 at ArkDes in Sweden and in 2026 at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.
Ren Loren Britton is a trans*disciplinary artist-designer reverberating with trans*feminism, technosciences, radical pedagogy and disability justice. The hir-story of cyberfeminism informs their focus on trans*, as in, transgender and trans*, as in, crossing contexts with feminist concerns. They are interested in how socio-technical systems make lives accessible and pleasurable. Departing from the understanding that we live in a deeply ableist white supremacist world they follow justice oriented practices by rethinking and reenacting all terms of who and what fits (in on/offline spaces) with what friction (or not) and why. Disability justice emerges in their practice as a practice of upholding and valuing all non-normative bodies and minds.
Ren holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art and a Bachelor of Arts and of Fine Arts from Purchase College. Ren has held residencies at Sonic Acts, Künstler:innenhaus Büchsenhausen, MedienWerk NRW, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Sandberg Instituut, Rupert, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research 2021. They have exhibited with multiple institutions including Sonic Acts, MU Hybrid Art House, MACBA, Transmediale, HKW, Martin Gropius Bau, Schloss Solitude, Constant, ALT_CPH Biennale, Yale School of Art & Kunsthalle Osnabrück.
Reading: ‘Against Access’ by John Lee Clark https://audio.mcsweeneys.net/transcripts/against_access.html
james taylor-foster is a writer, cultural critic, and curator of design and digital culture trained in architecture. Since 2018 they have developed a number of curatorial projects including Cruising Pavilion: Architecture Gay Sex and Cruising Culture (ArkDes, 2019) and Space Popular: Value in the Virtual (ArkDes, 2018), alongside large-scale public installations with Studio Ossidiana, Swedish Girls, MYCKET, and others. They curated WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD – the first institutional exhibition to explore the culture and creative field of ASMR, which originated at ArkDes (Stockholm, 2020), toured to the Design Museum (London, 2022), and opened in Hong Kong in 2025. They have twice organised exhibitions for the Nordic Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura, most recently working with Joar Nango’s Girjegumpi: The Sámi Architecture Library (2023). In 2025, Worldglimpsing: Role Play and the Design of Alternate Realities opens its first chapter – an episodic exhibition presented by ArkDes and Nieuwe Insitituut.