ECHOES exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH.

In 2020, Peter Wu+ founded and created EPOCH, an artist-run virtual experiment that functions as an inclusive community building platform inviting established and emerging artists working in both digital and analog mediums to participate. Being primarily artist-centric, EPOCH has established itself as a virtual destination that challenges the status quo with its critical and innovative approach to curation and exhibition building.

For the last two years, EPOCH has held ten virtual exhibitions, with every new show being a milestone in terms of scale, as well as spectacularity. At EPOCH gallery, an exhibition is not only about displaying artworks, it is about context and relevance, all in one. EPOCH’s virtual landscapes reimagine the real life settings, resulting in a series of heterotopias, the spaces of otherness as frightening as captivating one.

Swarm City by Rael San Fratello, ECHOES exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH.

The last EPOCH’s show titled ECHOES. It is an experimental collaboration between EPOCH gallery and LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab, featuring the latter's grant recipients: American Artist, Lukas Avendaño, EYIBRA (Abraham Brody), NNUX (Ana Lopez), and Oswaldo Erreve, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork and Rhett LaRue, Lawerence Lek, Jen Liu, Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, Sarah Rara.

This virtual exhibition investigates the excavation area of LACMA’s east campus, by digitally remodeling its landscape and incorporating the 3D sculptures, architectural renderings, and digital interventions around the place. In the tradition of speculative architecture, ECHOES deliberately creates a fictitious narrative about the real physical space in order to understand the social landscape that resonates with the sound of underrepresented voices in the most natural way.

Urban Light by American Artist, ECHOES exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH.

Before we start to talk about ECHOES, I have a somewhat strange introductory question. Can we, very hypothetically, say that ECHOES is a continuation of PHANTOM LIMB [another exhibition by EPOCH from October 2020]? Two different exhibitions cover the liminal space between LACMA’s already eliminated building and the one yet to appear…

Thank you, Kristina, for taking an interest in EPOCH and following our exhibitions! Yes, ECHOES is a continuation of PHANTOM LIMB. PHANTOM LIMB’s environment was modeled after the demolition of LACMA’s Ahmanson building and ECHOES begins in the excavation area where the forthcoming building for the permanent collection is slated to debut. A phantom limb is the sensation felt in the area when an appendage of the body has been amputated, so I was bridging the feeling of loss for that building to the loss of loved ones during the height of COVID. At the same time, both exhibitions address the fragility of the institution and the issues of representation within them. The latest exhibition is an echo of PHANTOM LIMB but the artists, within the current exhibition, have expanded upon ideas of identity to include post-humanism and gender multiplicities, as well as addressing concerns over land ownership and investigating speculative histories. There will be a third and final part of EPOCH’s LACMA saga being released in early 2023.

Pour une poignée de dollars by Mohamed Bourouissa, Phantom Limb exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH

How do you build the body of an exhibition? Is there some red thread when you locate specific projects?

The exhibitions always begin with a proposed environment that is tied, metaphorically, to current events. The sites I choose are usually emblematic ruins of late-stage capitalism. The exhibition’s environment provides a critical context for the artists to respond to and each artist responds to the environment how they wish. For ECHOES, which is a collaboration with LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab, I was restricted by copyright to use any of the public artworks on the LACMA campus, so I had modeled the empty platform where Chris Burden’s Urban Light famously is and American Artist claimed that space proposing a powerful artwork that brought to light an alternate perspective of history and human experience. Rael San Fratello responded to the environment by creating, Swarm City, which is a looming specter over Los Angeles addressing the issues of homelessness. ECHOES is an uncanny digital twin of LACMA’s surrounding campus, this closeness to reality and time/space is more prevalent than in previous exhibitions, amplifying the friction between the works and their respective virtual/physical sites.

It’s fascinating how the digital realm becomes the platform for marginalized communities. I mean, in virtual reality where people can create their digital identity from scratch, artists decide to speak about race, gender, sexual orientation, or physical ability in the most inventive way.

I don’t think digital identities are necessarily created from scratch but speak to desires of how one wants to be represented and can be an expansion or investigation of identity. There is more freedom in pushing the boundaries of identity within virtual spaces / metaverses since virtuality is inherently more fluid and less confining. EPOCH has strived to amplify marginalized voices as I felt there were not enough physical spaces actively presenting the multitudes of diversity. The digital realm is where we can potentially imagine a more just world but, at this moment, it is a proposed reality far from what some wish it could be. We are even seeing now, with the boom of NFTs, that digital marketplaces replicate many of the same problematic patterns of IRL representation which shut out the voices EPOCH is trying to elevate. There is still much work to be done.

Assimilation/Annihilation by Peter Wu, Wonderland exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH

It seems like some kind of “otherness” migrated to EPOCH from your own artistic practice. Just for a moment, can we switch to your personal experience, Peter? Was it hard for you to proceed with Assimilation/Annihilation, and WONDERLAND [exhibition by EPOCH from March 2021] on a personal level?

EPOCH is an accumulation of experiences from my personal and professional life. Being Asian American, WONDERLAND was a very personal show for me. It was created in reaction to the height of anti-Asian sentiment during COVID. I usually do not feature myself as an artist within EPOCH exhibitions but I felt if I was going to curate an exhibition of Asian artists of the diaspora (surprisingly, through my research, it has been over a decade since there had been an exhibition about Asian diasporas mounted in the US) then I had to walk alongside the participating artists and be just as vulnerable. Sadly, this exhibition opened ten days before the Atlanta shootings, taking the lives of eight people, six of whom were Asian women.

Replicants exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH

You modeled the environment of ECHOES after a real-life area in Los Angeles, you created the world of REPLICANTS after Queen’s Road Central in Hong Kong, FREEPORT was based on blueprints of Luxembourg Freeport, WONDERLAND digitally replicates an abandoned amusement park in China… Why is it important for you to model virtual environments after real physical places?

The friction created by tethering virtual environments to charged physical locations allows for critical conversation to be had around what these spaces represent and the historical and socio-political events that surround it. This type of speculative criticality is more difficult to achieve through visualizations located within fantasy.

AAG by Qianqian Ye and Tiare Ribeaux, Replicants exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH

EPOCH’s virtual exhibitions are rich with context, and you are responsible for placing particular works within fabricated context. How do you select the right elements for a shared environment? How do you reach some sort of coexistence?

I work very closely with artists to help realize their visions and I’m lucky to work with artists that have a solid practice. These artists know what they are doing, who they are, and can speak clearly about what their works are about. What goes in the exhibitions is fairly loose and involves a lot of trust from both sides. I’m an artist so I love talking about works, ideas, and possibilities, and artists are usually open to such conversations and we work together to get the best presentation. At times I do have to nudge artists in the right direction, especially those who haven’t created for a virtual space, because we all know, when you give artists no restrictions we sometimes tend imagine all sorts of fantastical things and my role is remind them to think of the virtual space as an extension for the expansive ideas within their actual practice.

Approximation by Katja Novitskova, Replicants exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH

As I know, you were reluctant to work with NFT at first. What convinced you otherwise? And what is so special about NFTs from EPOCH gallery?

When the NFT craze was happening in early 2021, many artists I had worked with said EPOCH was poised to participate. I was reluctant because I was aware that anytime you bring money into a project it can tend to corrupt its initial intention, but I also saw this as an opportunity to support the artists who believe in this project. I wanted to approach NFTs in a different way that didn’t replicate the same structures of what was going on in the current NFT ecosystem or the artworld in general. I realized that what was missing was context and criticality on NFT marketplaces and on “online viewing rooms’', so it was an obvious and organic evolution to mint the entire virtual exhibition as an NFT which had not been done at the time (and I’m not sure if it has been since).

Collectors receive a fully navigable stand-alone app of the entire exhibition containing the works of all its participating artists, in full 8k and hi-res audio, and can be viewed on VR headsets. I also wanted to introduce an equitable model that splits profits to each participating artist. Many of the artists in the exhibitions and, myself included, did not want to participate in the environmental damage that proof of work blockchains caused so I decided to launch on Algorand which is a pure proof of stake chain that is climate friendly.

I see EPOCH exhibitions as an allegory of the events of the past two years, so in a way, by acquiring an EPOCH NFT you become a participant in a model attempting to circumvent systemic structures while becoming a custodian of a cultural time capsule.

Swamp City by Alice Bucknell, Freeport exhibition. Image courtesy of EPOCH

ECHOES exhibition ends on May 13th, while being followed by a new show titled CRYOSPHERE. Can you offer a glimpse of what it would be?

CRYOSPHERE is inspired by and modeled after the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska. Climate change has caused ice forms in Alaska to disappear at a disproportionately faster rate than other glaciated regions on Earth. These vast rivers of ice perform a crucial role in regulating the planet’s atmosphere and these arctic areas have been called “ground zero” for climate change, as warming temperatures and melting sea ice impact local communities and influence global precipitation and temperature levels. The Matanuska Glacier has lost over 84 million tons of ice since 2002.

In June, the entirety of the CRYOSPHERE exhibition will be released as a singular NFT containing a compilation of artworks by participating artists and will be minted on Algorand. A portion of the proceeds will go to support Cook Inletkeeper, an Alaskan non-profit organization which engages with local communities, Indigenous-led movements, and a strong coalition of groups working to build a bridge to the future by protecting wild salmon landscapes and addressing the climate crisis.

CRYOSPHERE exhibition will be launched on May 14th at EPOCH gallery, featuring Carolina Caycedo, Patricia Echeverria Liras, Jiabao Li, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Nathan Shafer, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Studio Above & Below.