Mac Andre Arboleda

Mac Andre Arboleda is an artist exploring the sickness of the Internet through research and dialogue, art and text, organising and publishing. They are the Founding President of the UP Internet Freedom Network, a youth-led organisation committed to digital justice through advocacy campaigns, educational discussions, and special projects. They have completed artist residencies hosted by Beta Festival, transmediale, Akademie Schloss Solitude, ESRC Digital Good Network, Medialab Matadero, and Dreaming Beyond AI. A recipient of the Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award in 2024, they received an honorary mention at Ars Electronica's State of the ART(ist) in 2023 for their film on wildlife surveillance, Pictures of Nothing (co-directed with Rollyna Domingo).

Mac's practice looks into the incapacities and capacities of digital life, informed by their upbringing in the Philippines, once called the social media capital of the world. After establishing a digital rights organisation during the pandemic, they shifted towards artistic collaboration and research, engaging with urgent questions around digitality, from disinformation and censorship to labour and identity. Their projects have ranged from salvaging selfies in a PR campaign benefitting the grandson of a dead dictator to programming a radio broadcast commemorating one of the world's most notorious computer viruses. During the residency, Mac's research will centre on vulnerability and intimacy within discussions around seduction and security. By questioning narratives of securitisation around artificial intelligence, the project will explore how trust and technology shape human and human-machine relationships in contemporary digital culture.