How Digital Artists Are Hijacking & Re‑Designing Institutions

In episode two of this two-part conversation for the CAA Conversations podcast, multidisciplinary artists Lineadeluz (Darleen Martinez) and Edgar Fabián Frías shift from institutional critique toward speculative possibility, examining how digital practices can reimagine pedagogy, knowledge production, and cultural stewardship. Drawing from examples in augmented reality, AI art, queer archives, and self-instituted platforms such as Lineadeluz's The Selfie Institute for Selfie Studies (SISS) and Frías’s MOMMM (Museum of Multidimensional Mutant Maps), they consider how institutions can be performed, hacked, and collectively re-authored through care-based and community-driven frameworks. The discussion explores digital pedagogy as a slippery and relational technology that resists fixed hierarchies of legitimacy and authority, particularly within systems that continue to marginalize experimental, interdisciplinary, and Indigenous knowledge practices. Martinez and Frías reflect on speculative infrastructures as tools for redistribution, proposing models of institutional governance rooted in futurity, embodiment, and collective imagination. Together, they position the institution not as a static structure, but as an evolving performance, one shaped by queer worldmaking, technological magic, and the ongoing labor of re-envisioning how knowledge is created, shared, and sustained. The original podcast exists on the College Art Association's Website at: https://www.collegeart.org/programs/p... Timestamps 00:00 – Introduction – Performing Knowledge Podcast S2 E2 00:20 – Host Lineadeluz & guest Edgar Fabián Frías (artists & educators) 01:03 – Recap of Part 1: trauma, institutional critique, “purging” 01:40 – Who decides what knowledge is official? Institutional legibility 02:20 – From critique to possibility: digital knowledge repositories 04:11 – Book spotlight: Self‑Institution Terminology Audit (OJAI, 2025) 05:02 – Recursive institutionality – institutions constantly re‑asserting themselves 06:00 – Key definitions: institution, institutionality, institutionhood 07:10 – Directory highlights: Bureau of Melodramatic Research, PITTI, Self‑Luminous Society 08:15 – LTTR booklet reference (queer & trans publishing) 10:21 – The Institute for Other Intelligences – speculative media study (Mashinka Hakopian) 13:19 – Encoded – AR intervention at The Met (Native artists) 15:19 – Never Forget – overlay “Indian Land” on Cropsey landscape 20:15 – Acosia Red Elk x Queen Victoria – reclaiming ancestral presence 22:15 – Launch of the Selfie Institute for Selfie Studies (SISS) 24:19 – SISS mission & vision: digital self‑representation hub 25:09 – Website mock‑up: selfiestitute.com (AI‑generated space) 27:27 – Sample SISS course catalog: selfie economics, necropolitics, spirituality 31:38 – Wrong Biennial – decentralized global digital exhibition 32:11 – Throwing Digital Bricks – queer protest against algorithmic oppression 34:15 – Holographic Selves – AI‑driven choose‑your‑own‑adventure exhibit 38:40 – Token‑based governance: voting power via selfie contributions 42:19 – Embracing fluid, uncertain institutional models 44:14 – Article: “Digital Art & the Knowledge Gap” (Alexandra Crouwers) 48:05 – Social Software initiative – UCLA DMA (open‑source, AI, data) 56:03 – Museum of Multidimensional Mutant Maps (MOMMM) – Indigenous futurism project 57:15 – Reclaiming maps: Wixárika Nierika vs. colonial cartography Resources Mentioned Self‑Institution Terminology Audit https://jointintelligence.org/article... LTTR Magazine https://lttr.org/journal The Institute for Other Intelligences – Mashinka Hakopian https://www.xartistsbooks.com/books/t... Encoded at The Met (AR exhibition) https://www.encodedatthemet.com/ Digital Bricks: Queer Acts of Protest (Wrong Biennial) https://newart.city/show/throwingdigi... Holographic Selves Exhibition https://holographic-selves.netlify.app/ SISS https://selfieinstitute.com/ “Digital Art & the Knowledge Gap of the Contemporary Art World” – Alexandra Crouwers https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/digita... Social Software – UCLA DMA initiative https://dma.ucla.edu/initiatives/soci... Indigenous Futurisms as Planetary Assemblage – Kira Xonorika https://artlab.hyundai.com/editorial/... MOMMM https://www.edgarfabianfrias.org/the-... Lineadeluz (Darleen Martínez) https://lineadeluz.me/ Edgar Fabián Frías https://www.edgarfabianfrias.org/