Interdisciplinary Presentation: Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), in partnership with The Kitchen, a New York City institution for experimental art and the avant-garde since 1971, proudly presents Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art, on view from May 2 to August 10, 2025. Spanning multiple galleries, this interdisciplinary presentation highlights Black contemporary artists' impact on new media and cultivation of technology in arts and culture. A shared presentation across MOCAD and The Kitchen, Code Switch celebrates the power of collaboration across institutions in a pivotal moment across the cultural landscape.

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Driven by its mission, MOCAD’s artistic vision emboldens its programs to be responsive to the state of the world and reflect the best of contemporary practice. The Museum’s 2025 artistic program is motivated by inquiries into how artists interpret collective histories. The Spring presentation of Code Switch brings together artists from across the globe to showcase the varying expressions of technology and the internet’s impact on contemporary art, honoring Black cultural legacies in the field of new media and time-based practices.

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Code Switch, initiated by The Kitchen, debuted as an archival presentation in partnership with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, and explored the periods pre-1960 and 1960–1990 through the visions of twenty-four artists and creative technologists. Drawing its title from André L. Brock’s groundbreaking text Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures (2020), this contemporary group exhibition explores the relationship between Black cultural production and the legacy of computation as a mode of machinic engagement and creative inspiration.

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Building on the historic archival exhibition presented in its first iteration in Fall 2024, Code Switch at MOCAD expands as a contemporary group exhibition celebrating Detroit as an integral meeting place where Black people have always been, and continue to be, pioneers in new media art and technologies. The city’s deep history with sound—where techno was invented and popularized—offers a framework for exploring the interconnectedness of Black people, bodies, and machines.

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“This is an exhibition that began with two questions: ‘What would the story of a networked Blackness, through and beyond the internet as we now know it, be if we told it as an avant-garde and experimental history?’ and ‘What would the art history of time-based media, new media, and digital technologies have looked like if it had included Black people into the canon from its inception?’” says Legacy Russell, Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen.

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Bringing together an intergenerational roster of over forty artists and counting, Code Switch unpacks the evolving relationship between body and machine, further shaped by the “age of the internet.” The exhibition spans a wide range of disciplines and materials, challenging and expanding the definition of “internet art.” In an era of accelerated mass communication, Black cultural production itself has been transformed, mutated, and modified through digital mediation. Surveying these shifts, Code Switch examines how artists and creative technologists disrupt the utopian promise of cyberspace as an equitable site of representation and liberation—interrogating its structures while also leveraging its generative force for inquiry and resistance.

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“Collaborating with The Kitchen to present Code Switch here in Detroit is a vital opportunity to explore the fluidity of identity, language, and culture in a city that has long been a center of creative technologies. At MOCAD, we are committed to presenting exhibitions that challenge perspectives and inspire new ways of thinking, and Code Switch embodies that mission by creating space for reflection, exchange, and innovation.” says MOCAD’s Co-Director/Artistic Director Jova Lynne.

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This exhibition presents a group of artists that each represent a unique approach to making and celebrates the diversity of Black culture that has defined new media and experimental art. The artist list includes: American Artist, manuel arturo abreu, Minne Atairu, Xenobia Bailey, Neta Bomani, Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, chukwumaa, Tony Cokes, Shawanda Corbett, Sofía Córdova, Taína Cruz, A.M. Darke, Stephanie Dinkins, L. Franklin Gilliam, Cameron A. Granger, fields harrington, Auriea Harvey, Juliana Huxtable, E. Jane, Devin Kenny, Kalup Linzy, Pope.L, Nandi Loaf, Pastiche Lumumba, Julie Mehretu, Marilyn Nance, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Ayodamola Okunseinde, Sondra Perry, Howardena Pindell, Venusloc (Vanessa Reynolds), Tabita Rezaire, Cameron Rowland, Kahlil Robert Irving, RaFia Santana, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Martine Syms, Wes Taylor, -{ john-henry }-[ thompson ], Muriel Tramis, Jack Whitten, and others to be announced.