Kelly Chen is a writer, researcher, and memory worker based in Philly. Her poetry and games employ simple machines puppetry, early motion picture toys, and other presentation technologies to tell stories about American mysticism, memory, and grief.

Her performance work reveals the intersecting histories of computation, craft, and moving image as they relate to world-building and autonomous action in social and political life. She choreographs critical hypertexts that perform against obvious or encouraged uses of everyday objects and programs, instead using those objects as psychogeographic divination tools.

She studied Media Arts and Data Science at Northeastern University and is currently enrolled in a class through the School for Poetic Computation. Her current interests are in critical technology, criminality, American craft, and early moving image.

email me: chen.206.kelly@gmail.com

security culture/privacy
psychogeographies
jello
criminal intimacies
alice becker ho
autonomous action
hyperlink blue
tabletop role-play games

- reading "the university, too, must be destroyed" zine, lauren berlant on intimacy as world-making interview, the blue of distance by rebecca solnit, against innocence by jackie wang

- tattooing (taking new bookings in philly, worcester, and ny ;p email me)

- scheming piracy/critical technology study group with olivia

- curating visual media and performance @ firehouse, worcester

- riding my bike really fast in philly

- learning how to do cupping on my friends

Queer Sonic Aesthetics: Resistance and Memoriam in Pauline Oliveros’ Epigraphs in the Time of AIDS (2022)

Queer Citizenship, Surveillance, and Potential Criminality: Marginalized Bodies in the NYPD Surveillance Film Archives (2021)

Selected Exhibitions [Click to read more.]:

Selected Residencies/Fellowships
[Click to read more.]

Selected Public Programs [Click to read more.]:

Things that i have been thinking about:

Selected Research Writing:

Currently:

Selected Works [Click to learn more.]