2026 International Conference and Workshops for Arts Professionals

This month Para Site presents its 8th International Conference and 9th Workshops for Arts Professionals, convening artists, thinkers, and creatives from around the world in Hong Kong.

“Unsubscribe All!”
2026 Para Site International Conference
August 23, 2026

“Unsubscribe All!” explores how speculative practices are reshaping our understanding of a technologically mediated present. Over the course of a full-day programme, you’re invited to unsubscribe from any and all versions of the future and reimagine our relationships to the technologies that surround and shape us.

The gathering brings together alternate perspectives on the ways in which technology is far more than a neutral tool. Driven by a relentless pursuit of innovation and corporate interests, everyday digital systems—from predictive algorithms to platform networks—are reorganising the ways we think, communicate, and orient ourselves towards our futures. When participation is no longer a choice and the terms of our reality are defined by megastructures, we are left with little space to collectively negotiate what is to come.

Participants: Stanley Qiufan Chen (Hong Kong), Iris Long (London/Beijing), Bahar Noorizadeh (Amsterdam), Clara Che Wei Peh (Singapore), Sophie Penkethman-Young (Sydney), Charis Poon (Hong Kong), Winnie Soon (Hong Kong/London), Ziyang Wu (Hangzhou), Günseli Yalcinkaya (London), Liam Young (Los Angeles). 

The artists and cultural producers presenting as part of Unsubscribe All! each locate sites of friction and absurdity within dominant narratives, prompting us to evaluate the promises that technologies proffer. Rather than merely offering solutions, their speculative artistic and storytelling practices construct alternate worlds using myths, toolkits, and methodologies. Dislodging assumptions of a singular and inevitable future, they reveal just how fragile dominant narratives can be to suggest that there are a multitude of ways to inhabit the present.

The morning session considers how practitioners and digital subcultures employ language systems, storytelling, and worlding strategies to actively intervene in and reshape the cultural realities woven into technological advancement. The afternoon session turns towards questions of access, agency, and collective action, highlighting practices across the Asia-Pacific that draw on open-source cultures and collaborative networks to cultivate more equitable and accessible ecosystems.

The conference is free of charge and welcomes anyone interested in imagining diverse ways of living with, and through, the technologies shaping our lives today. 

Register for your spot here.

2026 Para Site Workshops for Arts Professionals
August 24–30, 2026

In connection to Unsubscribe All!, Para Site's 9th Workshops for Arts Professionals brings together 13 curators, artists, researchers, writers, and cultural workers from across the world to Hong Kong. Together, they will interrogiate the ways in which technology operates as socially embedded infrastructure and envision new methods for artistic production. Across seven days of intensive closed-door workshops, site visits, lectures, and facilitated discussions, the cohort will engage with regional and international practitioners to address questions around resource sharing, cross-disciplinary collaboration, community building, and access to technology, with a primary focus in the Asia Pacific region.

Facilitators include Mara Karagianni (London/Brussels) and Winnie Soon (Hong Kong/London), artists researching collaborative publishing and queer coding; Clara Che Wei Peh (Singapore), a curator investigating emerging technologies in Southeast Asian art ecosystems; Sophie Penkethman-Young (Sydney), an artist and digital producer examining digital museum culture and internet-based practices; Ashley Lee Wong (Hong Kong), a researcher exploring the cultural economies of art and technology; Ziyang Wu (Hangzhou), an artist employing AI and worlding strategies to critique digital societies; and Günseli Yalcinkaya (London), an internet folklorist researching online culture and digital myth-making.

The 2026 cohort includes: Franco Brobio (Quezon City), Jeremy Chen (London/Hong Kong), John Chow Ho Fung (Hong Kong), Guo Cheng (Shanghai), Erfan Ghiasi (Tehran), Danny Hartanto Kristiawan (Surabaya), Ana Marinkovic (Barcelona), Iacopo Prinetti (Turin), Crassula Shang, (Chiang Mai/San Francisco), Lua Vollaard (Amsterdam), canvaswan (Cologne), Ailsa Wong (Hong Kong), and Hui Ye (Vienna). Participants have been selected through an open call.

Convened by Yuanyu Li and Stefan Luk.

This year’s International Conference and Workshops for Arts Professionals is made possible by venue support from the Department of Art History at The University of Hong Kong and Current Plans, with generous residency support from Jeannie Vu, Jehan Chu, and LACMA Digital Leaders.

About Para Site
Para Site, a non-profit and artist-founded contemporary art and cultural space in Hong Kong, champions original developments in contemporary art by centring artistic voices and creative innovation. Through developing benchmark exhibitions, commissioning transformative works, and cultivating new talent, Para Site foregrounds contemporary art’s capacity to reshape our understanding of society. Since its founding in 1996 by seven Hong Kong-based artists as an alternate cultural space in the city, the organisation has mounted over 300 exhibitions locally and globally, hosted over 80 international residents, and delivered over 1,000 public programmes. All of Para Site’s activities are freely accessible to the public.