Join artist Ambie Drew and theorist Alex Quicho for an afternoon of talks and performance at arebyte Digital Art Centre, alongside sound artist and performer, Guili Dal Lago.
This event is part of the public programme for Soft Bodies, Cold Machines, a solo exhibition by Ambie Drew exploring what it means to grow up online in a world shaped by targeted advertising and AI-generated imagery through interactive installations and film.
Ambie will present the research and creative process behind Soft Bodies, Cold Machines, which is on view until 2 August 2026 at arebyte Digital Art Centre. Her presentation offers insight into the themes, thinking, and questions shaping the work. The works confront the audience with the impossibility of disentangling oneself from our curated digital persona. Capturing the anxiety of being consumed by the content algorithmic systems feed us.
This will be followed by Alex Quicho’s Girlstack Performance Lecture, an exploration of the ‘Girl’ as a technological and social construct. Drawing on ideas from Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females, and Bogna Konior’s writing on the ‘Girl’ as an inhuman, machinic category, the lecture-performance moves between theory and speculation.
Giuli Dal Lago will perform in the foyer as Jennifer, a latex-masked baby doll character in a Lolita maid dress, blonde wig, and rhinestone heels. Serving drinks from the bar and moving through the crowd, Jennifer will exist simultaneously as servant and object of observation; the raised bar stage becoming both functional and performative space. A curated soundtrack blending hyperpop, cutecore, and soundscapes composed by Guili, will frame their durational presence, embodying the themes of depersonalisation and the objectified body in Soft Bodies, Cold Machines.
Event schedule:
12.00pm - Exhibition opens to public
3.00 pm - Giuli Dal Lago presentation of the durational performance Jennifer (Part 1). Drinks served at the foyer
3.20 pm - Event welcome & Introduction by Pita Arreola, arebyte’s Head of Programmes
3.30 pm - Artist Presentation: Ambie Drew on Soft Bodies, Cold Machines research and process
4.00 pm - Girlstack Performance Lecture by Alex Quicho
4.30 pm - Ambie Drew and Alex Quicho in conversation with Pita Arreola
4.50 pm - Q&A Opens to the Public
5.00 pm - Giuli Dal Lago presentation of the durational performance Jennifer (Part 2). Drinks served at the foyer
6.00pm - Exhibition closes
This event is free and open to the public; advance booking is required to secure your place.
Read more about Soft Bodies, Cold Machines here. The exhibition is free and open to public until 2 August 2026.
Ambie Drew (b. 1996) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Worcester. Her practice interrogates how digital consumerism and artificial intelligence shape the construction of gender and female identity online. Working across moving image, sculptural installation, and text, Ambie adopts a hyperfeminised alter ego to explore the consequences of living in a heavily mediated world where the physical and digital exist in constant flux.
Alex Quicho is a theorist based in London. Her practice incorporates critical writing, performative lectures, and moving images to develop novel ways of understanding life within technological systems. She is the author of Girl Intelligence (2025, Aksioma) and Small Gods (2021, Zero Books).
Giuli Dal Lago is a London-based sound artist and performer who works at the intersection of sound and performance art. Giuli reclaims the body as a site of political struggle—a space for advocating gender identity and advancing queer celebration and liberation.