Wen New Atelier

Biography

Wen New Atelier is an art, language, and technology atelier formed by the duo Kalen Iwamoto and Julien Silvano, whose practice approaches language as both a malleable material and a generative device. Rather than treating words as fixed vehicles for communication, the duo works with polysemy as a working principle, drawing on a lineage that includes Oulipo's rule-based writing, Fluxus's intermedia practices, Surrealist automatic writing, and French critical theory from thinkers including Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida. Their works are frequently interactive, inviting viewers to become co-authors who generate meaning alongside sensory experience, and often use resampled text, algorithmic generators, and literary systems governed by strict rules to expose the very processes by which language is constructed. In 2022, Wen New Atelier created a play co-written with an AI, with its lines immutably inscribed on the Ethereum blockchain, treating blockchain as a new kind of publishing infrastructure capable of storing and circulating text beyond the traditional form of the book. Their exhibition Bar CodeX, presented at the MAC Bar of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, appropriated the codes and rituals of a bar setting, arcade games, DJ sets, lightboxes, and coasters, into a playful, participatory installation, including their generative conceptual poetry synthesizer Miniscriber, developed in an audio-reactive collaboration with musician Agoria. Wen New Atelier's work has been recognized with honors including the Lumen Prize, and continues to explore the boundary between physical objects, immaterial systems, and machine-based literary processes.