Prototypes for Alternative Power is the third iteration of Open Systems, a dedicated online initiative by SAM launched in 2023 that examines how digital technologies shape contemporary life and artistic expression through exhibitions, interventions, and programmes created for digital spaces.
Curated by Celine Wong Katzman, the exhibition brings together 13 artworks, texts, and documentation — including two newly commissioned works — that critically examine the infrastructures underpinning today’s technological systems. Moving beyond the idea of technology as neutral, Prototypes for Alternative Power foregrounds how these systems serve as interfaces through which race, labour, and memory are distributed and continuously renegotiated. Each work functions as a proposal or prototype for rethinking how power operates across technology, society, and politics. This line of inquiry extends to the exhibition website itself, which runs on Solar Protocol, a solar-powered server network, reframing the exhibition not only as a site of reflection, but as one that both operates within and reconsiders the infrastructures it examines.
Online at altpower.sg
When: 30 Apr - 25 Oct 2026,
By: Singapore Art Museum (SAM)
