KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN!
( That's what you get for using the computer! )

Preview of When WE Love

An exhibition of Filipino internet art celebrating the third world internet. Featuring commissions & showings of work from 24 Filipino artists in the form of a neverending karaoke party.

Agustin Crisostomo, Angeline Marie Michael Meitzler, Anton Romero, Bao, Beatris Cabana, Carmine and Fabi, Chia Amisola, Czyka Tumaliuan, Elise Ofilada, Emmanuel Fabella, Gab Brioso, Isola Tong, Jared Jonathan Luna, Jord Earving Gadingan, Kiana Fernandez, Kwago, Kuya Marlon (deepweb dumaguete), Leon Leube, Mac Andre Arboleda, Nikita Sacha, No Core (Silke Talastas & Daniella Jabines), Tàtam & Ijah, Waki Badz


2023–25
Internet art
Karaoke machine, pisonet

Play on your PC ↗
View the website ↗

KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN is a Filipino phrase that means "that's what you get for using the computer!" — it's something your mom would shout at you for being online too much; and is definitely something I heard a lot growing up. Now, it's an exhibition.

So what does the third world get for being on the internet? Exploitation, labor, repression, disinformation… but also liberation, community, self-preservation. This collection speaks to our counternarratives: the identities, selves, and bodies that carry, inhabit, and dwell within the internet but are often obfuscated in its tellings.

Presented as a karaoke party, the exhibition is available online forever, but also travels offline. Every piece is translated in two forms: pisonet (mouse & keyboard) and karaoke (microphone & remote).

We situate KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN in domestic contexts and use the karaoke machine as a perfect example of technology as a site for community & gathering, and as it invokes the blurriness between public and private, colonialism and reclamation, imitation and resistant, performer and audience, high and low technology, and beyond... it's intimately familiar, and received very differently in the Philippines vs. the western contexts it has been presented in.

Artists: Agustin Crisostomo, Angeline Marie Michael Meitzler, Anton Romero, Bao, Beatris Cabana, Carmine and Fabi, Chia Amisola, Czyka Tumaliuan, Elise Ofilada, Emmanuel Fabella, Gab Brioso, Gladys Regalado, Isola Tong, Jared Jonathan Luna, Jord Earving Gadingan, Kiana Fernandez, Kwago, Kuya Marlon (deepweb dumaguete), Leon Leube, Mac Andre Arboleda, Nikita Sacha, No Core Collective (Silke Talastas & Daniella Jabines), Tàtam & Ijah, Waki Badz

I think KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN is one of the most significant collections of internet art from outside the Western World. Despite third world bodies making & carrying so much of the internet today, our stories on-screen do not get the same liberty of visibility or expression. This was my attempt to change that.

Starting early 2024 (mostly), I worked closely with artists to translate their concepts, fictions, experiences, and identities for the screens. Many of these artists had never heard of internet art before... but Filipino struggle is interlinked with technology and the internet. We might even begin to consider our bodies as infrastructure...

I'm not a curator at all. It was hard to get people to believe in this exhibition; I've lost thousands of dollars in putting it together (including flying to see my work seen), funding artists (including tickets and transportation fees where possible). We started KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN to see more third world representation in internet art and new media spaces, who so often co-opt the language, concerns, and struggles of the third world. I hope to continue commissioning, preserving, and teaching towards a more inclusive internet art scene — as all of my art speaks to the Filipino experience.

Try KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN out on your PC today, available online forever at play.kakakompyutermoyan.com.


Piece Previews

View the playlist of art pieces online↗



Exhibitions

(KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN is a traveling exhibition! We currently have four pisonet units and a karaoke set in the Philippines, and a karaoke set in San Francisco. Please reach out to me if you'd like to host a machine – either for an exhibition, or in your community space. Let me know anytime.)

Press

Find more information and documentation in our press kit folder, available online.