Origin Story

Data Healing is a collective movement towards cybernetic repair that responds to the urgency of addressing the harmful psychosocial impacts of our digital landscape.

Our practice is informed by the following questions:

How do we begin to meaningfully describe what algorithmic debris has done to how we relate to ourselves and one another? If, on social media, we are coerced into serving as uncompensated laborers - how do we use that understanding as a departure point for reflection around the social and psychological toll that this labor takes?

In the Global South, where artists and cultural workers are largely excluded from major economic hubs and as such have to rely on online visibility to maintain sustainable careers, these questions ring with ever-layered pertinence.

Data Healing draws inspiration from harm reduction principles, a framework which stems from substance-abuse recovery communities; and is guided by the generous literature channeled into the world by Octavia Butler. Ultimately, our aim is to mobilize art to contextualize the issue of data trauma firmly within broader discourses on bodily autonomy, cultural repair, and public health.