April 23 / 6-9pm / Ladbroke Hall / 79 Barlby Rd, London
theVERSEverse hosts our first-ever symposium: an evening program celebrating the evolving landscape of poetry in the digital age. through curated panels, performances, and artwork displays, re:VERSE explores poetry’s power as a multifaceted, transdisciplinary art form; illuminates key areas of poetic innovation; and inspires meaningful engagement in our mission and movement.
co-presented by theVERSEverse and The Tezos Foundation in partnership with The Collectors Club, Muse Frame, Digital Art Week, and The Disruptive Gallery
SCHEDULE: 6:00pm: doors open + mingling + drinks 6:25pm: introduction + opening remarks by Leila Khazaneh 6:30 - 7:15pm: poem = work of art, a panel moderated by Ana María Caballero with Arch Hades, Melanie Lenz, Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, and Abigail Miller 7:20 - 8:05pm: poem = code, a panel moderated by Sasha Stiles with Eva Jaeger, Dyl Blaquiere, Jen Roebuck, and Mark Webster 8:10 - 8:45pm: poem = performance, a series of performances with Elisabeth Sweet, Arch Hades, and Christian Bök 9:00 - 11:00pm: poem = people, a post poetry party at The Disruptive Gallery 242 Acklam Road Westbourne Studios, with special thanks to Digital Art Week
newly released works
enough by Elisabeth Sweet Items I Scour the Internet to Find by Ana María Caballero HEART MANTRA_The internet is a heart that leaps.txt by Sasha Stiles
about the panelists + performers at re:VERSE
poem = work of art
Abigail Miller is Artist and Partnership Lead at Avant Arte, spearheading their digital art program and business development. Avant Arte exists to bring the work of outstanding artists to a new generation by developing programmes that cross pollinate culture, commerce and creativity. She additionally was a founding member of Unit London’s Web3 and Digital Art department in 2020 and leading it become one of the first art galleries in entering the art and tech space, recognising the potential for unparalleled transparency, access and liberty for generations of digital artists who have struggled to build careers in the traditional art ecosystem. Before transitioning into the art world, Abigail graduated with degrees in Blockchain Security focusing on Terrorism and Nuclear Non-proliferation. Additionally, she was a Fulbright in Russia where she worked with various museums and art institutions. She holds a MA from Courtauld Institute of Art and has worked with various auction houses, museums, and private collections based in Eastern Europe, London, and the United States.
Arch Hades (b.1992) is a London-based artist and bestselling poet with a background in politics and philosophy. Her practice spans painting, sculpture, and performance, and she is the author of six volumes of poetry. Working at the intersection of visual art and spoken word, Hades’ practice expands on the Romantic lyricism of her poetry, mining subjects ranging from personal loss to contemporary angst and existentialist questions.
Aleksandra Art, Head of Arts at Trilitech, Tezos Ecosystem. Aleksandra is a leader at the intersection of art and technology, with extensive experience in Web3 art projects. She is the Head of Arts at Trilitech, the hub for driving adoption and core technology on the Tezos blockchain. Aleksandra is a prominent speaker, writer, and educator on the role of decentralized technologies in the creative sector. Aleksandra holds a Master’s degree in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art and co-founded Electric Artefacts in 2020, a curatorial advisory focused on digital art and blockchain projects. As the Ambassador and former Director of Partnerships at .ART, Aleksandra played a key role in launching the .art top level domain in 2016, overseeing strategic partnerships to foster the embrace of technology in the art world, including collaborations with Rhizome and Ars Electronica, and spearheading the Digital Innovation in Art Award.
Melanie Lenz is curator of Digital Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum where she is responsible for developing the V&A’s digital art collections. She has organised multiple exhibitions, most recently co-curating Patric Prince: Digital Art Visionary (2023-2024). She co-edited the book Digital Art: 1960 to Now (2024) and has published on diverse topics including generative art (2024), early computer art in Latin America (2018), gender, art and technology (2014), collecting and conserving digital art (2011). Melanie has led on a broad range of public programmes including developing a digital art season, convened conferences on art, design and new technologies for health, and has initiated art partnerships with a variety of organisations including Women Who Code and Great Ormond Street Hospital. Based in London, Melanie also works as a freelance curator. She is a judge for the Lumen Prize for Art and Technology and a panel expert for the National Archives.
Ana María Caballero is a multiple award-winning, transdisciplinary artist. Her work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil from romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She’s the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Beverly International Literature Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Future Art Writers Award and a Sevens Foundation Grant. She’s the first living poet to sell a poem in the history of Sotheby’s, and the only artist ever to receive a triple finalist nomination for the Lumen Prize. Her work has been featured by BOMB, Poets.org, El País, the MAXXI BVLGARI Prize, Poets & Writers, been a finalist for the Vassar Miller Prize and exhibited at the V&A, HEK Basel, the Francisco Carolinum, the Ashmolean Museum, and Times Square, amongst other leading museums, galleries and public spaces worldwide. The author of six books, she’s also the co-founder of digital poetry gallery theVERSEverse.
poem = code
Dyl Blaquiere is the CEO of Muse Frame and Sedition, leading advancements in digital art experiences. With master’s degrees in Economics and International Business, he combines strategic insight with creative vision to expand access to digital art. Under his leadership, Muse Frame offers elegant solutions for displaying digital art, while Sedition provides a platform for limited digital editions by leading artists. Originally from Australia, Dyl has lived throughout Europe and the US and is currently based in Germany. He also serves on the International Selectors Committee for the Lumen Prize, reflecting his commitment to the digital art community.
Eva Jäger is Arts Technologies Curator and Creative AI Lead at Serpentine. She commissions artists working with advanced technologies, and is a collaborator in conceptualising novel approaches, workflows, and philosophies of emerging tech. At Serpentine she has worked with artists such as Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Hito Steyerl, Suzanne Treister, and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, amongst others. Eva is researcher and writer for the annual Future Art Ecosystems briefing, and Co-Investigator of the Creative AI Lab (Serpentine and King’s College London). Eva also has an independent design practice that investigates applications of emerging computation, information, analysis, and predictive technologies, in order to better understand how they form our belief systems. This work manifests as tech-integrated performances, object design, installations, and film.
Jen Roebuck is the London based CMO and entrepreneur focused on disruptive strategy, innovation, and creative leadership. Chair of Lumen Prize and CMO at Houdini Swap.
MARK WEBSTER. Born in Canada, raised in the United Kingdom and currently living in France, Mark Webster is a prominent figure in the field of visual and sonic arts using code to create evocative works of art. Upon graduating with a modern languages degree in 1998, he moved to France where he worked in a variety of fields within the visual and sonic arts, only to find code as a creative medium in 2005 with John Maeda. Recognising the potential in an emerging field for artists and designers, it was precisely then that he began organising events to promote awareness and encourage the creative coding community. Since 2010, he has devoted a good part of his time to teaching code in art schools and particularly to graphic design undergraduates. With custom-made software and computational and generative strategies as his main approach, he has been developing a highly personal body of work since 2020.
Sasha Stiles is a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, artist and AI researcher whose work bridges tradition and innovation through hybrid poetics, generative imagination, and collaborative intelligence. Her transmedia practice reframes poetry as both art and technology — a means of encoding human experience across space and time — and blends language, image, and algorithm to explore the role of human voice in a digital age. Stiles is a frequent speaker at international events in culture and innovation, and regularly publishes and exhibits around the globe, on and off the blockchain. Her work has been honored by the Sigg Art Prize, Lumen Prize, Prix Ars Electronica and Monument Lab, and featured by Art Basel, MoMA, Christie’s, Gucci, Art Forum and Poets & Writers. A co-founder of theVERSEverse and a graduate of Harvard and Oxford, she has served as Poetry Mentor to the AI humanoid BINA48 since 2018, and lives near New York City with her husband and studio partner, Kris Bones.
poem = performance
Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has won the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. After 25 years of effort, Bök has completed The Xenotext — a project that requires him to encipher a poem into the genome of a bacterium capable of surviving in any inhospitable environment. Bök is a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada, and he teaches at Leeds Beckett University.
Arch Hades (b.1992) is a London-based artist and bestselling poet with a background in politics and philosophy. Her practice spans painting, sculpture, and performance, and she is the author of six volumes of poetry. Working at the intersection of visual art and spoken word, Hades’ practice expands on the Romantic lyricism of her poetry, mining subjects ranging from personal loss to contemporary angst and existentialist questions.
Elisabeth Sweet is a poet exploring patterns of randomness. Her practice infuses ritual with critique on contemporary society, namely the forfeiture of attention in return for convenience. She leads communications and production at theVERSEverse, a digital poetry gallery where poem = work of art. Elisabeth’s poetry has been exhibited in London, New York City, and Paris, with a solo show in Berlin. She publishes weekly writings to her Substack, Species of Value.
theVERSEverse is a digital poetry gallery where poem = work of art. this women-led collective of poets, artists, and creative technologists commissions, curates, and sells digital poems, emphasizing craft and creating lasting value that can support artists financially. founded in November 2021 by Ana María Caballero, Kalen Iwamoto, and Sasha Stiles — with Elisabeth Sweet joining thereafter to support communications and community outreach — theVERSEverse is a collective of poets, writers, artists, editors, curators, and creative technologists working to unlock the literary potential of the blockchain.
Tezos is a cutting-edge, energy-efficient blockchain. Thousands of artists around the globe have chosen Tezos to create and sell digital art while cultural institutions including Serpentine, Musée d’Orsay, and LAS Art Foundation have used it for their innovative approaches to cultural programming.