Aurélien Lepetit (Amsterdam/London) is a visual artist whose practice articulates "Liquid Code," an alternative framework that reimagines information as inherently material, temporal, and embodied. He critically interrogates the politics of information, developing material-based alternatives to centralised data systems. Treating threads as lines of code or data, he employs textile techniques such as plant dyeing, embroidery, and weaving, to construct textile lexicons. These visual systems insist on the materiality of information, drawing insights from cosmotechnical frameworks, biological data, and biometric rhythms.
Lepetit's "Liquid Code" is a rigorous method enacted materially. It insists information is always already of matter, exploring its transformation within water-based systems and its rearrangement through material interaction. It embraces evolution, degradation, and decay, contrasting with the perceived permanence of digital data. This approach refuses the techno-capitalist epistemologies that divorce information from matter and knowledge from labor.
His critical inquiry into information's politics evolved over a decade. Early explorations interrogated the body's mechanisation and queer masculinities through performance and installation (2016–2022), later extending into xenofeminist digital projects reclaiming cyberspace (2020–2022). This trajectory informs his current engagement with handmade textile-database systems (2023–present), where material practices and advanced theoretical inquiry converge to create alternative systems for understanding, visualising, and embodying information.
Recently:
Guest Lecturer: MA Non Linear Narrative, Royal Academy of Arts (KABK), 2026