“We have to go back to kindergarten. We have to get back to the level of those who have not yet learned to read and write. In this kindergarten, we will have to play infantile games with computers, plotters, and similar gadgets. We must use complex and refined apparatuses, the fruit of a thousand years of intellectual development, for childish purposes.”
—Vilém Flusser, “Does Writing Have a Future?”

Born 1978, Chicago, Illinois

Joel Swanson is a queer interdisciplinary artist exploring the complex relationships between language, materiality, and technology. Through a range of works, including text-based sculpture and meticulously crafted works on paper, he investigates how linguistic tools and technologies subtly but profoundly shape meaning. As the director of the TYPO Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder’s ATLAS Institute, where he serves as Associate Professor, Swanson leads experimental investigations into the boundaries of text-based technologies.

Swanson’s methodology of queering/querying language operates both conceptually and formally, disrupting conventional systems of meaning and representation. His recent work excavates the material culture of literacy acquisition, examining the tools and pedagogical approaches that shaped his own formative relationship with written language. While grounded in conceptual art traditions, Swanson subverts the movement’s characteristic austerity through playful and excessive interventions—creating works simultaneously analytical and absurd.

Swanson's work has garnered international recognition, with exhibitions at prestigious venues including the MSU Broad Art Museum, the Power Plant in Toronto, Ireland's Glucksman Museum, and the 57th Venice Biennale (official satellite exhibition). His accomplishments include a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and artist residencies at La Napoule Art Foundation, HANGAR - Centro de Investigação Artística, the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, and RedLine Contemporary Art Center. He is a Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum Fellow and his work is featured in the Electronic Literature Organization's 4th Anthology. Swanson received his MFA from the University of California, San Diego, specializing in Computing and the Arts.