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Workshop

Experimental Realities: An Inquiry

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PT

  • Headshot of a an aging hipster in a funhouse mirror
    Grayson Earle, Speaker
  • Headshot of adult of East Asian descent with medium-light skin; short hair; dark blue polo shirt; in front of grassy field
    William Cheng, Speaker
  • Portrait of a half-Asian woman with short black hair about to rest her head on a bag of potato chips as she gazes into the camera.
    Alison Nguyen, Speaker
  • Headshot of an adult male with medium-dark skin tone, bald-headed, with a short beard, wearing a tan overcoat over a brown hoodie.
    Greg de Cuir Jr, Speaker
  • Headshot of a middle-aged male of African descent in a brown shirt, in front of a white background
    Mark Mushiva, Speaker
  • Headshot of a middle-aged male of Asian decent, wearing a black shirt, in front of a white wall.
    Oguri, Speaker
  • Headshot of a Black woman with in a tunic with long curly brown hair, photo is in black and white.
    Zinha, Speaker
  • Black and white headshot of a middle-aged man with medium-light skin tone, trimmed beard and closed mouth smile, wearing a dress shirt with both hands on his chest.
    Yucef Merhi, Speaker
  • Headshot face and top of shoulders of an adult with medium-light skin tone, red braided hair in two ponytails with two braids framing face, smiling
    Valeria Salinas Toro, Speaker
  • Headshot of a woman smiling with long gray and light brown hair wearing a mottled periwinkle with black splotches natural linen shirt in front of blurred green hedging plants
    Roxanne Steinberg, Speaker

Experimental Realities: An Inquiry will bring together a diverse group of researchers, artists, curators, creative technologists, poets, and collectives for an in-person convening in Los Angeles, from July 7-10, 2023. The convening sits in a place of emergence that centers on relationality and respect. We define experimental reality practices as immersive, virtual, and augmented reality practices that are rooted in visual arts, including time-based media, moving image art, and experimental filmmaking practice. We will explore many different variations of experimental realities, including and beyond the tech.

This event is made possible by generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Andy Warhol Foundation Logo

Event Participants

    Headshot of a an aging hipster in a funhouse mirror

    Grayson Earle

    Grayson Earle is a contemporary artist and activist from the United States. His work deals with the role that digital technologies and networks can play in protest and political agency. He is known for his guerrilla video projections as a member of The Illuminator Art Collective and Bail Bloc, a computer program that posts bail for low-income people.

    Headshot of adult of East Asian descent with medium-light skin; short hair; dark blue polo shirt; in front of grassy field

    William Cheng

    William Cheng is a writer, pianist, and gamer. He is a professor of music at Dartmouth College and a founding co-editor of the Music & Social Justice Series with the University of Michigan Press.

    Portrait of a half-Asian woman with short black hair about to rest her head on a bag of potato chips as she gazes into the camera.

    Alison Nguyen

    Alison Nguyen is a New York-based artist whose work spans video, installation, performance, and new media. Her work has been presented at MIT List Center for Visual Arts, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, The Everson Museum x Lightwork, The Dowse Art Museum, The International Studio & Curatorial Program, AC Gallery Beijing, Half Gallery, Signs and Symbols, La Kaje, Hartnett Gallery, and The University of Oklahoma, among others. Her screenings include e-flux, Ann Arbor Film Festival, International Film Festival Oberhausen, CPH:DOX, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Channels Festival International Biennial of Video Art, True/False Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, The Jewish Museum, and Microscope Gallery.

    Nguyen has received residencies and fellowships from the International Studio & Curatorial Program, The Institute of Electronic Arts, BRIC, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, Signal Culture, and Vermont Studio Center. She has been awarded grants from the NYFA Artist Fellowship in Film/Video, NYSCA, Wave Farm’s Media Art Assistance Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, and The New York Community Trust. In 2018 Alison Nguyen was featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”

    Alison Nguyen received her M.F.A. in Visual Arts from Columbia University and her B.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University. She is an Adjunct Professor in New York University’s BFA Program. She has been a Guest Lecturer and Visiting Critic at numerous institutions and organizations, including e-flux, Cooper Union, University of Buffalo, The New School, New York University, Rhode Island School of Design, The School of Visual Arts, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center.

    Headshot of an adult male with medium-dark skin tone, bald-headed, with a short beard, wearing a tan overcoat over a brown hoodie.

    Greg de Cuir Jr

    Greg de Cuir Jr (Serbia/USA) is the co-founder and artistic director of Kinopravda Institute in Belgrade. He has organized programs at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), Anthology Film Archives (New York), Locarno Film Festival, and Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, among others. De Cuir is currently editing the first translation of Constructivism in Film: The Man With the Movie Camera, written by Vlada Petric (originally published by Cambridge University Press, 1987). He lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia.

    Headshot of a middle-aged male of African descent in a brown shirt, in front of a white background

    Mark Mushiva

    Mushiva is a Berlin-based Namibian multidisciplinary creative technologist whose work exists at the intersection of computer science and art. One-third of the award-winning Hip Hop poetry group Black Vulcanite, Mushiva's work incorporates novel technologies such as computer vision, sound synthesis, and robotics to enhance the performative aspects of artists.

    Headshot of a middle-aged male of Asian decent, wearing a black shirt, in front of a white wall.

    Oguri

    Native of Japan, Oguri’s inspiration to dance came after meeting Butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi. He started performing in 1985 with famed dancer Min Tanaka's company, Mai-Juku, and participated in founding Body Weather Farm. Oguri also began performing solo dance in Tokyo. He practiced traditional organic farming, experiencing the rhythms and cycles of this most human lifestyle. This connection of the human body to nature is a foundation of Oguri’s dance. Oguri moved to Los Angeles in 1991 and joined Roxanne Steinberg sharing Body Weather Laboratory. Oguri has been teaching, creating, and producing formal dance theater settings and site-specific venues worldwide. He continues to investigate the relationship of dance to the environment and the boundaries between performer and audience. In 2011, Oguri formed ARCANE Collective with Morleigh Steinberg, touring full productions and live concepts.

    Oguri has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, The Annenberg Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, The Getty Center, the James Irvine Foundation/Dance USA, Japan Foundation, USA Doris Duke Fellow 2018, among others.

    Headshot of a Black woman with in a tunic with long curly brown hair, photo is in black and white.

    Zinha

    Emma “Zinha” Morgan-Bennett, is a native New Yorker living in London. After encountering documentaries through her undergraduate studies in anthropology, she has embarked on a career as a director who films stories surrounding race, reproduction, and apocalypse via nonfiction and fiction narratives.

    As a director and writer, Zinha recently directed the award-winning, Mama I’m Through, a 20-minute documentary about Black women, the Black Lives Matter movement, and their potential motherhood (2022; Rhode Island Film Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival; Watersprite Film Festival and more); she is 2023 a Birmingham Open Media (BOM) resident; she was selected as a youth juror for the 2022 Sheffield DocFest; named a 2022 AR Talent artist for Sheffield DocFest, a 2022 Future of Film grantee, and a 2020 Marshall Scholar. In her spare time, Zinha has been trained as a doula since the age of 20 and has assisted five incredible mothers (and counting!) through their pregnancies.

    Black and white headshot of a middle-aged man with medium-light skin tone, trimmed beard and closed mouth smile, wearing a dress shirt with both hands on his chest.

    Yucef Merhi

    Yucef Merhi (b. Caracas, 1977) is an artist, video maker, writer, researcher, coder, and a  pioneering figure in the field of digital arts. His work engages with poetry, hacking, retro video game platforms, and other media to create interactive experiences and environments while raising cultural awareness. Merhi's work has been exhibited in museums, biennials, galleries, and public spaces, including the New Museum (New York), LACMA (Los Angeles), National Art Gallery (Caracas), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), La Colonie (Paris), and Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul); as well as the 30th Ljubljana Biennial, the 13th Cuenca Biennial, the São Paulo-Valencia Biennial, and the 14th Dakar Biennale, among others.

    He is a 2020-22 fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab and an artist in residence at the Oolite Arts Studio Residency Program in Miami Beach, Florida. 

    Headshot face and top of shoulders of an adult with medium-light skin tone, red braided hair in two ponytails with two braids framing face, smiling

    Valeria Salinas Toro

    Valeria Salinas Toro is a Creative Technologist, Producer, and Visual Artist. Their interest lies in Afrofuturism, sustainability, community engagement, and speculative design. Their practice spans through various material experimentations such as ceramics, audio-visual interactions, 3D digital art, and film.

    Headshot of a woman smiling with long gray and light brown hair wearing a mottled periwinkle with black splotches natural linen shirt in front of blurred green hedging plants

    Roxanne Steinberg

    Roxanne Steinberg dances to transcend familiar vocabularies and bring about a heightened sense of perception and connectivity. A graduate of Bennington College, her work in choreography and improvisation brought her to Japan and to Body Weather Farm. She introduced Body Weather training in Los Angeles in 1988 at LACE Gallery. In 1990, she created La Boca Theater with Oguri at Sunshine Mission/Casa de Rosas women’s shelter. As artist-in-residence at Electric Lodge, Venice, since 1997, she teaches and presents artists. She was a 2020 Department of Cultural Affairs City, Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Artist Fellow. She is part of Lauren Bon’s art practice at Metabolic Studio. Delving into the phenomenon of dance as a vehicle to knowing, she seeks myriad existences for body and psyche, appreciating the ephemerality of dance within constructed environments of handmade and found objects showing in her 2023 exhibition “Don’t Hoard the Merchandise” at ARCANEspace.