The Spring 2010 lecture series, “The Theatrical/ The Performative/ The Transformative”, will introduce screenings and panel discussions with paradigmatic works by key artists with strong influence on contemporary art and its theoretical discourse. The focus will be on time-based work that navigates between art, film, theater, and dance. We also seek to juxtapose artists and […]
Xavier Le Roy was born in Juvisy sur Orge, France in 1963 and studied biochemistry at the University of Montpellier. He began his dance career in 1988, performing for companies including Véronique Larcher, Compagnie de l’ Alambic, and Detektor (Berlin). In 1993 he founded Le Kwatt, initiating his own collaborations and multi-media projects. He founded his […]
Constanza Macras was born in Buenos Aires Argentina, studied fashion design at the University of Buenos Aires and trained at the Margarita Bali School of Dance. She continued her training at the New York at the Merce Cunningham Studio, working later in Amsterdam. Since 1995, she has been living and working as a performer, director and […]
Bread and Puppet Theater director Peter Schumann will present a short fiddle lecture illustrated with cantastoria banners, after which moderator John Bell will lead a discussion with Schumann about Bread and Puppet’s uses of public space, technology, the concept of progress, and the relations between puppet theater and modernism. A question-and-answer session will follow, and the evening […]
Magda Fernandez creates synthetic video worlds that question our real lives in these contemporary times. She is drawn to the strengths and weaknesses that make us tick, how those characteristics spill into our social behavior, and how greater forces in turn shape us. Power and helplessness, reality and fantasy, memory and history are some of the […]
The Give Me Shelter lecture series draws together speakers from different disciplines to discuss questions such as: How can bodywear function as body extension or to support the human body under unusual conditions such as hot and cold climates? How can we expand the notion of the boundary between the body and environment? What kind of second […]
As future technologies of the modern augmented self and its geopolitical extensions, proactive clothing was first anticipated at the turn of the century in popular culture, science fiction and art. Since the 1960s, this question has become a fixed part of the cyborg discourse while “science fashions” were shifting from astronautics and military research to […]
Comic superheroes dress in hightech suits that support their hyperactivities with magic powers. Are these “wondersuits” fictional? Or have they become models for current ‘second’ skin developments including survival and performance enhancement suits worn by astronauts, athletes, and others? Möller also discusses the power of nature as personified by the DC Comics supervillainess, Poison Ivy, […]
Laura Anderson Barbata worked with the Yanomami people of the Venezuelan Amazon Rainforest, teaching them to make paper and books so they could write their own history. Their first bookShapono tells the story of the gods Omawe and Yoawe who taught the Yanomami how to build their home as a communal dwelling. Contact with outsiders has […]
Omar Foglio and Jose Luis Figueroa are founders of Bulbo, a Tijuana- and Los Angeles-based media collective, exploring cultural, artistic and everyday themes often overlooked or under-represented in mass media. Their documentary, Tierra Brilliante (“the brightest glaze”) spotlights lead poisoning suffered by practitioners of traditional ceramics in Mexico. Tierra Brillante is a co-production between Galatea and the […]
With support from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts and Trotti & Assoc. Inc., Cambridge, Mass., the BioSuit was developed to provide a ‘second skin’ capability for astronaut performance. Processes such as electrospinning and melt-blowing have been used to develop fibers for the suit. A current mockup uses nylon, spandex and urethane layers with varied […]
Sheila Kennedy will present recent research and work. Sheila Kennedy is a Principal of Kennedy & Violich Architecture Ltd. (KVA), an interdisciplinary design practice that explores the relationships between architecture, digital technology and emerging public needs. Recent projects at KVA include the IBA-Hamburg SOFT HOUSE in Germany, the Law School at University of Pennsylvania, Harvard […]
Steve Dietz is the Artistic Director of ZER01 which produces the 01SJ Biennial, dedicated to inspiring creativity at the intersection of art, technology and digital culture. Dietz is a serial platform creator. He previously founded Northern Lights, and is the former Curator of New Media at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he […]
Lauren Bon will talk about current projects with her Metabolic Studio, including Silver and Water, a film made out of the silver and water historically mined out of the Owens River Valley. The film—to be released in November 13, 2013, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Los Angeles River pipeline—is physically made […]
The ACT Monday night lecture series Collision 2: When Artistic and Scientific Research Meet draws together artists and scientists from different disciplines to discuss artistic methodologies and forms of inquiry at the intersection of art, architecture, science and technology. This series is part of AR – Artistic Research, a yearlong collaboration between the MIT Program in Art, […]
Luginsland (Belvedere) is an installation and sound piece by Florian Dombois, winner of the 2010 German Sound Art Award. Dombois’ work focuses on landforms, labilities, seismic and tectonic activity, scientific and technical fictions, as well as their various representational and media formats. In his dissertation What is an Earthquake? Dombois undertook a comparison of historical, […]
In 2006, Guillermo Faivovich and Nicolás Goldberg began working on A Guide to Campo del Cielo, a project that revolves around researching the cultural impact of the Campo del Cielo meteorites by studying, reconstructing, and reinterpreting their visual, oral, and written history, aiming to identify their historical and contemporary impact. In 2010, their exhibition Meteorit […]
AR – Artistic Research was a one-year collaboration between the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology and the Munich-based Siemens Stiftung. AR – Artistic Research was co-curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Associate Professor and Head of the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology; and Thomas D. Trummer, Curator of Visual Arts, Siemens Stiftung. […]
Laurent Grasso will discuss the ideas and processes behind his HAARP project (High Frequency Active Auroral research) eponymous of a research base in Gakona, Alaska. One side of this project was to display a scale reconstitution of the antenna array’s in the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2009. He will also present the Studies into […]
Jae Rhim Lee’s current work, the Infinity Burial Project, proposes alternatives for the post-mortem body and features the training of a unique strain of edible mushroom to decompose and remediate toxins in human tissue. Jae Rhim Lee’s work challenges the boundaries prescribed by society and culture between self and other by proposing unorthodox relationships for […]
Ricardo Dominguez is co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group who developed virtual-sit-in technologies in 1998. His collaborative project, the Transborder Immigrant Tool – a GPS cell phone safety tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border – is being exhibited at the 2010–11 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, the San […]
Attila Csörgö uses fruit peels to demonstrate problems of space and plane geometry in his work Peeled Spaces. Another piece, Distorted Spaces, is focusing on the photographic representation of our surroundings; by using hand-made cameras the images have unusual properties and become spatial entities. The Platonic Geometry is a series of kinetic sculptures dealing with […]
Rising above the Great Dome of MIT, immense inflatable stars soared over Killian Court on the evening of May 7 during FAST Light, the culminating event of the MIT150 Festival of Art, Science and Technology. The sculptures celebrated – and incorporated – the distinctive symbiosis among artists, scientists and engineers that emerged at MIT during […]
Soundtrack by Joan Jonas, music by Jason Moran with David Lang Opening, September 14, 2011, from 6-7 My New Theater: Reading Dante III is an exhibition of four video elements created for Joan Jonas’s Reading Dante series, an ongoing project that is a series of installations and performances. Taking Dante’s Divine Comedy as a starting […]
The Zones of Emergency: Artistic Interventions – Creative Responses to Conflict & Crisis Fall 2011 lecture series investigates initiatives and modes of intervention in contested spaces, zones of conflict, or areas affected by environmental disasters. We will explore whether artistic interventions can transform, disrupt or subvert current environmental, urban, political and social conditions in critical ways. How […]
Tess Thackara, Director, Survival International (USA) Popularizing the fight for indigenous rights: how using films and images can shift public opinion and change history This lecture explores the work and methodology of human rights group Survival International, with a particular focus on the group’s efforts to generate a groundswell of support for tribal people all […]
In 1992 Israeli curator Jack Persekian founded Anadiel Gallery, the first and only independent gallery for Palestinian artists in Jerusalem. Persekian later founded the Al-Ma’mal Foundation to continue the gallery’s mission and to further promote, instigate, and disseminate the production of art in Palestine. In his talk, Persekian will share his experience – the challenges […]
Moore’s law and the Internet have dramatically reduced the cost of producing and distributing information. This has greatly lowered the cost of collaboration and has empowered a qualitatively different “public” to think, express, and act without, or in spite of, central authority. These changes and advances in technology enabled interventions such as low-cost video cameras […]
The Otolith Group will participate in a conversation with art historian and critic TJ Demos, on the current conditions of politically engaged filmmaking and documentary representation. The Otolith Group is an artist-led organization founded in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun that integrates film, video, artists’ writing, workshops, exhibitions, publications and public programs. The […]
The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to present an exhibition of the light-based sculptural work of Otto Piene (b. 1928, Bad Laasphe, Germany). Piene is a pioneering figure in multimedia and technology-based art. Known for his smoke and fire paintings and environmental “sky art,” Piene formed the influential Düsseldorf-based Group Zero with Heinz […]
4–6 PM Talks by Jana Winderen, Marina Rosenfeld, and Christopher Bergevin. Moderated by Micah Silver. 7–8 PM Sonic presentation by Jana Winderen 8–9 PM Diagram/for room and phonographic loudspeaker, sonic installation by Marina Rosenfeld Curated by Ute Meta Bauer, ACT Director MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology October 22, 2011, marks the second anniversary of […]
How do we observe or quantify the impact of an artistic intervention? Or the impact of a documentary film? Lucy Walker will be reflecting on the experience of making and showing the film Waste Land, a documentary about artist Vik Muniz’s collaboration with the self-designated recyclables materials pickers of Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the […]
How does creative activism contribute to society? How do we moderate crises through individual and collective art practice? How do we reconcile the arts, activism, and pedagogy? Stella McGregor, Founder and Director of Urbano Project, will share her experince of working with inner city youth and introduce projects such as Violence Transformed, and Pedro Reyes’Palas por […]
In the aftermath of the disaster suffered in Japan, MIT launched the MIT Japan 3/11 Initiative, a multi-year collaborative project focused on disaster-resilient planning, design and reconstruction. Back from the first MIT Japan 3/11 workshop which took place this summer, Shun Kanda and Jim Wescoat will discuss the process and challenges in planning and implementing […]
Indian artist Amar Kanwar creates documentary-based multi-channel installations that deal with the politics of power, violence, sexuality, and justice. In The Torn First Pages, Kanwar unfolds the struggle for democracy in Myanmar. The eight-channel video piece The Lightning Testimoniesreflects upon a history of conflict in the Indian subcontinent through the experiences of sexual violence against women during […]
An Evening Celebrating the Legacy of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) Thursday, December 8, 2011 Speakers: Otto Piene, CAVS Director Emeritus Márton Oroz, György Kepes Fellow for Advanced Studies and Transdisciplinary Research in Art, Culture and Technology. Screening Centerbeam (1978), newly restored documentary The György Kepes Fellowship for Advanced Studies and Transdisciplinary Research […]
Disobedience: an Ongoing Video Archive Exhibit opens Friday, December 9, 2011, 5-8 PM Through April 15, 2012 Curated by: Marco Scotini together with Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas; Assistant curator: Andris Brinkmanis; Display System by Urbonas Studio The Disobedience Archive research and exhibition project is produced in collaboration with the students from the ACT courses 4.303 […]
Art, culture and technology. What is the potential of such an intersection in the present? Being cognizant of historical and unusual crossings while exploring more profound investigations and productions suggest experiments in thinking, action and form. Questions raised by pursuing this matrix lead to a variety of histories of the present, the combination of official […]
Some contemporary art is profoundly engaged with the world in ways that go beyond interpretation. We seem to be in the midst of a cultural moment where the instrumentalization of art has never been more widely accepted among artists. Whether such artistic practices seek to work across disciplines like science or sociology, or aim to […]
Bruce Yonemoto works within the overlapping intersections of art and commerce, and the gallery world and cinema screen. Yonemoto juxtaposes cultural material from different international communities, such as those of the Japanese Americans, Nipo-Brasiliero, Peruvian Quechua and Hollywood communities. The photographic series North South East West focuses on the erased history of American Civil War soldiers of […]
Taru Elfving, curator and director of Contemporary Art Archipelago (CAA), calls into play the curatorial notion of the “dysfunctional” exhibition and its role within the larger concept of sustainability. CAA, a trans-disciplinary, cross-cultural exhibition spread across the isles of the Turku Archipelago (Baltic Sea), included over 23 international artists who researched the area’s environment and ways of life, […]
In the 1970s, broadcast television, cable, and even satellite transmissions were considered viable outlets for visual artists to experiment, tamper, and often times, spectacularly fail with, all the while engaging in a generative model of art production. This talk focuses on the institutionalization of media art with a particular emphasis on the Long Beach Museum […]
Preceded by a tour of community gardens in Boston Sylvère Lotringer will address the notion of autonomy, its planting, plotting, and propagation as the means to imagine and propose alternative relations to land, history, politics, and art. Lotringer's talk expands the discourse initiated through the international archive platform, the exhibition Disobedience: An Ongoing Video Archive. The tour […]
Muntadas’ work addresses social, political and communications issues such as the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and investigates channels of information and the ways these may be used to censor or promulgate ideas. His projects are presented in different media such as photography, video, publications, the Internet, installations, and urban interventions. […]
This talk will analyse the sonic and affective turns that have appeared relatively recently in both contemporary art practice and current critical thought from the standpoint of what Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi has termed “semiocapitalism.” Though the attention to sound and affect is typically held to be a remedy to the excesses of the past few […]
A Screening and Book Signing Reception The MIT List Visual Arts Center will host a screening and book signing reception to celebrate the publication of Renée Green’s latest book Endless Dreams and Time-Based Streams. Conceived for Green’s 2010 exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Endless Dreams and Time-Based Streams considers […]
Desire for cinema existed before its creation. Today, cinema is an umbrella term for a variety of moving images and time-based forms, which have intersecting, yet particular, histories of emergence. These histories and contexts include changing technological and spatial forms themselves—from collective halls to handheld devices—in which cinema appears, as well as the movement and […]
Desire for cinema perhaps existed before its creation. Today, cinema can be thought as the umbrella term for the variety of moving images and time-based forms that currently circulate and which have intersecting, yet specific, histories of emergence. These encompass the changing technological and spatial forms themselves—from collective halls to handheld devices—in which cinema appears, […]
What would a cinema that serves its subjects, rather than forces of capital, look like? A cinema of refusal, a cinematic non-form that breaks away from the conditions set by capital. A cinema made entirely of the process itself, that cannot be retained, that disappears and renews itself when recalled, that creates an unforgettable loss, […]
Screening and discussion with: John Akomfrah, OBE Director, filmmaker, and writer, Smoking Dogs Films, UK Lina Gopaul Producer and writer, Smoking Dogs Films, UK Renée Green Free Agent Media and ACT Director and Associate Professor Handsworth Songs (1986), an essayistic documentary film, explores the history of the contemporary British black experience, in particular the riots and […]
Chip Lord, Professor Emeritus, Film & Digital Media, UC Santa Cruz Chip Lord’s talk presents several recent projects and includes a historical introduction to the radical art and architecture group Ant Farm, 1968–1978. In 1970 Ant Farm travelled cross-country in a “Media Van” shooting video and networking with other artists. Ant Farm Media van v.08 , an […]
Ros Gray, Lecturer, Critical Studies, Goldsmiths University of London Within the context of cinematographic traditions and different liberation movements on the African continent, Ros Gray’s research focuses on revolutionary cinema and its global networks; the screen as a site of radical gathering; anti-colonial and post-colonial theory; and contemporary film and video art. Gray co-edited a […]
Krista Lynes, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies Department, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada In his critical analysis of postmodern culture, Fredric Jameson asserted that the particular temporality of video, its “total flow,” bound apparatus and subject in a new kind of materialism governed by measurement, a machinic time closer to the chronometer than the cinema. This produced […]
Lecture & Reception with Tadej Pogačar Introduction by Gediminas Urbonas Tadej Pogačar has examined indeterminacy and transformation within social systems since 1993 when he established the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art. In his art practice, he engages in interventionist logic, institutional critique, and critical research on social and political issues as well as participatory and collaborative projects. The […]
Desire for cinema existed before its creation. Today, cinema is an umbrella term for a variety of moving images and time-based forms, which have intersecting, yet particular, histories of emergence. These histories and contexts include changing technological and spatial forms themselves—from collective halls to handheld devices—in which cinema appears, as well as the movement and […]
Arthur Jafa, Artist, filmmaker, and cinematographer The realization of a black cinema is as central to American culture in the 21st century as was black music to the 20th century. What does this statement imply and what might it entail? What is black? What is cinema? What constitutes American culture in the 21st century? What was […]
John Akomfrah, OBE, director, filmmaker, and writer, Smoking Dogs Films, UK Lina Gopaul, Producer and writer, Smoking Dogs Films, UK The Stuart Hall Project (2012) is a film on the cultural theorist and sociologist Stuart Hall. Directed by John Akomfrah and produced by Lina Gopaul, the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2013. […]
Program Schedule Monday, March 4 Tuesday, March 5 Wednesday, March 6 Program Themes Monday, March 4 10-12pm \ Seminar and lunch: The Spectropoetics of Diaspora; Hauntologies Films include: The Genome Chronicles and The Call of Mists Location: ACT Cube, E15-001 Hauntologies is artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah’s compelling meditation on disappearance, memory and death. From his first exhibition for Carroll/Fletcher gallery […]
I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You Screening and lecture with Karim Aïnouz, Filmmaker and artist I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You 35mm, color, 75 min. Dir. Karim Aïnouz Film synopsis José Renato, a thirty-five-year-old geologist, is sent on a surveying trip to […]
Professor Gediminas Urbonas and Affiliate Nomeda Urbonas presented their 2001 piece KARAOKE at Transmediale 2013, a Berlin-based media art festival and year-round project that draws out new connections between art, culture, and technology. Their video piece stages a karaoke performance of ABBA`s “Money, Money, Money” by employees of The Lithuanian Savings Bank. In 2001 the bank was the last […]
Knut Åsdam, Artist and filmmaker How, amidst continual changes in society and media and the shifting relationship between psychology and film spectatorship, can we deal with notions of site, space, society, and subjectivity within cinema today? What narrative devices can be used to explore the interplay between these notions in the moving image? Åsdam examines these questions within the context of his […]
Nora Alter, Chair and Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University Nora M. Alter’s teaching and research focus on twentieth and twenty-first century cultural and visual studies from a comparative perspective, and she published the first English-language study of director Chris Marker in 2006. In her talk, Alter investigates Marker’s complex use of sound, […]
Keith Fullerton Whitman is a musician based in Cambridge, MA. His current work is split into two avenues: 1) Live Electronic Music: largely improvised and/or performed in loose, through-composed or “automatic” frameworks on an array of hardware modular synthesis equipment; 2) Studio Music: largely concerned with the transformation of acoustic and electronic materials via Musique Concrète […]
Simin Farkhondeh, Independent filmmaker, artist, educator, and activist Simin Farkhondeh is an award winning filmmaker, artist, educator, and activist. From 1995 to 2003 she produced and directed the acclaimed monthly TV show Labor at the Crossroads. Her films have been screened at the Whitney Biennial, Margaret Mead Film Festival, and MoMA, as well as on PBS and […]
Luke Fowler is an artist, filmmaker, and musician based in Glasgow. His work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary filmmaking, utilizing archival footage, photography, and sound. Fowler’s filmic collages have featured portraits of controversial figures including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, English composer Cornelius Cardew, and Marxist Historian E. P. Thompson. In […]
Guerino Mazzola earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Zurich University, where he also taught algebraic geometry. Mazzola has been a major figure within the European school of mathematical music theory since 1980 and has written six books on the subject including The Topos of Music, which was proposed by the American Mathematical Society as the […]
Featuring visiting artists Stephen Vitiello, Scanner, and the Either/Or ensemble, as well as sonic installations on campus by students from MIT courses 4.373 and 21M.351 The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) and the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) present Resonating MIT, the culmination of a semester-long interdisciplinary collaboration […]
Wearable Mosques are clothes that can be fashioned into minimal Islamic prayer spaces. These portable religious devices represent ways of negotiating spatial relationships between Islamic traditions and modernity. While accommodating the ritual prayer of at least two worshippers, a wearable mosque functions both as a community-making device and as an intermediary between the material and […]
Cinematic Migrations is a multi-faceted exploration of the histories and contexts of moving images and time-based media and their intersecting and distinct paths of emergence around the world. The Fall 2013 lecture series brings together a complex set of artists, filmmakers, and thinkers who have pioneered and continue to redefine the boundaries of cinematic explorations. Their […]
Charles Atlas, Artist and filmmaker Charles Atlas has been producing film and video works since the mid-1970s. He constantly experiments with new technologies and works that range from the highly flamboyant to the very minimal, including pioneering media/dance works, multi-channel video installations, feature-length documentaries, video art works for television, and live electronic performances. Throughout his […]
Lovett/Codagnone, Multimedia artist duo As artistic practices broaden to embrace a variety of new media and expansive models such as cinema, theater, and music—practices that interrogate notions of authorship—the duo Lovett/Codagnone favor forms of cooperation as their source of inspiration. Mapping a work methodology and introducing new formats—their band, the staging of plays, and the […]
John Akomfrah, OBE Filmmaker and writer, Smoking Dogs Films, UK Lina Gopaul Producer and writer, Smoking Dogs Films, UK John Akomfrah, OBE, and Lina Gopaul co-founded the seminal film and video group Black Audio Film Collective and the more recent production company Smoking Dogs Films. Their collaborative and long-standing partnership has won them over thirty-five international […]
Presentation by Stefan Helmreich, MIT Professor of Anthropology, followed by book signing and reception. Florian Hecker's book Chimerizations introduces new ways of visually representing sonic experiments. Chimerizations documents six of Hecker's most recent projects with an introduction by Tate Modern curator Catherine Wood and an essay by MIT Professor of Anthropology Stefan Helmreich. The book will be available for sale at […]
Tarek Elhaik Media anthropologist, film curator, and Assistant Professor of Media and Culture, San Francisco State University Tarek Elhaik’s talk sheds doubt about the proliferation of medial acts deployed under the banner of the “Social.” It is in fact still unclear how social media and art practices have emerged as the dominant creative horizons […]
Ryan Kuo’s Party is an assemblage of faces, colors, cuts, and coded disclosures. Built using a mixture of digital and analog approaches, the work functions as a test of focus and readability. In its current installation, Party also means to interrupt the daily flow of knowledge and knowingness. It is an amassing of information that […]
On view in SA+Ps Wolk Gallery from December – March, Solidarity Works presents recent work by Azra Akšamija, Class of 1922 Career Development Professor in the Department of Architecture and Assistant Professor in SA+P’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology. Solidarity Works explores how art and architecture can act as vehicles for community making, both real […]
Joan Jonas, ACT Professor Emerita In Joan Jonas’s own words, Reanimation “is partly an homage to spiritual aspects of nature , but as glaciers are now melting, the work reflects the present-day situation.” The piece is based on the 1968 novel Under the Glacier by Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness. Originally […]
Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) and Stephen Vitiello’s sonic work investigates bodily experience and spatial practice. Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) is an artist and composer working in London. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, concert production, installations and recordings. His albums include Mass Observation (1994), Delivery(1997), and The Garden is Full of Metal (1998). His work has been presented throughout […]
Cinematic Migrations is a multi-faceted exploration of the histories and contexts of moving images and time-based media within their intersecting and distinct paths of emergence around the world. The cinematic, as a poetic and essayistic form of examination and reflection, underlies the breadth of perspectives and practices explored by our guests. Filmmakers, multimedia artists, performers, and […]
John Akomfrah, OBE Filmmaker and writer, Smoking Dogs Films (UK) Lina Gopaul Producer and writer, Smoking Dogs Films (UK) John Akomfrah’s Transfigured Night is a two-screen installation and reinterpretation of Richard Dehmel’s poem Verklärte Nacht that reflects on postcolonial histories. Exploring the many facets of migration, human experience, and political struggle, Akomfrah and Gopaul’s films, gallery installations, documentaries, TV […]
Cinematic Migrations, as a conjoined designation, poses the notion of “migrations” in relation to “the cinematic” in an intentionally porous juxtaposition, conceived to allow a wide range of questions, interpretations and permutations to emerge. During this initial phase, the work of John Akomfrah, currently with Smoking Dogs Films and previously with Black Audio Film Collective, […]
Kazue Kobata Professor, Department of Intermedia Art, Tokyo University of the Arts Art curator and professor Kazue Kobata will explore themes of political and personal transformation in connection with aspects of technology, medium, and experience as they unfold in Japanese cinema. In 1982, Kazue Kobata opened Plan B in Nakano, Tokyo, Japan’s first alternative art […]
Where’s the Passion? Where’s the Politics? or How I Became Interested in Impersonating, Approximating, and End Running Around My Selves and Others,’ and Where Do I Look When You’re Looking at Me? Yvonne Rainer Dancer, choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer’s lecture explores issues around self-expression, spectatorship, and the politics of both. Rainer is a […]
Elvan Zabunyan Art critic, historian, and Associate Professor, University of Rennes (France) The starting point of Elvan Zabunyan’s talk is the work of Korean-born American artist and poet Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. In 1980, having left her native Korea seventeen years earlier, Cha returned to work on a film project she described as “memory materializes directly on […]
Since the millennial shift to C21 “the contemporary” has become a common topic in discussions of periodization, as well as a gauge used regarding how to perceive and think about what artists and thinkers are thinking about, doing, and producing in the present. This fall semester, topics explored in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) events […]
Marko Peljhan: Artist, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at UC Santa Barbara, and Director of Systemics Lab, MAT/ART, UC Santa Barbara Unmanned aircraft systems have recently been rediscovered due to their use in the so-called “war on terror,” but are an invention more than 100 years old. The lecture will explore the histories and interconnectedness of these […]
ARTISTS AND SCIENTISTS COME TOGETHER TO SHARE TECHNOLOGIES AND APPLICATIONS FOR CULTURAL COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE MIDDLE EAST. CULTURUNNERS, a week of workshops and public events at MIT (October 1st to 6th, 2014), is a multidisciplinary gathering of artists, designers, filmmakers, scientists, curators, and scholars whose practices inspire novel approaches towards […]
CULTURUNNERS@MIT Ava Ansari: Artist and Edge of Arabia Associate Curator Azra Akšamija: Class of 1922 Career Development Professor and Assistant Professor at MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology Stephen Stapleton: Artist, Curator, and Edge of Arabia Co-founder Daanish Masood: Advisor, Political Affairs and Media for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Ahmed Mater: Artist, Medical Doctor, and […]
Bernardo Bader: Architect and Principal of the bernardo bader architekten Eva Grabherr: Director, Center for Immigration and Integration Azra Akšamija: Class of 1922 Career Development Professor and Assistant Professor, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology Nasser Rabbat: Aga Khan Professor and Director, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT Can an Islamic cemetery be more than a […]
Kelly Nipper: Artist and Lecturer, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology “My name is Tessa Pattern. I’m related to Thora Pattern, a character from The Edge of the Alphabet, a composition of letters pressed to pages and printed in 1962. I was educated at the technical school for clock making in the Black Forest. The school […]
Join ACT for a sound installation and concert by Neil Leonard, launching Leonard's two new CDs For Kounells and Mil Maneras. The event will begin with the “True Bread” sound installation on display from 7pm to 8pm in Wiesner Building Lower Level, followed by the For Kounellis/Mil Maneras concert in Bartos Theatre from 8pm to 9:30pm. True Bread […]
Gabriel Kahan: Filmmaker, Producer, and Lecturer, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology Multi-screen, rapid consumption of content is opening up new ways to communicate and engage viewers, in particular youth. At the same time, the complexities of modern social dynamics require one to develop novel ways of thinking about the role of government. Creating content […]
Daniela Pérez: Independent Curator Patrick Charpenel: Director, Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo Patrick Charpenel and Daniela Pérez will introduce the life and work of the artist Gustav Metzger and will expand on one of the artist’s most recent proposals regarding the construction and long-term activation of spaces for social change. The project explores questions regarding environment, climate […]
SPRING 2015 LECTURE SERIES | TOWARD CIVIC ART This lecture series investigates the critical spatial practices that claim manifold definitions of public art, through a diverse array of visual forms argued by key practitioners across the disciplines of art, pedagogy, architecture, and urban studies to identify the tools, tactics and consequences of actively reclaiming public […]
Doris Sommer is Founder of Cultural Agents, Harvard University and Ira Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Director of Graduate Studies in Spanish, Harvard University. Founder of Harvard’s Cultural Agents Initiative, Sommer calls attention to art as a social resource, and she promotes best practices through workshops and public forums. Her book “takes […]
Jeanne van Heeswijk (Bard College, Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism), is a visual artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces in order to “radicalize the local.” Van Heeswijk embeds herself as an active citizen in communities, often working for years at a time. These long-term projects, which have occurred […]
Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou from atelier d'architecture autogérée ("aaa"), revisit the notion of co-production in the context of their recent participatory projects in Paris (www.urbantactics.org). They will speak about the tools, spaces and agencies needed for citizens to co-produce their cities in times of crisis and austerity and about the (political) role of architects […]
Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van der Pol, School of Missing Studies, Sandberg Institute Amsterdam Understanding artistic practice as a form of learning and as a space of experience and encounter, a strategy for emancipation, and a potential response to public issues, Bik Van der Pol, through their often site-sensitive practice seek to question ‘publicness’ as well […]
Rikke Luther, Learning Site, Copenhagen Luther will discuss her art practice and the political economies of place. The concept of a ‘site’ is narrow. In contrast, place entails consideration of access; how social spaces and interactions are constituted; how spaces are lived; and how they mediate our material behavior. Above all, places are constructed by speech. […]
Claire Pentecost, Professor and Chair, Department of Photography, School of the Art Institute of Chicago For her upcoming lecture series contribution, Pentecost will be presenting formal responses to her research into soil, microbes and money, Pentecost will demonstrate the artistic position she calls “the public amateur.” Claire Pentecost’s work engages collaboration, research, teaching, writing, lecturing, drawing, […]
MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) is pleased to present, it could be an algorithm: karada/sex/watch/repeat/archive/chewing/clues/translation an exhibition of the work of ACT’s graduate students. These works are the culmination of this year's artistic and academic research, and range from animation-performance to a feature film to sonic opera sculpture to flying objects to […]
The Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) Special Collection's ongoing exhibition, the center in print: tracing the history of CAVS events and exhibitions through its poster art, is currently on view at the Rotch Library Exhibition space. The center in print marks a milestone achievement for ACT’s CAVS Special Collection projects: the digitization of over […]
ACT’s Fall 2015 lecture series, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, focuses on the method of the artist as embodied experience. At what point does experienced reality depart from representation? What are the corporeal consequences of living or performing artistic methodologies outside of traditional contexts? The title, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, refers to the early work […]
History and geography, storyboard and grid – Jafri’s talk will focus on the interstitial spaces between these poles opened up by three of her recent works. Jafri will discuss her ongoing photo research project “Independence Day 1934-1975.” The project is fueled by Jafri’s interest in questions of heritage and the archive, and the role of […]
Through her installations, Rosa Barba continues her exploration of film and its capacity to simultaneously be an immaterial medium that carries information and a physical material with sculptural properties. The category of film is expanded and abstracted beyond the literal components of the celluloid strip, the projector through which it passes and the image projected […]
Artist and ACT Lecturer, Kelly Nipper has invited her Performance Art Workshop (PAW) class to develop a set of actions inspired by their own experimental artistic community, with its unique rituals, missions, ethics, and aesthetics. Performances will take place within the context of ICA Boston's Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957 exhibition, as […]
Taking two case studies as references - Ubuntu Park, a community-organized public space in Soweto, South Africa, and sustainable extraction reserves and Indian territories in Acre, Brazil - Potrč argues that the appropriation of space by local communities, whether this is an urban public space or a territory in the rainforest, is fundamental for the […]
Beauty and the Right to the Ugly was the title of an exhibition in 1981 by the Brazilian-Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi, which took a stand against bourgeois taste and values presented at her seminal building SESC Pompéia in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with employees of a national organization for […]
Methodology is not only the means of a system for describing realities; it is a political tool that takes part in the process of knowledge production. From the perspective of an integrated relational practice in the field of urban, pedagogy and contemporary art, Pelin Tan conveys how collective experience of the translocal production of knowledge […]
Curation: Agencies + Urgencies ACT’s Spring 2016 lecture series Curation: Agencies + Urgencies addresses the contexts and forces shaping the practice of curation today. Bringing together a cast of influential curators, critics, and educators operating across institutional boundaries and political scales—from the book to the biennial—these lectures consider the curator—as diplomat, as researcher, as (para-)artist, as speculator, […]
Drafting exhibitions: empathy and artistic relations. An old way that might be the best way of doing things – beyond the notion of professionalism Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev Director of Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin ACT, in collaboration with AKPIA at MIT Present the first public lecture of the 2016 Lecture Series, Curation: Agencies + Urgencies. Carolyn […]
Future Island: Cuba Alejandro de la Fuente, Harvard University Magdalena Campos-Pons, SMFA Doris Sommer, Harvard University Timothy Hyde, MIT ACT present the second public lecture of the 2016 Lecture Series, Curation: Agencies + Urgencies. Alejandro de la Fuente is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics and Professor of African and African American Studies […]
Curatorial-Editorial Urgencies/ A Palimpsest of Species and Spaces Anna-Sophie Springer Co-Director of K. Verlag, Berlin Arguing that current matters in natural history are messier than some of the most compelling scientific and artistic representations seem to suggest, Springer will discuss her current research and previous exhibitions and publications which have engaged a complex spectrum of species […]
A workshop exploring the politics and aesthetics of Affect Space with Eric Kluitenberg, media theorist, writer, and researcher for Open! Platform for Art, Culture & the Public Domain Lara Baladi, Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence at MIT’s Center for Arts, Science & Technology and lecturer in MIT’s ACT program Alessandra Renzi, artivist and Professor of […]
Instead of describing memory changes in terms of crisis and loss, we may also choose to see them as pointers toward new modes of understanding “sharing,” “transfer,” “influence,” and “contact” in short, as vectors of collectivity. In this workshop we will discuss the new technologies of memory from perspectives that explicitly investigate their impact on […]
Conceptualized by ODGE Graduate Community Fellow Ron Martin, Infinite Footsteps is a multi-layered and dialogic engagement with the theme of mentorship against the backdrop of a fragmented history of racial discrimination in the world of academia in the US. Exploring the notion that over time architecture registers cultural identity and social change, the site-specificity of […]
Guided tours with the project’s lead artist, MIT Assistant Professor Azra Aksamija Daylight experience: 5pm – 5:30pm - May 4 + 5 Evening illumination: 8pm – 8:30pm - May 4 + 5; and 9pm – 9:30pm - May 7 (MIT Moving Day) The Memory Matrix is a monument in the making that explores the […]
Historical Resonances, Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future Corinne Diserens Director of ERG in Brussels; and curator of the 10th Taipei Biennial Corinne Diserens is currently director of the art academy erg (l’ecole de recherche graphique, Brussels) and curator of the 2016 Taipei Biennial; she was jury chairwoman of Akademie Schloss Solitude from 2011 to […]
Mediated Entities. In and Out of Curating. Lars Bang Larsen Co-curator of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, Visiting professor at the Haute Ècole d’Art et de Design in Geneva Mediated Entities: In and out of curating. Counterintuitive to the idea of critical practice, how can a work of art be “holistic” and at the […]
Experimental Publishing and Archival Research May 5, 7:00 PM Stemming from a series of encounters with the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) Special Collection, anarchive under the custodianship of MIT’s Program in Art, Culture & Technology (ACT), the editorial board of Experimental Publishing at ACT presents an indefinitely temporary musing into the utopic matrimony […]
Gediminas Urbonas, ACT Director Nomeda Urbonas, MIT research affiliate Baltic Pavilion, Palasport Arsenale Gediminas Urbonas and Nomeda Urboniene will present the Druzhba project as their contribution to The Baltic Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Reflecting on the cross-border, “shared space of ideas” that forms the theme of the Baltic Pavilion, the Druzhba installation […]
XXII CSAV – Artists Research Laboratory Cinematic Migrations Renée Green 1-23 July 2016 Cinematic Migrations Desire for cinema perhaps existed before its creation. Questions regarding this speculation and the variety of ways this longing has been addressed in the past and present form the basis of inquiry in this workshop. Cinema can now be thought […]
This series invites artists, designers, and philosophers to help us speculate on the future of art, learning, and action in a rapidly intensifying age of software aesthetics, persuasive computing, intangible infrastructures, nonorganic vitalities, and ubiquitous sensing. Over the course of the term, our six visiting lecturers will present different ways of approaching division and inclusion, […]
“Imaginary property” is an artistic research project on the halting problem of a society after the spectacle when Guy Debord’s “autonomous movement of the non-living” has become almost trivial but fully embedded in biopolitics. The concept of imaginary property characterises a new regime of ubiquitous image-production which throws into crisis conventional conceptions of the vexed […]
Azra Akšamija, Associate Professor, MIT, presents FITCH COLLOQUIUM: PRESERVATION AND WAR at Columbia University GSAPP. What are the moral limits to war? The destruction of heritage has, at least since the Enlightenment, been considered a threshold beyond which military action becomes unjust, even criminal. Centuries before modern preservation laws, it was military jurists like […]
Intangible infrastructures. Nonorganic vitalities. Digital solidarities. Technical debts. Human Machines. Bot torrents. Post-Media Through a survey of recent design projects from anexact office, The Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and PetaBencana.id, Etienne will argue for an interventive disposition toward the parametrization of life on earth. Etienne Turpin is a philosopher studying, designing, curating, and […]
In this two-part program, Cristina Ricupero casts light on “secret societies” through the prism of contemporary art and focuses on them as a fruitful locus of resistance to the excesses of today’s “open society.” Artists have always been fascinated by the obscure and the occult, and by the visual representation or transmission of secret knowledge […]
Gediminas Urbonas, ACT director, Nomeda Urboniene, MIT research affiliate, Lucas Freeman, ACT writer in residence, Nikola Bojić, ACT visiting lecturer, and Ashley Rizzo Moss, ACT senior communications & public programs assistant in collaboration with the Occupational Hazard (OH-) Project, Keilir Academy and the Keflavik Airport Development Corporation During 13 – 16 October, 2016 A___Zooetics (a project exploring […]
“Slight Agitation” is a four-part project of newly commissioned, site-specific works presented in sequence within the Cisterna, one of the pre-existing buildings at Fondazione Prada’s Milan venue. Curated by the Fondazione Prada Thought Council, whose current members are Shumon Basar, Cédric Libert, Elvira Dyangani Ose, and Dieter Roelstraete, “Slight Agitation” will unfold in four chapters […]
Today, yesterday’s LEFT has collapsed into what is referred to as “progressivism,” which aspires toward a MIDDLE, and today’s right has evolved into a neoliberalist faction and an ever more powerful faction in the form of an aggressive populism characterized by irrationalism, racism, xenophobia and misogyny. This reality is not limited to the United States […]
“The animal of the molecular revolution will be neither mole nor snake, but a drone-animal-thing that is solid, liquid, and a gas.” As the philosophical, religious, and historical systems that have produced the “individual” (and its counterparts, society and community) over the years continue to break down, the age of “dividuality” is now upon us. […]
About art, metamorphosis and exploring experience to enhance a different political imagination Ducks are capable of abstract thinking. This recent scientific discovery is no surprise to ducks; they are ducks, after all. The discovery just reveals that we, non-ducks, are deeply fascinated by sharing traits that are integral to our own idea of rationality. If […]
artworld agent, agent of social change counter-intel, counter-aesthesis insinuation, infiltration artist, provocateur What makes a double agent in art? What drives them? ACT’s Spring 2017 Monday Night Lecture Series, Double Agents, invites three renowned artists whose respective works provoke and thrive in the tension between competing systems of power, production, and exhibition. At play in these […]
Magid will be discussing recent projects, her engagements with the law, and permission as a material of the work with responses from international curator and art historian Lars Bang Larsen and SA+P Dean Hashim Sarkis. Bio Jill Magid is a widely celebrated MIT alumna now based in New York City. Her dynamic practice is deeply […]
Artists with unique international practices join ACT and the wider MIT community to discuss their respective approaches to work, research, and the formation of artistic intelligence. All presentations are in E15-207 unless an alternative location is noted. Speakers Matthew Ritchie Wednesday, February 22 - 11:30am - 12:30pm talk and Q&A Tony Cokes Monday, March 6 […]
Co-hosted with MIT Global Studies and Languages (GSL) Tania Bruguera defines herself as an initiator rather than an author. She often collaborates with multiple institutions and many individuals in such a way that the full realization of her artwork occurs when others adopt and perpetuate the models and proposals she creates. This presentation will show […]
With responses from Doris Sommer (Harvard, Cultural Agents) and Lawrence Susskind (MIT, DUSP) Pedro Reyes’s practice sews together the usually uneven goals/ends of art, architecture, psychology, theater, activism, and more. It’s understood that an expanded notion of sculpture is expanding into the social. His solutions engage us in the same way a practical joke would. According to Pedro, jokes […]
1+8 is a film by Angelika Brudniak and Cynthia Madansky about Turkey’s unique position between West and East and her relationship to her eight very distinct and diverse neighbours. 1+8 is filmed close up on border towns of Turkey with Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, Nakhchivan/Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and Syria exploring what connects and separates the […]
Edited by Gediminas Urbonas, Ann Lui, and Lucas Freeman Designed by NODE Berlin Oslo Produced by the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) Published by SA+P Press Distributed by MIT Press Contributors: atelier d'architecture autogérée, Dennis Adams, Bik Van Der Pol, Adrian Blackwell, Ina Blom, Christoph Brunner with Gerald Raunig, Néstor García Canclini, […]
The fall 2017 ACT Lecture Series invites renowned artists and philosophers to help us challenge our habits of perception and expand our margins of thought. Artistic intelligence is drawn to the fertile edges of knowledge, engaging radically anticipatory modes of being, thinking, creating, and acting without certainty. The series will offer models for un-knowing science […]
Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and numerous other disciplines. Among his chief concerns are learning how to see the historical moment we live in and developing the means to imagine alternative futures. Paglen’s work has had one-person exhibitions at Vienna Secession, Eli & Edythe Broad Art […]
Artists with unique international practices join ACT and the wider MIT community to discuss their respective approaches to work, research, and the formation of artistic intelligence. All presentations are in E15-207 unless an alternative location is noted. Speakers Newton Harrison Eco-Art and Action Research Wednesday, September 20 – 1:00pm – 2:0pm talk and Q&A Hinrich Sachs Soft […]
Following Cristina Ricupero’s special interest in the mechanisms of contemporary secrecy, she will focus this two-part program on espionage, a topic she is developing for an exhibition project with Alexandra Midal (independent curator and professor at the design program at HEAD-Haute Ecole d’Art et Design, Geneva). With examples from contemporary art and design, sociology, philosophy, […]
David Reinfurt will report on the last six months in Rome as a fellow at the American Academy interrogating one small, industrially produced artwork-product from 1965. The Tetracono was designed by Bruno Munari and produced by Danese Milano as an austere 15-cm black steel cube housing four aluminum cones, each painted half-red and half-green, which […]
Postcommodity will discuss their 2015 land art installation and socially engaged artwork Repellent Fence, and the implications of this work on their art practice, their future work, and the field of contemporary art as we approach the year 2043 (when the US transitions to a non-white majority). Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of […]
Professor Barry will be discussing recent projects with introductions by ACT Director, Gediminas Urbonas, and School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) dean, Hashim Sarkis. Respondants Emily Watlington, SMArchS ‘18 and Curatorial Research Assistant at the MIT List Visual Arts Center Eugenie Brinkema, Associate Professor in the Literature Section of SHASS Kristel Smentek, Associate Professor in […]
Two of the 20 international young designers chosen to participate in the inaugural antenna are from the ACT community. antenna is a program of Design Indaba and Dutch Design Week (DDW), which brought these designers together to present their projects – that will shape the way that we adapt to the ever-changing world that we live in – on the […]
The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology graduate students will set up a temporary school as an intervention into the nested ecosystem of education at MIT. This school will be a subsystem of education where students and the general public will be invited to participate in ACT student-led classes, cinema cycles, exhibitions, discussions, conferences, […]
Artists with unique international practices join ACT and the wider MIT community to discuss their respective approaches to work, research, and the formation of artistic intelligence. Speakers Lanfranco Aceti Tuesday, February 13 – 12:45pm – 1:15pm talk and Q&A deRoth Room, E15-283a Rikke Luther Tuesday, March 20 – 12:30pm – 2:00pm talk and Q&A deRoth […]
Film Screening + Artist Talk Dragonfly Eyes is an 81-minute fictional movie, made entirely out of surveillance footage. It tells a story deeply rooted in today's reality, revealing the "invisible" crises hidden in our mundane lives, and the inexplicable turns of events that lie beyond our grasp. The film reflects fragile sensibilities in our private […]
How are the frontiers of the universe being mapped, visualized, and sonified by artists? Our understanding of the universe is not just the result of scientific research and technological innovation. Artists have been active in producing some of the most powerful and persistent ideas about the possibilities of of universe we exist within, just as […]
Join us for the Cambridge/MIT premiere of the Sundance-supported docuseries CareForce One Travelogues (ITVS/PBS Indie Lens Storycast). The 20 minute film series will be introduced by its producer Marisa Morán Jahn (Lecturer, MIT Art, Culture + Technology) and followed by a lively conversation about care and co-design with Sasha Costanza-Chock (Associate Professor, MIT Comparative Media […]
In collaboration with the Department of Nuclear Science & Engineering and the MIT Media Lab, ACT presents Resynthesizer, a performance, installation, and public tour series of MIT Media Lab Professor Joe Paradiso’s modular synthesizer temporarily installed within MIT’s internationally known Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). Resynthesizer will incorporate a month long series of public […]
The Zooetics+ Symposium commences Friday, April 27, 2018 with the sessions “What Does Ecosystemic Thinking Mean Today” and “Knowledge Production Through Making and Living with Other Species,” discussing the habits of thought associated with cybernetics and the transition towards new thinking, inspired by sympoietics. The day will be finalized with a session speculating on what […]
Part of the Zooetics+ Symposium Looking ahead to future generations, sustained by the strength of our ancestors and wise to the challenges of living in fraught times, how do we bring our values as Indigenous people to our work in creating Indigenous futures? As artists, how do we apply Indigenous science and technology to creating […]
Recent work by MIT alumni in visual art. Co-curated by ACT Consulting Curator Laura Knott and ACT Research Affiliate Nomeda Urbonas, In Our Present Condition… celebrates work by alumni whose diverse practices have received numerous awards and recognitions in international art circuits. The show is part of the many events and exhibits associated with the […]
Renewable Futures. Art in the Age of Post-Media: Exploring Patterns for Social, Scientific and Ecological Transformations Rasa Smite will discuss the transformative and visionary potential of art in the post-media age by tracing her earlier artistic experiments with new media together with Raitis Smits and RIXC -- Internet radio and the Acoustic Space Lab in […]
The Swamp Pavilion: Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice International Architecture Biennale May 26–November 25, 2018 As part of Freespace, the 16th Venice International Architecture Biennale, Lithuania presents its first individual pavilion titled The Swamp Pavilion, curated by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, commissioned by Pippo Ciorra, presented by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and produced by the Architecture Fund. In a time […]
Join us for the fourth annual Arts on the Radar - an evening of exhibitions, arts, activities, and dancing! Friday, September 7 7 – 11 PM Members of the MIT Community are invited to join MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the Program in Music and Theater Arts, and the Arts […]
The Civic Arts Series, which is part of the Comparative Media Studies' graduate program Colloquium, and co-sponsored by ACT, features talks by four artists and activists who are making innovative uses of media to reshape the possibilities of art as a source of civic imagination, experience and advocacy. Using a variety of contemporary media technologies–film, […]
Part of the New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies Erik Loyer's award-winning work explores new blends of game dynamics, poetic expression and interactive visual storytelling. From his best-selling Strange Rain story-playing iPad/iPhone app, to his visually stunning digital fiction The Lair of the Marrow Monkey (powered by Shockwave software animation), and his interactive explorations […]
Part of the New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies Daniel Bacchieri is an award-winning Brazilian journalist, documentary film maker and collaborative web developer/curator, whose visually inspiring StreetMusicMapplatform has been widely praised for its curation of street performers from across the globe. Combining a documentarian vision with a trans-cultural appreciation of the public art of […]
Part of the New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies Marisa Morán Jahn is a multi-media artist, writer, educator and activist, whose colorful, often humorous uses of personae and media create imaginative pathways to civic awareness of urgent public issues. Working collaboratively, her projects include a classic American road trip, CareForce One, in a 50-year-old station […]
ACT’s lecture series draws together artists, scholars, and other cultural practitioners from different disciplines to discuss artistic methodologies and forms of inquiry at the intersection of art, architecture, science, and technology. Each spring and fall semester brings a different thematic focus and the format for each event shifts depending on the visitor(s) and the nature […]
Richard Sennett: The Good Craftsman Richard Sennett will be giving a lecture based on his book The Craftsman. “Good craftsmanship” stands for work of good quality. What sort of work is this in the digital era? The lecture explores this question in three domains: the acquisition of craft skills, learning from others in workshops, and technical supports […]
Screening of Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock Followed by a conversation with Myron Dewey hosted by Lisa Parks Collaboration with CMS/W About the film The Dakota Access Pipeline is a controversial project that would bring fracked gas from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa and eventually to Illinois. The Standing Rock […]
Raitis Smits will talk about his research in digital art preservation, key strategies, and main practices, particularly focusing on archiving and representation issues of internet based art from the '90s. He will be introducing case studies on the Rhizome Archive at the New Museum that he studied as a part of his Fulbright research in […]
Thursday, November 15 5:00pm – 6:00pm ACT Cube (e15-001) Part of the New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies Introduction by Lisa Parks, Professor, Comparative Media Studies; Director, Global Media Technologies & Cultures Lab and recently awarded MacArthur Fellow! Respondents: Nicholas A. Brown, Artist, Cultural Geographer, Assoc. Teaching Prof, Northeastern University Marisa Morán Jahn, […]
ACT's Professor Emerita, Joan Jonas, and alumnus, Sung Hwan Kim, will be together in conversation with ACT Director, Judith Barry.This event will honor Jonas' being awarded the Kyoto Prize, her contributions to ACT, and highlight the re-emergence of performance art at ACT, to be taught by Kim in Spring 2019. Respondents: Jay Scheib, Professor in Theater, […]
It is often assumed that Conceptual Art pivots on bureaucratic means of communication such as text and documentary photography, and that it performs a dematerialization of traditional media such as painting and sculpture. In this lecture, I will argue that since the '90s, artists have focused more on Conceptual Art’s legacy of remediation, rather than […]
Below are the events currently scheduled for February School 2019. Most workshops have limited places. To sign up for a workshop event, please email info@thefebruary.school. In the month of February, the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology will set up a temporary school in the Wiesner Gallery, Student Center (W20). Initiated in 2018, February School is an […]
ACT’s Monday Night lecture series draws together artists, scholars, and other cultural practitioners from different disciplines to discuss artistic methodologies and forms of inquiry at the intersection of art, architecture, science, and technology. Each spring and fall semester brings a different thematic focus and the format for each event shifts depending on the visitor(s) and […]
Free and Open to the Public Eva and Franco Mattes are an artist duo originally from Italy, living in New York. They have continually made work that responds to and dissects the contemporary networked condition, always approaching the ethics and politics of life online with a darkly humorous edge. Their latest body of work, […]
The Civic Arts Series, which is part of the Comparative Media Studies’ graduate program Colloquium, and co-sponsored by ACT, features talks by five artists and activists who are making innovative uses of media to reshape the possibilities of art as a source of civic imagination, experience and advocacy. Using a variety of contemporary media technologies–film, web platforms, […]
Pashpeshau: Rising Multiplicities – Indigenous Artists Speaker Series Pashpeshau means s/he rises, s/he bursts forth, s/he blooms, in the Massachusett language As the work of Indigenous artists gains prominence across the globe, this series highlights the multidimensional perspectives of Indigenous artists that challenge dominant cultural defects, engages with critical approaches to creating, and exposes our deep relationships to […]
Civic Arts Series, “Bringing the War Home”: Visual Aftermaths and Domestic Disturbances in the Era of Modern Warfare Caren Kaplan Wednesday, Feb 20, 2019 5-6:30 pm | MIT Building 4, room 270 Part of the New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies Introduction by Lisa Parks, Professor, CMS/W At the close of the First […]
Pashpeshau: Rising Multiplicities – Indigenous Artists Speaker Series Pashpeshau means s/he rises, s/he bursts forth, s/he blooms, in the Massachusett language As the work of Indigenous artists gains prominence across the globe, this series highlights the multidimensional perspectives of Indigenous artists that challenge dominant cultural defects, engages with critical approaches to creating, and exposes our deep relationships to […]
Join us for the ACT's Artistic Research Luncheon Series, where artists with unique international practices join ACT and the wider MIT community to discuss their respective approaches to work, research, and the formation of artistic intelligence. Spring 2019 Speakers: Matthew Mazzotta Tuesday, March 5 12:30pm – 1:45pm talk and Q&A deRoth Room, E15-283a Sung Hwan […]
The New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies, presents Opeyemi Olukemi Introduction by Sarah Wolozin, Director, MIT Open Doc Lab Opeyemi Olukemi is Executive Producer of POV Spark—the innovation arm of the iconic independent nonfiction film program POV—and Vice President of American Documentary’s Interactive unit. Throughout her career as an interactive producer, funder […]
Jaroslav Švelch: Gaming the Iron Curtain: Computer Games in Communist Czechoslovakia as Entertainment and Activism Part of the New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies Introduction by Vivek Bald, Professor, CMS/W at MIT Based on the recent book Gaming the Iron Curtain, this lecture will outline the idiosyncratic and surprising ways in which […]
Beth Stryker is Co-founder of CLUSTER (Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research) a platform for urban research, architecture, art, and design initiatives based in Downtown Cairo. CLUSTER has received critical recognition for its work, including a Curry Stone Design Prize (2017), and inclusion in the Egyptian National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture […]
"Thumbs Type and Swipe" DIS Collective (Lauren Boyle) The New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies Introduction by Amy Rosenblum Martín, Independent Curator and Educator, Guggenheim DIS (est. 2010) is a New York-based collective composed of Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro. Its cultural interventions are manifest across a […]
As the new archivist for ACT, Thera Webb has been exploring the amazing breadth of the special collections. She thinks it’s important for this collection to be open not only to people doing research on specific subjects/art practices, but also to MIT students, faculty, staff, and anybody in the greater Boston area. She is planning […]
The New Media and Civic Arts Series, hosted with Comparative Media Studies presents Haidee Wasson: Do-it Yourself Cinema: Portable Film Projectors as Media History. Introduction by Lisa Parks, Professor, CMS/W Haidee Wasson’s talk will explore the long and vibrant place of portable film devices in the history of small media, repositioning the ‘movie theatre’ as the […]
Pashpeshau means s/he rises, s/he bursts forth, s/he blooms, in the Massachusett language, from the Natick Dictionary. As the work of Indigenous artists gains prominence across the globe, this series highlights the multidimensional perspectives of Indigenous artists that challenge dominant cultural defects, engages with critical approaches to creating, and exposes our deep relationships to land, […]
Extrastatecraft explored repeatable spatial formulas and large socio-technical infrastructures—the free zone world cities, mobile telephony networks and commercial spatial products that are making some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world. Her recent book, Medium Design, continues to expose the dangers and powers of this ubiquitous space by focusing on not only the […]
There will be a screening of Inadelso Cossa's films A Memory in Three Acts (64 minutes) and The Dead Tell No Tales (10 minutes) in Bartos Theatre, beginning at 4pm, prior to his 6pm lecture, Personal Perspectives on Mozambican History Through Film. Inadelso is a Mozambican film director, cinematographer, producer, and the founder of 16mmFILMES, an independent […]
Inadelso Cossa is a Mozambican film director, cinematographer, producer, and the founder of 16mmFILMES, an independent film and television company based in Mozambique. His work explores different phases of Africa’s, particularly Mozambique’s, history from a personal perspective. Investigating the Colonial, Post Colonial, Independence, and Post Civil War periods, Cossa finds it his duty to document […]
☞ The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology presents Put That There, an exhibition of graduate student work. Featuring works by: ACT Class of 2019 Erin Genia Zach Jama Rikas Xiaoyan Shen Ringo Runzhou Ye Zhexi Zhang ACT Class of 2020 Ryan Aasen Luíza Bastos Lages Rae Yuping Hsu Matt Ledwidge Casey Tang Nancy […]
Pashpeshau: Rising Multiplicities – Indigenous Artists Speaker Series with Demian DinéYazhi´(Diné), artist and activist Pashpeshau means s/he rises, s/he bursts forth, s/he blooms, in the Massachusett language, Natick Dictionary As the work of Indigenous artists gains prominence across the globe, this series highlights the multidimensional perspectives of Indigenous artists that challenge dominant cultural defects, engage with […]
The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts was established in 1996 through an endowment from Harold and Arlene Schnitzer of Portland, Oregon. Schnitzer, a real estate investor, graduated from MIT in 1944 with a degree in metallurgy. The Schnitzer Prize is presented to current MIT students, undergraduate and graduate, for excellence in […]
An exhibition of thesis explorations by graduate students in architecture, urban design and planning, art, media studies, and real estate. On display are documentary depictions of drawings, renderings, and photography, as well as models and videos. The exhibit features the work of the ACT graduating class of 2019: Erin Genia Zach Jama Joshuah Jest Ringo […]
Join us for a screening of new films by graduating SA+P students Zach Jama (ACT) and Daphne Young Xu (DUSP). Event catered by Basho Sushi. Xasuuqii Means Massacre (2019) by Zach Jama. Zach is an artist, filmmaker, and engineer, and a graduate of the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology. A Thousand Year Stage […]
Co-founded by ACT Assistant Professor Nida Sinnokrot, Sakiya is located on an idyllic hillside in the village of Ein Qiniya, Ramallah. It is a progressive academy which promotes visual art, ecological preservation, sustainable agriculture and food justice. Rooted in Palestine’s rich tradition of agrarian self-sufficiency, Sakiya grafts cultural heritage together with contemporary artistic and ecological […]
Joan Jonas describes her artistic methods in forthright terms. She recorded her own voice speaking poetry and prose and bits of overheard conversation. She made a closed video system and watched herself while she performed. She brought together objects and movement and images like beads on a string. She moves. She films. She edits. She […]
Sound Performance, LP Launch, and Discursive Event on the Amphibian Pedagogies and Submerged Perspectives The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology and the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga, are co-presenting the Futurity Island, an infrastructure for interspecies communication. A network of water/sewer pipes, Futurity Island is assembled into an artificial skeleton that channels the sounds of "nature." […]
As an artistic research program, ACT is perennially concerned with emerging modes of expression that explore evolving forms of knowledge production. In this context, the program’s Fall 2019 Lecture Series asks, “What is art if not an event?” Philosopher Alain Badiou describes an event as a multiplication of conditions which may not always make sense […]
Oppenheimer’s calculated manipulation of standardized spaces disrupts the embodied experience of spatial continuity, reorienting and clarifying the experience of the built environment. Upcoming and recent solo projects include N-01 (Kunstmuseum Thun 2020), S-337473 (Mass MoCA 2019), S-337473 (Wexner Center for the Arts 2017), S-281913 (Pérez Art Museum Miami 2016), S-399390 (MUDAM Luxembourg 2016) and 33-D […]
Throughout history, the project of architecture was realized by draining swamps, marshes, and wetlands. Dividing the land into a liquid and solid, butchering the territory for agriculture, waterways, and settlements, extracting and parceling it by expelling the indigenous—all are technologies of architecture and colonization. To notice the swamp below our feet is to switch to a […]
György Kepes was MIT's first tenured artist, a pioneer of interdisciplinary collaboration, and the founder of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. But despite his success relating artistic, scientific, and technological research at MIT, his tenure was also defined by backlash and controversy. Kepes found himself entangled in a new military-industrial-aesthetic complex during the Vietnam War era. In this talk and discussion, John R. Blakinger shares from […]
Public lecture by Joe Davis, the pioneer of BioArt Followed by Q&A session Joe Davis is a legend, a CAVS fellow, and a prominent artist in the field of BioArt, art that engages living matter. Davis, according to writer Patrick House “was the first to insert art in the genome of a living organism” (New […]
Considering a graduate degree in Art, Culture and Technology? Join us for the Graduate Open House. This is your chance to meet our faculty and students, familiarize yourself with our program, and learn how to prepare your application materials. REGISTER HERE FOR THE OPEN HOUSE! Note: Online registration closes at 12pm on Friday, November 8; however, […]
Diffractions: Holography at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies On exhibit November 12 - 29, 2019 E15-223 What is a hologram? A hologram is a 2-dimensional image that contains all the 3-dimensional information of an object. When viewing a hologram, you can tilt the image and see the orientation of the shape move. It’s as […]
Thursday, November 15 12:30 – 2:00pm deRoth Room Raitis Smits will talk about his research in digital art preservation, key strategies, and main practices, particularly focusing on archiving and representation issues of internet based art from the ’90s. He will be introducing case studies on the Rhizome Archive at the New Museum that he studied as a part […]
ACT will be hosting the book launch for Hemispheres, a collection of poetry produced by ACT staff member, Kevin McLellan. The event will feature a series of poetry readings, musical performances, and a film screening by a group of other artists and writers as well as the author. Nancy Dayanne Valladares (b. Tegucigalpa, Honduras). Her work […]
In December of our war year, a Communist filmmaker disappeared. Later, a rumor circulated: He was making a different war film, embarrassing to our own side. He had left behind a 16 mm film, hidden inside a can of cooking flour. It may not have been the enemy army that killed him. Mohaiemen’s work over […]
In his talk Martin Guinard will share the curatorial vision he and Bruno Latour have for the project that attempts to map a new reorientation of dealing with the condition of Earth. Their project that identifies some of the shifts in political affects, has been drawn up to differentiate between the global and the “terrestrial” – […]
Artists and academics with unique practices join ACT and the wider MIT community to discuss their respective approaches to work, research, and the formation of artistic intelligence. Speakers Jacopo Buongiorno and Gordon Kohse MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory Tuesday, February 4 12:30pm – 1:45pm talk and Q&A Wiesner Room, E15-207 Nicole L'Huillier MIT Media Lab, Opera of […]
The MIT Nuclear Reactor: a World-Class Facility for Research and Education A description of the MIT Nuclear Reactor with examples of outstanding research taking place in this facility. The reactor is a versatile tool that allows faculty and students to probe the properties of materials and sensors in a radiation environment, transmute chemical elements into […]
As of 3/10/2020, any event happening beyond 3/10 has been postponed per MIT’s response to COVID-19, the Corona Virus. We are hopeful that we will be able to reschedule it for Fall 2020. The Allegorical Resonance of Alchemical Affect Each speaker might be seen as engaging with these terms in different ways. Allegory as allowing […]
Who: Dora García What: Artist talk and discussion. When: Monday, 02/10 @ 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Where: E15-001 Dora García, an internationally renowned Spanish artist, will be discussing her artwork that inquires the legacy of Marxist feminisms and their […]
Schedule of Events 4:30 – 6:00pm | Screening of The Proposal 6:00 – 7:30pm | Discussion 8:00 – 9:30pm | Second Screening of The Proposal Speaker: Jill Magid Moderator: Caroline A. Jones Panelists: Ana Miljacki and Timothy Hyde Watch the lecture on Vimeo or below. Known as “the artist among architects,” Luis Barragán is among the world’s most […]
Nicole L'Huillier: Membranal Strategies for a Vibrational World Thursday, February 27 12:30 – 2:00pm E15-207 Since everything that is matter has the capacity to vibrate and resonate, our reality is intertwined by vibrations that physically animate matter across scales and media. This idea presents a framework where both human and non-human agents are part of […]
Speaker: Stephen Prina Respondents: Renée Green and David Joselit Stephen Prina will present English for Foreigners, 2017; galesburg, illinois+, 2015; and As He Remembered It, 2011. Watch the lecture on Vimeo or below. Stephen Prina (*1954, Galesburg, Illinois) lives and works in Los Angeles, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is Professor, Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University. MFA, California […]
Who: Brian Mayton, experimental designer and technologist What: Presentation and discussion. When: Wednesday, 03/04 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Where: E15-001 Brian Mayton joined the MIT Media Lab in 2010 and is currently working towards his PhD. His research interests include connecting ubiquitous computer technology to the physical world through sensing and actuation, and […]
Who: Carlos Garaicoa What: Presentation and discussion. When: Monday, 03/09 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Where: E15-001 Carlos Garaicoa Manso (Cuba, 1967; lives and works between Havana and Madrid) employs a multidisciplinary approach to address issues of culture and politics, particularly Cuban, through the study of architecture, urbanism and history. His main subject has been […]
As of 3/10/2020 these events have been postponed per MIT's response to COVID-19, the Corona Virus. We are hopeful that we will be able to reschedule it for Fall 2020. For up-to-date information regarding MIT's policy surrounding this, please click here. The Artists and Archives Program will bring guests from the art community to MIT […]
Robert Dell Artists and Archives Series Tuesday, March 10 ACT Cube 7:00pm Free and open to the public. Registration encouraged; Walk-ins are welcome. Robert Dell Geothermal Engineer and Progenitor of Sustainable Art Center for Advanced Visual Studies Fellow, 1993-1997 Founding Director, the Center for Innovation and Applied Technology and the Laboratory for Energy Reclamation and Innovation Professor […]
As of 3/10/2020 this event has been canceled per MIT's response to COVID-19, the Corona Virus. For up-to-date information regarding MIT's policy surrounding this, please click here. Who: Stefanie Hessler What: Presentation and discussion. When: Monday, 03/30 @ 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Where: E15-001 Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer and editor. Her work focuses […]
As of 3/10/2020 this event has been canceled per MIT's response to COVID-19, the Corona Virus. We are hopeful that we will be able to reschedule it for Fall 2020. For up-to-date information regarding MIT's policy surrounding this, please click here. Jasmine Dreame Wagner Artists and Archives Series Tuesday, April 7 ACT Cube 7:00pm Jasmine […]
Put the arts on your radar! You’re invited to join us online to learn more about a range of arts-related topics, spanning the myriad opportunities for making, learning, and experiencing the arts at MIT this academic year. Schedule of Events Thursday, September 3, 7-9:30pm Info Booth / Arts Lounge Making Music Virtually Creating Dance Virtually Panel: MIT […]
Who Feels at Home in the Visible World? is an online exhibition from the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, featuring new works from Casey Tang, Luíza Bastos Lages, Matthew Ledwidge, Nancy Valladares, Rae Yuping Hsu, Ryan Aasen, Aarti Sunder, Chucho Ocampo, Emma (Yimeng) Zhu, Faruk Šabanović, and Po-hao Chi. In 1965, the founder […]
This fall, ACT is co-sponsoring a lecture series as part of MAS.S63 | Black Mobility and Safety in the US I, a new course taught by Ekene Ijeoma, Director of the Poetic Justice Group at the MIT Media Lab. In this seminar and studio, Ijeoma will guide students to listen, learn, reflect and respond to issues around mobility (physical, […]
Zoom Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/91769853830 Sponsored by a CAST grant. This talk is part of the course 4.s31: Video Installation, taught by Georgie Friedman and TA: Jola Idowu. Derek Hoffend is a visual and audio artist who creates interactive sound-sculpture installations and electronic music, exploring sound as a medium intersecting with physical forms, structures, bodies, and spaces to create immersive and participatory […]
ACT invites you to attend a panel discussion from the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative (TSI). On Monday, October 19, join Caroline A. Jones, Daniel J. Wietzner, Patricia Williams, and Ethan Zuckerman for 'Data Magic and Democracy: Privacy, Politics, and Transmedia Storytelling' from 5:30-7:30pm EST. Just weeks before the US presidential election, we invite you to an […]
Each speaker might be seen as engaging with these terms in different ways. Allegory as allowing interpretations that have the possibility of giving form to the immaterial while revealing hidden meanings. Alchemy as a forerunner of chemistry, encompassing the recognition that serendipity as a chance operation can lead to unforeseen outcomes. Affect as a verb generative of an experience, feeling, […]
Monday, October 26 6pm EDT Virtual Lecture – Register Here Watch Here Speaker: Barbara London Respondent: Caroline Jones Barbara London will investigate how media art is shaped by its DNA: technology, real-world politics, and art’s mutability. She will focus on how early pioneers and today’s young innovators combine forms, and along the way revise the […]
Arianna Mazzeo: On gestures beyond performance, urban bodies and artistic research into the unknown. Dr. Arianna Mazzeo is teaching at Harvard University, Methodologies and Practice in Design Engineering Research and advising for Independent Design Engineering Projects (IDEP). She is Associate Visiting Professor of Practice in Design, Art, and Technology, and a Senior Research Fellow at […]
Professor Hufanga Dr. 'Okusitino Mahina, Professor of Art, Culture and Critical Anthropology Tonga International Academy Dr Mahina lectured in social work in 1993 and 1994 before moving to Auckland University where he taught Pacific Political Economy and Pacific Arts in Anthropology. Born in the Tongan village of Tefisi, on the island of Vava`u, he was […]
Speaker: Ekene Ijeoma Respondent: Dayna Cunningham During this lecture, Ekene Ijeoma will explore new forms of justice through art. Ekene Ijeoma is an artist, professor at MIT, and the founder and director of the Poetic Justice group at MIT Media Lab. Through both his studio and lab at MIT, Ijeoma researches social inequality across multiple fields including social science […]
Dr. John Bingham-Hall is Director of the charitable research centre Theatrum Mundi (TM), which aims to expand the practices of city-making through projects linking built environment and artistic disciplines, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at UCL STEaPP. With TM he has led programmes on cultural infrastructure, sonic urbanism, urban commons, and choreographing urban mobility. He has held research […]
Monday, December 7 Time 2pm EST Virtual Lecture Speaker: Cesare Pietroiusti Respondent: Jesal Kapadia Non aes sed fides. Georg Simmel, at the very beginning of the XX Century, proposed his concept of “spiritualization” of money in capitalist society. It is not the “bronze” (aes) that assure strength and stability to economy, but faith (fides) that makes everyone believe […]
Continuing from fall 2020, ACT is co-sponsoring the series of public guest lectures that coincide with Ekene Ijeoma’s Black Mobility and Safety in the US course. Focusing on the theme of living while Black, this semester’s topics will include: learning, voting, driving, working, and loving while Black. Guest panelists will include John Akomfrah (The March, 2013), Garrett […]
Tuesday, February 23 1pm EST Virtual Event Free event. Registration required. Sign up here. The Spring 2021 Black Mobility and Safety in the US Lecture Series begins with the theme of Black Progress, and we welcome Garrett Bradley and John Akomfrah. Garrett Bradley is an artist who works across narrative, documentary, and experimental modes of filmmaking to address themes […]
Tuesday, March 2 1pm EST Virtual Event Free event. Registration required. Sign up here. The Spring 2021 Black Mobility and Safety in the US Lecture Series continues with the theme of Learning While Black, and we welcome Anthony Abraham Jack and Stefan Lallinger. Anthony Abraham Jack is a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of […]
Spring 2021 Lecture Series | The Incidence of Fingerprints When Earth Meets the Sky Virtual Events: March 15 Lawrence Abu Hamdan | Natq (impossible speech) Lawrence Abu Hamdan presents ‘Natq’, a live audiovisual essay on the politics and possibilities of reincarnation. Through listening closely to “xenoglossy” (the impossible speech of reincarnated subjects), this performance explores […]
Monday, March 15 Virtual Event 12:30pm EDT Free event. Register here. Lawrence Abu Hamdan presents 'Natq', a live audiovisual essay on the politics and possibilities of reincarnation. Through listening closely to "xenoglossy" (the impossible speech of reincarnated subjects), this performance explores a collectivity of lives who use reincarnation to negotiate their condition at the threshold […]
Tuesday, March 16 1pm EST Virtual Event Free event. Registration required. Sign up here. The Spring 2021 Black Mobility and Safety in the US Lecture Series continues with the theme of Voting While Black, and we welcome Darryl Pinckney and Nsé Ufot. Darryl Pinckney, a long-time contributor to The New York Review of Books, is […]
Tuesday, March 23 1pm EST Virtual Event Free event. Registration required. Sign up here. The Spring 2021 Black Mobility and Safety in the US Lecture Series continues with the theme of Driving While Black, and we welcome Frank Baumgartner and Gretchen Sorin. Frank R. Baumgartner holds the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professorship in the Department […]
Wednesday, March 31 5-6:30pm EDT Virtual Event Register Here About Drone-enabled 3-dimensional mapping now meets technologies of 5G broadband, empowering real-time surveillance – should there be ethical constraints? In November of 2020, the digital New York Times celebrated the arrival of 5G broadband service in the greater New York area with a paid notice conveying […]
Tuesday, April 6 1pm EST Virtual Event Free event. Registration required. Sign up here. The Spring 2021 Black Mobility and Safety in the US Lecture Series continues with the theme of Working While Black, and we welcome Tanya Wallace-Gobern and Thomas Shapiro. Tanya Wallace-Gobern became the Executive Director of the National Black Worker Center Project […]
Monday, April 12 Virtual Event - Watch Here! 7:00pm EDT The term “Indigenous” is often used to refer to Native issues at an international level. This panel consists of renowned curators whose practices engage an international circuit of art exhibition while, at the same time, addressing the nationalist and colonialist implications of that same infrastructure. […]
Thursday, April 22 Virtual Event 6:00pm EDT In collaboration with the MIT Architecture and with the participation of Ulrike Al-Khamis, interim Director and CEO of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and Sean Anderson, Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA. Watch the lecture here! Our global society is facing an […]
Monday, May 3 Virtual Event - Watch Here! 9am Boston / 9pm Beijing Register HERE for the Lecture! Speaker: Cao FeiRespondent: Nick Montfort The modern narrative labyrinth was first used by the Argentinian novelist Jorge Luis Borges, who in his short story, The Garden of Forking Paths, used time, as a metaphor, to weave the […]
Friday, September 10 6-7pm EDT Free, open to the public RSVP required In-person, Bartos Theatre (e15-070), MIT Event website Artists: Pohao Chi (TW), Kwan Q Li (HK), Weihan Jiang (CN), Weilu Ge (CN) and Kelon Cen (CN), Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits (LV) Curator: Rasa Smite (LV) With more recent enhancements of immersive and sensing […]
Urgent, Critical, and Experimental Explorations Across Art-Culture-Technology The Fall 2021 programming aims to revisit the foundational parameters of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program, positioning ACT within the context of a changing world and its future challenges. By articulating key thematic avenues and methodological approaches that intersect the work of invited artists and ACT faculty […]
Thursday, September 16 6:00pm EDT Watch Here In collaboration with MIT Architecture and the Architecture and Urbanism Group Sanford Biggers Interdisciplinary Artist and MLK Visiting Scholar Sanford Biggers’ work is an interplay of narrative, perspective, and history that speaks to current social, political, and economic happenings while also examining the contexts that bore them. His […]
This event is free and open to MIT Affiliated individuals. Registration is required and seating is limited. **PLEASE NOTE** In accordance with COVID-19 contact tracing guidelines, contact information for all event attendees, including name and cell phone number or email address will be collected via the RSVP form. All attendees are required to wear a face […]
Virtual productions by students across MIT engaging with the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative, 2019-2021 Celebrating two years of operation (one and a half of them in a global pandemic), the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative (TSI) of the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) presents an exhibition of student work; beginning with the cellphone video made in the […]
Saturday, October 23 Public Program Artist Talk In collaboration with the List Visual Arts Center Leslie Thornton's Begin Again, Again is on view from October 22, 2021 - February 13, 2022. Leslie Thornton has produced an influential body of work in film and video. Her early encounters with experimental, structuralist, and cinéma vérité traditions as a […]
Monday, October 25 at 6pm Virtual Event Watch Here This panel discussion will include short presentations by artist Morehshin Allahyari, Mark Jarzombek (MIT Architecture - History, Theory, Criticism), and Charles Shadle (MIT Music Dept.), followed by a moderated discussion and an open Q+A. Morehshin Allahyari | On Digital Colonialism In this talk, Morehshin Allahyari will […]
Monday, November 8 at 6pm Virtual Event About the lecture: The property relation of the enslaved included and exceeded that of chattel and real estate. Plantation mortgages exemplify the ways in which the value of people who were enslaved, the land they were forced to labor on, and the houses they were forced to maintain […]
Friday, November 12 12-7pm EST Physical Location: MIT 7-429, Ling Lounge (for MIT community only) Virtual Location: Webcast Link Register here Cinema begins with analogue simulations of fanciful realities (Méliès’s Trip to the Moon) as well as torquings of time that can run upside down and backwards -- yet all our virtual realities must obey […]
Recent developments in preparation for this evening’s planned panel have broadened the potential significance and impact of our discussion on Sovereignty and Indigenous Curation. In response to these developments and with an interest in maintaining an open and respectful forum for educational exchange, the ACT Program at MIT and the IAIA have decided to postpone […]
Considering a graduate degree in Art, Culture and Technology? Join us for our Virtual Open House. This is your chance to meet our faculty and students, familiarize yourself with our program, and learn how to prepare your application materials. Join us via Zoom on Tuesday, November 16 at 10:00am EST and/or Thursday, November 18 at 6:00pm […]
Friday, November 19 12:30pm ACT Cube (E15-001) In person event A 39,000-Year History of Virtuality is a journey through time and space to explore other forms of reality, called “virtuality,” through the rich past, present and future of human immersive creativity, vision, ingenuity and culture. This journey will follow the very human quest for human-made […]
An exhibition of prints curated by ppppress, a student and alumni-run publishing project within ACT. ppppress was founded by ACT Class of 2021 Chucho Ocampo Aguilar, Emma Yimeng Zhu, Aarti Sunder, and Po-Hao Chi. In an effort to bring printed-media back into the ever-growing presence of the virtual and the screen, ppppress presents a collection […]
Monday, December 6 at 6pm Virtual Event Watch Here This panel discussion will include short presentations followed by a moderated discussion and an open Q+A. The Art, Science & Climate Crisis panel aims to bring together cutting edge artists and scholars in conversation with interesting trans-disciplinary scholars from MIT and beyond, including Rania Ghosn (MIT), […]
January 11, 2022, 8.30am EST Virtual Event Register here In this online event artist Kwan Q Li (SMACT ’22) and architect Joel Cunningham (SMArchS AD’22) will share their project No humans in the City, but Weeds - a piece of artistic research that examines an emerging trend of data-centre urbanism. This collaborative project commenced in […]
Artists and academics with unique practices join ACT and the wider MIT community to discuss their respective approaches to work, research, and the formation of artistic intelligence. SPEAKERS Emma Yimeng Zhu (SMACT ’21) and Chucho Ocampo (SMACT ’21) Collaborative tools and practices, history, present and future of ppppress Thursday, February 10 12:30pm – 2pm talk and Q&A ACT […]
Collaborative tools and practices, history, present and future of ppppress. Thursday, February 10 12:30pm ACT Cube Speakers: Emma Yimeng Zhu, Chucho Ocampo Recent graduates, as well as inaugural post-graduate residents of the Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program at MIT, Emma Yimeng Zhu (SMACT '21) and Chucho Ocampo (SMACT '21) will share the story of ppppress, a […]
Rafi Segal: The Fantastic Realities of Maps In-person at MIT in room 1-132 or virtually via Zoom Join us for a guest lecture by Rafi Segal as part of 4.301: Intro to Artistic Experimentation: Drawing Then Into Now. Maps are instruments of power that create new realities often hidden from plain sight. Through various examples, architect Rafi Segal will demonstrate how the […]
Urgent, Critical, and Experimental Explorations Across Art-Culture-Technology The Spring 2022 programming aims to revisit the foundational parameters of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program, positioning ACT within the context of a changing world and its future challenges. By articulating key thematic avenues and methodological approaches that intersect the work of invited artists and ACT faculty […]
The event is free and open to the public. MIT will be observing all Covid-19 precautions, and registration is required. You can register here. Dr. Adesola Akinleye will speak about the research she began at MIT that focuses on a new lexicon. This event serves as a follow up to the first part of her […]
Book launch Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp Edited by Azra Aksamija, Raafat Majzoub and Melina Philippou Published by the MIT Press, 2021 Free admission; join here. A conversation with ACT Director and Professor Azra Aksamija, Raafat Majzoub (SMACT '17), and Melina Philippou (SMArchS '16), moderated by Huma Gupta, lecturer in the […]
Christine Shaw GROUP PROBLEMS: Learning to Live Together at Scale Thursday, March 31 12:30pm ACT Gallery For whom do group problems exist? How do they appear, how do they persist, how do they spread and intensify, and how do they end? What is the function of the problem in the context of group formation, disintegration, […]
Louis Volont The Notion of ‘Community' in Activist Urban Praxis: A Theory Friday, April 1 12:30pm ACT Gallery The notion of ‘community’ has become a key term at the intersection of architecture, activism and design. Activist architects and designers, inspired by utopian groups from the 1960s and 1970s, continue to offer intelligence, resources and support […]
ACT welcomes Alia Farid (SMVisS '08) for a discussion of her recent projects, namely her solo exhibition, In Lieu of What Is, currently on view at the Kunsthalle Basel. Alia Farid (b. 1985) lives and works in Kuwait and Puerto Rico. Through a combination of mostly film and sculpture, her work gives visibility to lesser-known […]
Nolan Oswald Dennis (SMACT '18) misrecognition Thursday, April 7 12:30pm Virtual Event - Please join here. In this talk Nolan Oswald Dennis will reflect on the twin notions of relation and irrelation as conceptual strategies, political coordinates, contingent aesthetics, and conditions in his practice. He will try to outline a series of commitments and track […]
The event is free and open to the public. MIT will be observing all Covid-19 precautions ‘Microperformativity’ denotes a current trend both in performative art practices and theories of performativity to destabilize human scales – both spatial and temporal – as the dominant plane of reference and to emphasize biological and technological micro-agencies that, beyond […]
Suneil Sanzgiri (SMACT '17) Thursday, April 21 12:30pm Virtual Event - Join Here This talk by artist and filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri unpacks and explores questions and themes around decolonization, identity, diaspora, and cross-continental solidarity. Through his lens based practice, Sanzgiri’s experimental films and installations blend multiple layers of 16mm film, CG animation, desktop aesthetics, and […]
**Registration is REQUIRED via Eventbrite** **Live webcast link HERE** The Garden, in the context of Palestine, conjures conflicting imaginaries of security and abundance, of disobedience and control, inside and outside, and of exile and return. These binaries are the narrative components of the enclosures and infrastructures that have distinguished the Garden from untamed wilderness. As such, the […]
We are excited to invite you to the final presentation for the course Art & the Public Sphere (Choreographing the City). The course develops an emerging lexicon for movement in urban space, merging notions of choreography, city-making, community and the new climatic regime. The course taught by prof. Gediminas Urbonas in collaboration with MIT CAST […]
Here and Elsewhere - ACT Thesis Exhibition 2022 May 28 - June 30, 2022 ACT Student Gallery, E15-095 Opening reception: May 27 at 5pm Opening reception co-hosted with MIT Architecture Student Council. How to look at closeness from afar? Here and Elsewhere presents selected works of the graduating Art, Culture, and Technology cohort of 2022: […]
zero.zerozerozerozerozeozerozerozeroone On view May 27 - October 2022 East Lobby at MIT.nano Building Opening reception on Friday, May 27 from 6:30-8:30pm Object's color, luster, and texture are shaped by its nanoscale properties. So is the way we perceive taste, smell, stickiness, transparency, and other aspects of an object's tangibility. Utilizing instruments within MIT.nano, one can […]
This exhibition is a reflection on Professor Emeritus Krzysztof Wodiczko’s essay “Un-War” and a call to put an end to perpetuating the culture of war we live in. The displayed works are a part of an open call in response to the following prompts: What does Un-War mean to you? What does it mean […]
On Display: September 9 – October 29, 2022 in the Wiesner Student Art Gallery, open 9:00am – 9:00pm daily Reception: September 16, 2022 / 5:00 – 7:00pm An exhibition of work by José Alejandro Medina Bickford, Graduate Student in the Art, Culture, and Technology Program at MIT In Reconfiguración, Alejandro Medina (SMACT '23) presents five new […]
You're invited to a party for all art lovers at MIT! Free event for MIT students Friday, Sep 9 / 4–11pmMIT Building E15 Lobby20 Ames St., Cambridge Enjoy an evening of art exhibitions, studio visits, tours, food, and a dance party, presented by the Art, Culture and Technology Program, Arts at MIT, Department of Architecture, List Visual Arts Center, Media Lab, and […]
September 14 - October 26, 2022 Reception: September 14, 2022, 4-6pm in Rotch Library Gallery Wojnarowicz in Cambridge is a series of photographic portraits composed in response to David Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud in New York series, in which the artist was photographed wearing a mask of the transgressive French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Wojnarowicz in Cambridge brings queer […]
Between September 19-20 the artist duo Lundahl & Seitl will offer a studio showing of two works at ACT: Symphony of a Missing Room ( 2009 - ongoing), and The Memor (2019 - 2022) which was made with co-artist ScanLAB Projects. The visit is an invitation from Urbonas Studio and the MIT ACT program in […]
Join ACT and the MIT Press Bookstore to discuss Ekow Eshun’s In the Black Fantastic with Kelli Morgan and Christie Neptune A richly illustrated exploration of Black culture at its most wildly imaginative and artistically ambitious, In the Black Fantastic assembles art and imagery from across the African diaspora. Embracing the mythic and the speculative, it recycles […]
Gearóid Dolan is an activist artist from Dublin, Ireland, working in the US under the branded name screaMachine. Their ouevre spans the worlds of performance art, film-making, audio, animation and interactive works, which often all combine in large scale street intervention projects with arrays of video projectors. Known especially for their work with protest movements, […]
Farmed salmon are a constructed animal, one of the most recently domesticated and industrialized species in human history. In this performative-lecture Cooking Sections reflect on their expansive body of work on the environmental impact of salmon farms which can be traced far beyond the circumference of open-net pens, and everything that escapes through them. Salmon […]
Considering a graduate degree in Art, Culture and Technology? Join us for our Virtual Open House. This is your chance to meet our faculty and students, familiarize yourself with our program, and learn how to prepare your application materials. Join us via Zoom on Tuesday, October 25 at 7pm ET and/or Thursday, October 27 at 9am […]
Ute Meta Bauer | Saying It Without Saying. Can a Biennale Be a Newspaper?: On The Process of Creating the 17th Istanbul Biennial The suspension of life-as-we-knew-it is a rare license to do things differently. Doing justice to this moment means resetting our expectations and our purposes, reimagining our formats and making way for a […]
Pandemic Pondering, an exhibition of student work curated by Azra Aksamija, Director of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program at MIT, is on view at MIT’s Keller Gallery through March 5. Through large-format images of COVID masks created by MIT students, the exhibit takes as its subject the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its repercussions. The […]
Following the Symbionts exhibition walk-through at MIT List Visual Arts Center, ACT will host a dual book launch and discussion event at The Cube (E15-001) with Caroline A. Jones, Stefan Helmreich, and Sophia Roosth. What is “Life” in BioArt? Caroline A. Jones will present briefly on the concept of “biofiction” developed around the practice of […]
Free Rain, an exhibit by Luca Senise (SMACT '23), is a suggestion for an alternative water infrastructure in the form of a decentralized network of self-contained rainwater catchment, filtration, and dispensing devices. The project explores environmental intervention between the individual, do-it-yourself scale, and the scale of a municipal utility, taking operational cues from a resource […]
As part of MIT Architecture Spring 2023 public program in collaboration with MIT ACT, this lecture will be held in person, at 6 PM ET in Long Lounge (7-429), followed by a discussion with Huma Gupta (AKPIA), Bish Sanyal (DUSP) and Gediminas Urbonas (ACT) as respondents. In the past decade, the Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory […]
As part of ACT Spring 2023 events, Abigail Disney's award-winning documentary The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales will be screened in Bartos Theater, followed by Q&A with co-directors Abigail E. Disney, Kathleen Hughes, and former Disney cast member Artemis Bell, moderated by the Dean of SA+P, Hashim A. Sarkis. Abigail Disney looks at America's […]
As part of ACT Spring 2023 events, Maria Niro’s award-winning documentary The Art of Un-War will be screened in Bartos Theater. This event, hosted by ACT Professor Gediminas Urbonas, is featuring a discussion between director Maria Niro, artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, and respondents Natalie Bell (MIT List), Hector R. Membreno-Canales (ACT). The Art of Un-War is an award-winning documentary directed by Maria Niro. The film […]
Poetics of Inquiry: How to Stay with Trouble, is a behavioral-based solo exhibition by artist Ishraki Kazi (SMACT ‘23). Activated by a series of durational performances, the show is set as a tentacular experiment on the inquiries of how our knowledge system may be limited and how we can relate with others. Audiences will be […]
As part of Spring 2023 ACT Lecture Series and in collaboration with MIT Morningside Academy for Design, this lecture will be held in person, at 6 PM ET in The Cube (E15-001). The talk will feature Aubrie James (SMACT '24) as the respondent, and curator-director of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design Roi Salgueiro Barrio as the […]
The 2023 Max Wasserman Forum: Altered Access, organized by the List Visual Arts Center and co-hosted by ACT, brings together artists, educators, and curators to discuss current disability discourse within the arts and museum institutions. This year’s Wasserman Forum will consist of two days of hybrid programming including a virtual keynote address, and three hybrid […]
In this event co-sponsored by CMSW, ACT, and ICEO, Prof. Frances Negrón-Muntaner (Columbia University) will discuss the origins, impact, and future of the award-winning artivist project Valor y Cambio (Value/Valour and Change), in conversation with Prof. Katerina González Seligmann (University of Connecticut). Starting in Puerto Rico in 2019, Valor y Cambio repurposed an old ATM to […]
Mrinalini Singha Forensic Artifacts of a Democracy in Crisis Public Viewing Forensic Artifacts are objects that contain data and evidence of something having occurred. Over the past 30 years since the watergate moment the Babri Masjid was demolished by fevered Hindutva mobs, reduced to rubble in hours by bare hands, the Indian secular democracy has […]
Counteractions: An ACT Thesis Screening MIT Museum May 312:00pm Opening Remarks 2:10-3:40pm Screenings 3:40-4:00pm Closing Remarks Join ACT graduate students and alumni for a video screening of their work offering a glimpse into each artist's research, process, and conceptual frameworks. Moderator: Ian Daniel Free with museum admission SCREENINGS (in order) Stata Island by Mrinalini Singha Compost Ritual by […]
The Biggest Obstacle Film Screening and Q+A Wednesday, June 7 5:30pm Bartos Theater (E15-070) Join the Disabilities ERG for a screening of the award winning film The Biggest Obstacle, directed and produced by ACT's Gearóid Dolan on Wednesday, June 7th from 5:30 to 7:30pm in the Bartos Theater (E15-070) A short Q & A with the director […]
An immersive art installation that allows you to experience an environment controlled by microbes Opening Reception: Tuesday, June 27 from 5-7:30pm Reserve your free ticket HERE Open for viewing: Thursday, June 29, 12-3pm Friday, June 30, 12-3 pm and 5-8pm Thursday July 6, 12-3pm Friday July 7, 12-3 pm and 5-8pm Saturday July 8, 1-4pm […]
Get to know the arts at MIT! Explore resources, events, workshops, and connect with fellow MIT art lovers. REGISTER TO ATTEND
The Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program at MIT is pleased to host the 2023-2024 artistic inquiry luncheon series. These lunch-time conversations aim to foster artistic inquiry across disciplinary boundaries and are open to faculty, staff and students in the School of Architecture and Planning, as well as those affiliated with the MIT Center for […]
On Monday, September 18, ACT and the Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) will host "Landscape Painting for Beginners: Non-linear Information Keeping," an Artistic Inquiry gathering with Joe Davis, hosted by Cassandra Guan. About Joe Davis: While earning his Creative Arts degree (1973) from Mt Angel College in Oregon, Joe Davis pioneered sculptural methods […]
On Monday, October 2, ACT and the Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) will host an Artistic Inquiry gathering with Rhea Vedro, Metals Artist in Residence & Technical Instructor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. Metal objects have long been signifiers of cultural values, power, and protection across belief systems and time. […]
Celebration of 55th anniversary of MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies A series of events including a Book Launch for Elizabeth Goldring and Ellen Sebring's Centerbook at the Goethe-Institut Boston, Research Salons, Screening of Márton Orosz's György Kepes: Interthinking Art + Science, and a lecture from Margit Rosen. Centerbook, by Elizabeth Goldring and Ellen Sebring, […]
The Fall 2023 programming aims to revisit the foundational parameters of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program, positioning ACT within the context of a changing world and its future challenges. By articulating key thematic avenues and methodological approaches that intersect the work of invited artists and ACT faculty members, we link these inquiries to concerns […]
György Kepes. Interthinking Art + Science documentary film by Márton Orosz, Hungary–Canada 97 min Part of the Fall 2023 Lecture Series. Film screening followed by Q+A with the filmmaker. Can technology save us from technology itself? "Can prosthetics be used to emulate the pageantry of nature and provide a viable alternative for building a sustainable […]
In Light Dance, Seth Riskin extends his body with light and, with the control of a gymnast, articulates light phenomena around viewers who find themselves at the center of the movement experience. Through unique artistic methods and technologies, Light Dance creates a visual environment in which light is perceived as a reflexive experience of vision. […]
Nearly seven decades ago, British cybernetician Gordon Pask (1928-1996) envisioned a world in which machines engaged humans in conversation. Pask, who gained international fame in the 1950s for his innovative adaptive teaching machines, created cybernetic devices and environments that not only adapted to humans, but challenged them. Assuming that humans find it pleasurable to continuously […]
Sama Alshaibi, Sadik Alfraji, and Huma Gupta | From the Great Flood to the Great Migration Part of the Fall 2023 Lecture Series. In collaboration with the Aga Khan Program and the Department of Architecture. This lecture will be held in person in Long Lounge, 7-429 and streamed online. Iraki-Dutch Multimedia artist Sadik Alfraji works […]
Considering a graduate degree in Art, Culture and Technology? Join us for our Virtual Open House. This is your chance to meet our faculty and students, familiarize yourself with our program, and learn how to prepare your application materials. Join us via Zoom on Monday, November 6 at 9am ET and/or Wednesday, November 8 at 7pm ET. […]
Video-artisan and new media scholar Albert Figurt (aka Alberto Angelini), together with MIT Professor of Digital Media Nick Montfort, collaborate on the “retroduction” of a new screencast movie—a film entirely unraveling within the borders of a computer screen. The movie is produced using historical computing technology from the late 1990s, well before the earliest “desktop […]
Part of the Fall 2023 Lecture Series. In collaboration with the Department of Architecture. This lecture will be held in person in the ACT Cube (E15-001). Part storytelling, part lecture, and part live documentary film, Sarah Kanouse’s solo performance “My Electric Genealogy” explores the shifting cultures and politics of energy in Los Angeles and the West […]
Matej Vakula's research explores the ethics of generative biological design and tissue printing. He culturally analyzes the feasibility of creating machine-learning-based automated ethics for 3D-printed organisms, organs, and organ systems. His research intervenes in debates on algorithmic bias in generative design and AI ethics by analyzing the automation of bioethics related to generating the digital […]
Aubrie R.M. James (SMACT '24) shore/lime/line/light On Display: December 1, 2023 through January 14, 2024 Wiesner Student Art Gallery, open 9:00am–6:00pm daily. Opening Reception: December 1, 2023 / 5:00–7:00pm The environment of MIT is not porous; the hard-surfaced landscape conspires to convince us that we are somehow in a place without memory. Using techniques of […]
The Biggest Obstacle Tuesday, December 5, 2023 6–8 p.m. | Refreshments served at 5:30 p.m. Bartos Theater, E15-070 In collaboration with ACT, MIT’s Disabilities ERG are presenting the documentary film The Biggest Obstacle on Tuesday, December 5, at 6 p.m. in the Bartos Theater.This documentary film, directed and produced by an ACT Media Instructor Gearóid […]
.zerodotzerozerozerozerozerozerozerozeroone Lisa T. Su building December 6, 2023 through Fall 2024 Opening event on December 6, 2023 from 5-7pm This exhibit marks a significant step in bringing together the Art, Culture, and Technology program with MIT.nano, probing new presentation methods, delivery modes, and visualization concepts that address artistic pursuits across societal, environmental, scientific, and cultural […]
Join us on Wednesday, December 13 from 1-3pm for seasonal treats and learn more about ACT's Spring 2024 classes! Classes that are open to undergraduates are: 4.301 | Introduction to Artistic Experimentation Instructor: Erin Genia TA: Frank Cong Schedule: MW 9:30am-12:30pm 4.302 | Foundations in Art, Design and Spatial Practices Instructors: Tobias Putrih, Cherie Abbanat […]
Atmospheres - Art, Climate, and Space Research Mobile Pavilion February 1 - March 1, 2024 Open from 11am-2pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays Free and open to the public The mobile pavilion is an international ambassador. A specially produced miniature version of the mobile pavilion's presentation room with the same content is now traveling as […]
Part of the Spring 2024 Lecture Series. In collaboration with the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), and co-sponsored by MIT Native American and Indigenous Association (NAIA), MIT American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), and Co-Creation Studio. This lecture will be held in person in the Bartos Theater (E15-070). The lecture is […]
Friday, March 1, 2024 1-2pm Free and open to the public Join curator Astrid Kury for a guided tour and conversation surrounding Atmospheres - Art, Climate, and Space Research, currently on view in the ACT Cube. This specially produced miniature version of the mobile pavilion’s presentation room with the same content is now traveling as […]
A powerful examination of the unsettling history of photography and its fraught relationship to global antiblackness. Part of the Spring 2024 Lecture Series. In collaboration with MIT Press. This lecture will be held in person in the ACT Cube (E15-001). Following Kimberly Juanita Brown's presentation/reading, she will be joined by ACT lecturer Hector Membreno-Canales and […]
Imagining Communities through Architecture: The Mediterranean Sea as a Constellation This lecture will present three projects that bring together art and architecture united by the Mediterranean Sea as a coherent site of imagination, collective future and interconnectedness: 1.Cycles of Collapsing Progress, an exhibition held at the Oscar Niemeyer-designed Unesco World Heritage Site in Tripoli, Lebanon. […]
Sky Art 24 - Symposium & Exhibition ACT Cube, 2-5pm, April 5th 2024 Join us on Friday, April 5th at 2:00 pm for the Sky Art Symposium 24 in the ACT Cube in the Wiesner Building (MIT E15-001)! Space is limited. Register here. Our event aims to continue the history of a series of Sky Art […]
Techne: Evidence in the Anthropocene telescopes between galactic and planetary evidence that is presented by scientists and artist-investigators who contemplate both deep time and the fate of the human species. Using the framework of a simulation model developed at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory that considers the probability for intelligent life to occur in the Milky […]
Lunch Lecture Shaping Spatial Constellations Dr. Judith-Frederike Popp, Prof. Johanna Diehl, Prof. Raphael Sbrzesny Tuesday, April 16 12:30-2pm Wiesner Room Judith-Frederike Popp Assembling the voice of the space - Aesthetic practices of coming together The background for this lecture is provided by an approach understanding aesthetics as practice between art, design and everyday life that constitutes […]
"The whole star is a moving skin" is a trio exhibition of Aubrie James (SMACT ‘24), Luca E. Lum (SMACT ‘25), and Zhanyi Chen (SMACT ‘24). In this exhibition, the three artists explore relationships with our temporal and spatial environments through the lens of yearning and loss. The title is a line taken from a […]
Sky. Pond. Mouth. Book Launch Wednesday, May 8th ACT Cube (MIT E15-001) 6pm Join us on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, for a book launch, reading, and signing of Kevin McLellan's Sky. Pond. Mouth. Kevin McLellan's Sky. Pond. Mouth. won the Granite State Poetry Prize, selected by Alexandria Peary, and has been fast-tracked for publication by YAS Press to coincide […]
Advanced Workshop in Artistic Practice and Transdisciplinary Research: Topics in Biological Arts, Ethics, and Automation 4.314 U / 4.315 G Course Final Presentation This course, taught by Matej Vakula, examines artistic practice as a form of critical inquiry and knowledge production. It offers opportunities to develop art as a means for addressing the social, cultural, […]
Join filmmakers Ghida Anouti, Juan Manuel Chávez, and Hajar Alrifai for a screening of their film, Traveling Laundry Line, at the MIT Museum on Saturday, June 1, 2024 at 12pm. Traveling Laundry Line emerged from an Independent Study that the trio took with ACT Professor Nida Sinnokrot. Previously, they had taken Sinnokrot's Introduction to Film […]
This exhibition Ethos of Abstraction in Biodesign includes students' artworks from the Advanced Workshop in Artistic Practice and Transdisciplinary Research: Topics in Biological Arts, Ethics, and Automation course, offered in the spring semester of 2024 by the Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT SA+P. Exhibiting Students: Lauren Ramlan (MIT Biological Engineering and Media Lab), […]
Get to know the arts at MIT! Explore resources, events, workshops, and connect with fellow MIT art lovers. REGISTER TO ATTEND
The Fall 2024 programming aims to revisit the foundational parameters of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program, positioning ACT within the context of a changing world and its future challenges. By articulating key thematic avenues and methodological approaches that intersect the work of invited artists and ACT faculty members, we link these inquiries to concerns […]
In Anne Duk Hee Jordan's work, she explores the intersection of technology and nature, challenging the omnipotence of AI by embracing artificial stupidity. Through installations and sculptures, she reveals the poetic beauty of failure and the unpredictability of the digital gaze. Her creations simulate ecosystems where machines and organic lifeforms coalesce, questioning the boundaries of […]
Atif Akin's lecture will focus on works that examine science, nature, mobility, and politics through (a) historical and contemporary lens, exploring transdisciplinary issues within a technoscientific context. Akin delves into his decade-long research on radiation, mutation, and archaeology, offering a narrative on the intersection of art, science, and politics. He examines radioactivity and mutant spaces, […]
Considering a graduate degree in Art, Culture and Technology? Join us for our Virtual Open House. This is your chance to meet our faculty and students, familiarize yourself with our program, and learn how to prepare your application materials. Join us via Zoom on Wednesday, October 16 at 9am ET and/or Thursday, October 17 at 7pm ET. […]
October 18 - November 14 12-5pm (Closed on Mondays) An exhibition featuring artworks from Vinzenz Aubry (SMACT ‘25), Frank Cong (SMACT ‘25), Haozhen Feng (SMACT ‘25), and Brian Hudson Huang (SMACT ‘25) The works on view attempt to contend with a world that no longer makes sense through the act of sense-making. We are in […]
Presented with the MIT Department of Architecture. ONLINE Webcast Lucy Orta’s visual arts practice investigates the interrelations between the individual body and community structures, exploring their diverse identities and means of cohabitation and employing socially engaged methodologies. She works across a range of mediums including drawing, textile sculpture, photography, film and performance to realise singular […]
Emilija Škarnulytė is an artist and filmmaker, who reflects on human civilization through the topic of deep time. In the exploration of invisible structures and components of reality beyond human control, she uses the camera as an archaeological tool that pierces through cosmic and geologic, as well as ecological and political strata. Immersive experiences, exercising […]
The Interrogative Design Symposium is organized as a celebration of the artistic and intellectual legacy of Krzysztof Wodiczko, ACT's Professor Emeritus, with the launch of the book Interrogative Design, edited by ACT alumnus Ian Wojtowicz (SMACT '12) and published by the MIT Press. The Symposium examines the role of art and design in activating the […]
In collaboration with the MIT List Visual Arts Center, we invite you for an evening of experimental sound and visual performance, “The Predictability of Unpredictability*…” by Andrew Neumann. The event is free and open to the public, though reservation is suggested. This performance, originally conceived as a small system designed for solo improvisation has for […]
This generative video installation engages viewers with a circle of animated digital eyes that respond to human presence. As participants approach, they encounter an unknown entity of digital avatars closely following their movement. A mediated face-to-face encounter with the unknown. Who is really watching who? In this generative video installation by Vinzenz Aubry (SMACT '25), […]
ACT lecturer Hector Rene Membreno-Canales's Golden Cargo: Conquest of the Tropics examines the complex history of the United Fruit Company (UFC), a global banana exporter with deep ties to Greater Boston and MIT. The exhibition draws from several archives, including MIT's Francis Russell Hart Nautical Collection, established in 1921 by the Department of Naval Architecture. Known […]
A pair of temporary site installations connected across space and time by performance, Panoctagon and Festival Henge investigate the creation of space activated by presence, structure, and the artifact of community, from the voices for social justice to the expression of joy. Panoctagon is a temporary forum space dedicated to a decade of protest as documented by […]
Art Exhibition and Lecture on the history and future of handloom jamdaani weaving by MIT Economist Abhijit Banerjee, Artist-Illustrator Cheyenne Olivier, and Woolmark Prizewinning Garment Designer Suket Dhir. The Exhibition will feature artworks in jamdaani including a woven scroll and garments, and a video on jamdaani weaving. This is the first exhibition of a textile […]
Videos featuring kinetic typography will display portions and the complete text of Kevin McLellan's poem "States," projected onto an exterior wall of the MIT Weisner Building. Begins at 7pm on March 7 and March 8. Kevin McLellan is the author of Sky. Pond. Mouth. (winner of the 2024 Granite State Poetry Prize, selected by Alexandria Peary), in other words […]
Film screening of Oscar® nominated Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat and conversation with filmmaker Johan Grimonprez. Jazz and decolonization are entwined in Johan Grimonprez's Oscar® nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film historical rollercoaster that rewrites the Cold War episode that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest […]
Join Azra Aksamija and the MIT Future Heritage Lab team at the MIT Museum for an interactive paper-cutting workshop where you can design textile patterns inspired by plant intelligence. Telltales of Tide and Terra is an art-science project that documents plant intelligence through textile patterns, exploring how plants adapt to environmental challenges. Through creative engagement with […]
A special edition of the MIT Museum’s After Dark offers interactive experiences and community-focused activities that are free and open to the public. After Dark is a monthly after-hours event created by the MIT Museum. Attendees will enjoy a variety of hands-on making demonstrations, conversation, and interactive play accompanied by live music and a pop-up cash […]
LAYERS OF PLACE: MIT SYMPOSIUM Join us on April 7 and 8. Register here. April 7: Augmented Reality as Art, Voice and Resistance In conjunction with the MIT Open Documentary Lab’s AR and Public Space Artist Collective’s exhibition, Layers of Place: MIT, this interdisciplinary panel explores how artists and communities are using augmented reality to reveal […]
Join us for a conversation between ACT Professor Judith Barry and ACT Professor Emerita Joan Jonas. Among other things, they will discuss recent and current projects and exhibitions. Registration is required. This event is free and open to the public. Joan Jonas (b. 1936, New York, NY) is a world-renowned artist whose work encompasses a […]
stand and watch in the dark Aram Kavoossi and Luca Lum April 18 - 25, 2025 Open 12-6pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Tuesdays. Open 12-7pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Closed on Mondays. Opening reception on Friday, April 18 from 6:30-9pm. Opening Night Artist Talk: 7:15–8PM | Elegies in Real Time moderated by Harris Chowdhary […]
The Mizna Futurities Issue launch and symposium is an invitation to collective speculation on relationalities of people, land, futurity, and catastrophe in the twenty-first century. Taking the form of a symposium, but abandoning the emphasis on lectures for a multidisciplinary assemblage of performance, conversation, and workshopping, this event will comprise readings, performances, artist talks, discussions, […]
A large net-like installation suspended mid-air echoes with mirrors, fish-shaped sculptures, and images of Asian women within the exhibition space. Ghostly fish seem to swim through invisible currents, repeatedly traversing between reflective surfaces and fragmented stage settings. Using the Chinese folklore tale "Chasing the Fish" as a metaphorical and narrative thread, Haozhen Feng's (SMACT '25) […]
Make, Shift is a collective exercise in unfolding explorations. Marking a milestone in seven artists’ movements through distinct material and conceptual explorations, this exhibition invites viewers to weave through material meditations, intimate and alien media, labor-powered fermentation, soft memorials, intergenerational pedagogy, subsonic perception, and more-than-human ecologies. Spanning sculpture, photography, print, audiovisual installation, new media, and […]
Festival Henge @ MIT Media Lab Fall 2025 screaMachine / Gearóid Dolan This is a community participation project that involves, absorbs, and reflects the community of artists at and associated with MIT Festival Henge is a dynamic, participatory installation composed of eight freestanding, translucent hand-made LED video panels arranged in an octagonal formation. Evoking the […]
Get to know the arts at MIT! Explore resources, events, workshops, and connect with fellow MIT art lovers. REGISTER TO ATTEND
Primacy of Shape An exhibition/workshop Wiesner Gallery (MIT Student Center W20, second floor) Special Dates: September 16, 2025 / 5:00–7:00pm / Opening Reception September 29, 2025 / 5:00–7:00pm / Closing Reception On Display: September 2–29, 2025 / Gallery open from 1:00–6:00pm, Tuesday–Friday Wiesner Student Art Gallery, Stratton Student Center, W20 Room 209, 84 Massachusetts Avenue, […]
For the last forty years, Julia Scher's research has explored social control dynamics in the public sphere, focusing especially on themes of surveillance. The art projects have taken the form of interactive installations, reformulated surveillance, site tours, interventions, performances, photography, writing, online projects, linear video, and sound. This talk offers a personal and critical reflection […]
MIT Open Documentary Lab presents a conversation between Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan and storyteller Sona Tatoyan about their shared mission to heal the world through science and art. Guided by María Puig de la Bellacasa’s understanding of care as a world-making ethic, ACT takes up the charge to turn art into durable infrastructures of care. Quantum […]
5:00–6:00 PM - MIT List Visual Art Center open 6:00–7:00 PM - Artist Discussion in ACT Cube List Projects 33: Every Ocean Hughes features One Big Bag (2021) is a 40-minute single channel video. The video uses the “mobile corpse kit”—a bag filled with everyday objects doulas use to care for the newly dead—as both the visual structure and narrative driver […]
Considering a graduate degree in Art, Culture, and Technology? Join us for our Virtual Open House. This is your chance to meet our faculty and students, familiarize yourself with our program, and learn how to prepare your application materials. Join us via Zoom on Monday, November 3 at 7pm ET and/or Wednesday, November 5 at 9am ET. […]
Extensions of Soil November 7 - 14, 2025 Gallery Hours: 12:00 - 5:00 * Closed Mondays Special Events: Nov 7: 5:00 - 7:00 Opening Reception and Musical Performance Nov 11: 12:00 - 2:00 Children Drop-In Making Session Extensions of Soil is an installation by artist Coco Allred (SMACT '26) and composer Ophelia Ariadne Worbes (Berklee […]
Visualizing Data and Life-Like Processes in Digital Art December 8 - 11, 2025 Viewable by appointment. Please contact the TA for the course, Will Allstetter (SMACT '27). The exhibition is a showcase of the students' final projects for the course "Visualizing Data and Life-Like Processes in Digital Art," taught in Fall 2025 by Matej Vakula. […]
Modeling as Tektological Praxis By Reza Negarestani This event is Free and Open to the Public. Register here. This talk examines a cross-disciplinary problem: when compression in modeling—across scales or by computational cost—enables explanation and control, and when it effaces the organizational structure on which action depends. It is framed by Alexander Bogdanov’s account of […]
Dust Ingot: An exhibition from Eliot Z. Felde (SMACT '26) and Sophia Chefalo (SMACT '26). Opening on Friday, February 13, 2026 The show runs from February 14-20, 2026
Max Cheever | Contents March 9 – March 22, 2026 12-5pm (Closed on Mondays) Opening reception: March 12th 2026, 5:30-7:30PM Contents is an exhibition featuring artwork from Max Cheever (SMACT ‘27). Through the work, the importance of framing is examined through structured methods of communication. Contents: 8 wooden posts, 4 cardboard boxes, 4 wooden shelves, […]
This lecture examines AI infrastructure through exocapitalism, a framework for understanding how capital can move independently of physical constraints like energy, labor, and raw materials. We'll explore the strange economics of the AI boom (trillion-dollar announcements, debts backed by computer chips, and endless layers of intermediary management services) to argue that the "datacenter" now exists […]
Victoria Shen is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on sound and performance based in San Francisco. Shen's practice is concerned with the materiality of sound and its relationship to the human body through a lens of disruption and experimentation. She creates and manipulates custom-built sculptures and extensions specific to her body to challenge conventional […]