Becky Beamer
An Outsider’s Perspective from the Inside
Becky Beamer is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, book artist, and Fulbright Fellow. Her specialty is international, social justice storytelling that encourages public discourse on personal identity and cross-cultural communication. For Becky, the project dictates the medium which could range from documentary film to multimedia installations and sculptural forms. For over 15 years Ms.Beamer worked on documentary television for companies including National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discovery, and PBS. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from the University of Alabama. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the United Arab Emirates at the American University of Sharjah in the Department of Art & Design. “I believe in the immortality of art & collaboration. Every adventure supplies new inspiration for artistic expression, content and process. With so many stories to tell, there’s no reason to stay in one place.”
Boris Debackere from United Intelligence Lab
Critical AI Manifesto
United Intelligence Lab (UIL) is an ever growing group of people cooperating on the Critical AI Manifesto exploring the impact of machine learning on culture and society. UIL members are from all walks of life and remain anonymous. Whether AI-dominion is something you secretly yearn for or desperately hope to escape from, one thing is for certain, the old vantage points on AI will for nobody suffice anymore. Anyone can join except if you are an AI.
Kajin Kim
Image as Mediator
Kajin Kim is a video artist currently living and working in New York. Her recent projects explore how the immersion into digital images mediates communicative access and builds psychic connections between people. By observing a trend or mass-produced phenomenon, she investigates the way image is building a sense of attraction to it, coopting investigation of the self and seeking after intimate relationships. Kajin earned a BFA in Sculpture from Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea with the highest distinction and now she is pursuing an MFA in Combined Media at Hunter College, The City University of New York. She received Fulbright Graduate Study Award in Fine Arts from Fulbright Foundation. She has been featured in various group exhibitions in Korea, Japan, Germany and the US.
Jiaqi Li
New Trend: Pictorialized Living Space
Jiaqi Li is a visual artist. He uses picture/image as material to question the reality that we see. He is obsessed with the humor brought by the deception of the image, which is all around us, exists as tricks, camouflage or ideal vision, and is easy to be produced and circulated. He claims to be a pessimist who pretends to be an optimist, a realist who pretends to be an idealist. After receiving his BFA from China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2019, and exchanged to Glasgow School of Art (2017), Li is currently pursuing his MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago with full scholarship supported by the Chinese Scholarship Council. His first and second solo shows in Glasgow (2017) and Chicago (2020) respectively, questioned the artist’s role in society. Li entered the group show “ASA-XYZ Young Artist Award Nomination Exhibition” (2018) and the “2018 Art Nova 100” Opening Exhibition in Guardian Art Center in Beijing as a young artist. In 2020, he received School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Clay Morrison Scholarship, that encourages graduate students to study art originating from beyond the academic
mainstream.
Qiuwen Li
Emotion in Communication Design
Qiuwen Li is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design in the Department of Art and Art History at Santa Clara University in CA, U.S. She also is the co-founder of emotionlab, a progressive research lab to create positive emotional experiences for people through innovative design approaches to human problems. Born in China, Qiuwen received her B.F.A. in Graphic Design from St. Cloud State University and received her MFA in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. As a Chinese woman living in the U.S., Qiuwen is in an in-between position, which also brings a distinctive perspective for her thinking, being and making. In Qiuwen’s designs, graphic elements (shapes, color, pattern, type) are constructed, deconstructed and then reconstructed in order to create a richer experience and extend their meaning.
Maura McCreight
Visual Mobility & Containment: Movement between North Africa and Europe expressed by artists Lydia Ourahmane and Ursula Biemann
Maura McCreight is a PhD Candidate in Art History at The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York and teaches Art History at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Her research explores the circulation of images within political and artistic networks of exchange between North Africa and Europe, with a focus on women combatants and political prisoners from the National Liberation Front (FLN) during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62). She has an ardent interest in photographic forms that uphold ontologies of storytelling, and non-traditional art mediums that mobilize aesthetics as a tactic of insurgency against state repression. She is also an activist whose previous projects include conducting legal support for protestors and political prisoners and is currently focused on abolition work that supports incarcerated survivors of gendered and sexual violence.
Olivier Peyran
God is Dead. Long Live AI.
Olivier Peyran is an AI scientist. In the late nineties, he did his Ph.D. at Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, specialising in optimisation problems. Upon graduation, a teaching job opportunity brought him to Singapore, where he eventually took a position in a scientific research institute and began experimenting with AI techniques to solve complex optimisation problems. Since then, he has been using AI in various ventures in Asia and Europe.
Nobuko Tsuruta, Takemi Kitamura, and Yuki Neo
PURGE
Nobuko Tsuruta was born in Kamakura City, Japan and graduated Rikkyo University, majoring in economics. She worked in the fashion industry for eight years after college and later moved to New York with her husband.
When her son turned five, they attended a SAORI weaving workshop which immediately sparked her interests in fiber art. She began practicing regularly at Loop of The Loom Weaving Studio in Manhattan and soon began to create her own style. Since then, she has held exhibitions in New York, Japan, France and Germany and Korea as a fiber artist.
A native of Osaka, Japan and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Dance-Education from Hunter College, where she received the Choreographic Award from the Dance Program. Her performances credits include Blood Moon by Beth Morrison Projects at Prototype Festival 2020
(choreographer/dancer/puppeteer), The Oldest Boy (puppeteer/dancer) at Lincoln Center Theater, The Indian Queen (dancer), an opera directed by Peter Sellars, Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed (puppeteer) by Dan Hurling, Shank’s Mare (puppeteer) by Tom Lee and Koryu Nishikawa V, and Falling Out (puppeteer/dancer) by Phantom Limbs Company, and SLEEP (dancer/ensemble) by Ripe Time.
Born and raised in Japan, Yuki received a BA from Tokyo Woman’s Christian University and an MS in Advertising from Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism. Her interest in photography began when her father, an amateur photographer, allowed her to watch while he developed black and white film in his darkroom at home. This interest in photography and visual communication initially took her on the path of advertising. She worked for several major advertising agencies in both the USA and Japan, and while enjoying work in the creative space, she further developed an eye and love for photography. After 12 years of advertising life, she moved to New York in 2009 and studied at International Center of Photography to begin a new career as a professional photographer. Her work has won her acclaim and has been seen in Japanese publications, commercial websites and social media.
Lee Hau Yi
Present and Bloom
Lee Hau Yi, born in Hong Kong 1984, she graduated from the Bachelor of Arts in Applied and Media Arts in Hong Kong. She is a self-taught artist and creative designer who is fascinated by visual art. After traveling and working in London for a year, she set up her own studio for design work and painting. Her artworks explore the complexity context of life in a contemporary world, discursive diverse elements came from humanity, politics, moralities and ecology. Lee Hau Yi has had her works exhibited in several venues, including Taipei international illustration fair in 2019, collective Impact group online exhibition curated by a IKOUII US Gallery in 2020.
Haeseung Yun
Point of View
Haeseung Yun is currently based in the Republic of Korea, received a BA from Goldsmiths University of London. She has continued to record her moments and memories that individuals experience in our society through painting. She observes and records her surroundings, such as herself, family, friends, animals, and so on. Her artworks – which are often interpreted as just personal documentary- take new roles, especially in art museums and public places.
She is doing figurative paintings that simply record what she sees, but each painting is rearranged and reconstructed in a new space. Her cut-off paintings create unique scenes and stories by turning into a role player within the space. Her works, which seemed extremely personal, gradually blur the boundaries between public and private areas.