News & Events
Imagined Histories of Women in Art, 2023
I created Imagined histories of women in art a performance for the inaugural Ladies of Courage Festival in March 2023. Its three acts honor the imagined aesthetics of women’s imagined history. The first part reconstitutes the documented rituals of Demeter Initiates. The second section combines scholars, witches and suffragettes as they might be illustrated in an Edwardian magazine. The final act focuses on the imagined aesthetics of 20th century women protesting, turning performative resistance into its own art form.
My collaborators were Sa’heeda and her dance troupe including Perry Wood and Rose Hough. My other collaborator is MidJourney generative AI software. I may be the last person who was able to use the term fallopian tube in my MidJourney prompt, since it has since been banned by the software company. Even in the virtual world, we lose the conceptual right to our virtual body. In regards to these ethical issues, there is no better place to be than in the mix. Whether it is a new technology or any other aspect of our society. Participation is essential to navigating the future.
Ladies of Courage Festival
September, 28th 2024 – mark your calendars! The City of West Hollywood has approved a second year of the Ladies of Courage arts festival. For information about this event, please visit
https://www.ladiesofcourage.com/
The DNA Festival Santa Monica
Beginning in 2021, a collaborative project between LA ACM SIGGRAPH, and the EZTV Online Museum, has been annually presenting an online series of interviews with leading digital artists, whose work in some cases go back to the 1960s. These previous three years, all were leading up to this year’s inaugural one-month long exhibition for DNA Festival Santa Monica, a new six-month long annual digital arts festival, an initiative between Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica College, 18th Street Arts Center, in cooperation with the City of Santa Monica, and various community organizations.
In celebration of EZTV’s 45th anniversary, as well as its 40 years of collaborations with LA ACM SIGGRAPH (as well as the entire international SIGGRAPH communities), a survey of 24 artists, whose work ranges form the late 1970s to today, will demonstrate the rich DNA of innovations that occurred between artists and technologists. Almost all the artists have been presented in events co-sponsored by LA ACM SIGGRAPH and EZTV, and all the artists presented have been active in the artistic movement that exists between the on-going collaborations between these two seminal Southern California media arts organizations.
Curated and Produced by Joan Collins and Michael J. Masucci
with additional curating and production by Victor Acevedo
Special thanks to: Walter Meyer, Chair, Department of Art, and Sheila Cordova, Director, Center for Media & Design, Santa Monica College.
Additional thanks: Diane Piepol, LA ACM SIGGRAPH, and the Santa Monica Arts Commission’s Media Arts Committee.
Featuring artists: Jon 9, Victor Acevedo, Rebecca Allen, Maija Beeton, Paul Brown, Kevin Mack, Clayton Campbell & Christian Knudsen, Mark Chavez, Coco Conn, Kate Crash & Chris Germano, Matt Elson, David Em, Dave Curlender & David Goodsell, Federico Galavis, Kate Johnson, Sheriann Ki-Sun Burnham, Robert Lowden, Diane Piepol, Patric Prince, Karl Sims, Barbara T. Smith, Vibeke Sorensen, Michael Wright and materials from: LA ACM SIGGRAPH & EZTV Online Museum