BRIClab Video Art: Public Artist Talk

Please join us in celebrating the 2020 BRIClab Video Art residents in a lively public artist talk to discuss their works of video art created this year.

The BRIClab: Video Art residency track is a year-long residency for professional, local visual artists who have a desire to explore video and audio as distinct mediums, or as part of an interdisciplinary practice.

Starting April 13 – June 29, 2021, watch the full films here or on Brooklyn Free Speech HD (Spectrum 1993, Optimum 951, Verizon 47) on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 7-9:30pm.

These films were created before and during the pandemic, this work encompasses many urgent themes of the past year–climate change, healthcare, incarceration, and immigration–while also necessarily being seen through the lens of isolation, death, and loss felt across the globe. This residency is often described in terms of access, as a program that takes place in Brooklyn’s Community Public Access Center. But this past year plus the tenets of a public access center have been strained–community engagement, sharing equipment, supporting one another’s projects–are in many ways not possible in isolation or the hardships we have all been forced to bear. Presenting these works, by many artists that are learning or relearning filming techniques, can be seen as a success under strained conditions, a triumph of will, or for some a prelude to a future finalized work. Embracing both of these modes of working is part of the ethos of community media, and one that feels more important and present now more than ever.

The 2020 BRIClab Video Art Residents

Jonathan González is an educator, cultural organizer, farmer, and artist at the intersections of performance and time-based media. González’s current projects speculate on otherwise Black and Indigenous cosmologies (Tiffany Lethabo King) of practice and poetry as a method towards breaking with the pentameter (Kamau Brathwaite) regarding systems of sociality, the afterlife of coloniality, and transnational dialogues on catastrophe and interconnectedness.

Their recent projects and collaborations include those at MoMA, MoMA PS1, Abrons Arts Center Performance Space New York, and Danspace Project, all NY; and Paragon Arts Gallery, Portland, Oregon. Their curations include Knockdown Center and Movement Research Fall Festival. Previously an LMCC Workspace Resident, NARS Foundation AIR, Jerome Foundation Fellow, Mertz Gilmore Grantee, Art Matters Fellow, and Performance Art/Theater Foundation for Contemporary Arts grantee. González holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

Sareh Imani is a multidisciplinary artist who dwells between her individual studio work and her collaborative projects in alternative spaces. Imani’s work explores the reparative potential of art and science, intimacy and distance, instructions and poetics.

Imani has participated in group exhibitions at A.I.R Gallery, Grid-space Gallery, 17 and Essex Gallery, all NY. Her residencies and fellowships include: A.I.R. Fellowship at A.I.R. Gallery; BRIC; Artist in the Marketplace (AIM), The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx; the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship, all in NY; MASS MoCA Residency, MA. Imani received an MFA from Parsons School of Design and an MFA from the University of Tehran, College of Fine Arts, Tehran, Iran.

Melissa Joseph is interested in connecting people through collective memory and shared experiences.  Her work addresses themes of diaspora, family histories and the politics of how we occupy spaces.

Joseph has participated in exhibitions at Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn NY; Bemis Contemporary Art Center, Omaha NE; and Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids MI; and PAFA Museum, Philadelphia, PA, among others. She is currently a Dieu Donné Workspace Resident,  Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a MAT from Rhode Island School of Design.

James McCracken Jr. is a photographer, educator, and collector of things. He is interested in storytelling, memory, and structures of family and community. His research based process often engages narratives and histories to examine the psychology of power in relation to identity.

He has exhibited work at the Jewish Museum, Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, and SoHo Photo Gallery, all NY. He is the recipient of a Puffin Foundation Grant and Chico Hot Springs Portfolio Review & Charcoal Publishing Prize. He received an MFA from Columbia University and MA from Fordham University.

Autumn Newcomb is a multidisciplinary media and performance artist. She uses color, humor, and optimism to fight the power and promote self love through a variety of mediums including video, soft-sculpture, illustration and glass.

Newcomb has exhibited her work at The Dimenna Center for Classical Music, Fashion Institute of Technology, and The Brooklyn Clay Tour. She received her BFA from Alfred University School of Art and Design.

Elizabeth Orr is an interdisciplinary artist whose work combines video installation, sculpture, performance, and text. Her subject matter evolves from an interrogation into methodologies of thought and representation, oriented towards an understanding of the history of philosophy through a queer feminist perspective.

Orr has exhibited at La Kaje, Brooklyn, NY; Bodega, New York, NY; RPFA, Los Angeles, CA; CAC Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge, France; and VIN VIN, Vienna, Austria. Orr has screened her work at Lubov, New York, NY; Tranzit Display, Prague, Czech Republic; and Anthology Film Archives, Art in General. She received her MFA from Bard College, and a BFA from Hampshire College.

Carrie Elston Tunick is a multimedia artist who explores manifestations of love and sanctioned violence in the public consciousness through videos, prints, and paintings. Her practice is primarily driven by her video works which pulls from world events both historical and contemporary, pop culture, politics, and environmental disasters for subject matter.

She has exhibited her work at Beverly’s; Dino Eli Gallery; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; and Cuchifritos Gallery, all in NY. She has participated in the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, the NARS Foundation International Residency Program, and Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) at The Bronx Museum of the Arts. Tunick received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Yale University.

Tanika Williams employs the use of narrative prose, video, performance, and installation to explore black women’s transfer of generational knowledge and transmission of embodied family archives. She designs liturgical rites to uplift the voices and expertise of marginalized black women and give authority to their autobiographical expressions in the production of knowledge. Her work is influenced by Afro-Caribbean aesthetics of magic and mystical phenomena.

Williams’s work has been featured on 99.5 WBAI; Art in Odd Places; Creative Time; Civic Art Lab, GreenspaceNYC; Let Us Eat Local, Just Food; and Performa. She has participated in the NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. She holds a BA from Eugene Lang College, New School and MDiv from Union Theological Seminary.

Hanwen Zhang is an artist and filmmaker whose practice encompasses both still and moving images, supplemented by performance, digital technology, and writing. Derived from direct observation, his work examines the individual’s status in contemporary society, its existence as well as relationship with space, image, memory, and ideology.

His selected exhibitions and screenings include LongShots Film Festival, BBC Reel; OCAT Institute, Beijing, CN; CICA Museum, Gimpo, KRl; Arthaus Artist Residency, Havana, CU; Mannequins and Puppets, Millepiani, Rome, IT; TvE Caribbean Screenings 2019, Barbados Museum & Historical Society, Bridgetown, BB. Zhang has participated in the Fosun Foundation Art Residency, Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, CN, Summer Documentary Lab, UnionDocs, New York, NY, and VSC Artist-in-Residency, Vermont Studio Center, VT. He is the recipient of the Society of Architectural Historians Award for Film and Video. He received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts.