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BRIClab Public Programs / BRICxHOME /

ELEVATOR (work-in-progress)

A two-night presentation and discussion of ELEVATOR (work-in-progress), an immersive multimedia performance. Join us for a YouTube live premiere on Thursday and a Zoom panel discussion on Friday. 

Date

THU, OCT 8, 2020 | 7PM
YouTube Live
FRI, OCT 9, 2020 | 7PM
ZOOM

Cost

Free w/ RSVP

Location

Virtual Event

(L-R) Panelists Sean Green, Lisa Nash, Jenny Gerow, and Wendy Xiao Schadeck.

THU, OCT 8 | 7PM | YOUTUBE LIVE
Join us for a live, work-in-progress premiere of ELEVATOR on YouTube Live. Watch a video iteration of this new work created by interdisciplinary collective ThoughtThought. ELEVATORis an immersive multimedia performance exploring a deconstructive critique of the Elevator Pitch, a capitalist ritual where a concise business proposal is delivered within a two-minute elevator ride to a captive listener. 

Watch Thursday's Live Premiere, available until Oct 23:

FRI, OCT 9 | 7PM | ZOOM
Starting with a screening of the work-in-progress, we'll then engage in a panel discussion about algorithmic justice and how it relates to power dynamics, biases and discrimination in venture and tech, and the value of artistic expression. Panelists include Jenny Gerow, BRIC Curator of Contemporary Art; Lisa Nash, IDEO Data Scientist; Sean Green, Arternal Founder and CEO; and Wendy Xiao Schadeck, Northzone Ventures Principal.

Watch Friday's panel discussion below, available until Oct 23

 

 


ABOUT ELEVATOR
A tech start-up company is pitching a product proposal for a “human upgrade” to a panel of venture capitalists. As the pitch unfolds, a surreal hall of mirrors emerges, escalating into a visual and sonic choral cacophony unveiling the gendered, racialized lens of the white cis male dominating the tech world, whose performative optics claim "client-facing" diversity and inclusion. ELEVATOR reveals how “the pitch” promotes the morphing of personhood and product, pushing the viewer to question the ethics of creation.

ELEVATOR draws from our experiences as artists and entrepreneurs who are continually asked to engage with the ritual of pitching. This work examines the start of the entrepreneurial journey as an entry to our capitalist system, which not only influences how we run businesses, but also how we live our lives and structure our communities. The performance explores tech start-up culture for its underlying inequities and embodiment of capitalist extremes - idealism, competition, and ego. In our COVID reality, our dependence upon technology has accelerated exponentially, elevating the privilege and inequity of the tech industry, leaving us unaware of how deeply this culture influences and surveils our lives without our knowledge or permission.

Conceptual Artist: Tahir Carl Karmali
Playwright/Director: Mia Rovegno
Pitchwriting Dramaturg: Elizabeth Thys
Editor: Tyler Jensen
Sound Designer: Roman Chimienti

Cast: Starr Busby, Daniel K. Isaac, Ben Beckley


ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Tahir Carl Karmali, Mia Rovegno, and Elizabeth Thys collaborate as ThoughtThought, a collective merging our contemporary art and social practices in performance, visual art and creative entrepreneurship. We ask questions that critically consider the crumbling paradigm. We are curious and serious about creative disruptions. ELEVATOR is our first collaboration.

Mia Rovegno is a Brooklyn-based playwright/director of experimental, investigative and immersive performance works. Her production of The Way They Live (The Civilians) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art was featured in The New Yorker’s Favorite Cultural Moments of 2015. Her  site-specific production of Miami Motel Stories was named in Vogue Magazine’s Cultural Guide to Avoiding Art Basel and Inphantry’s Best Activations at Art Basel & Miami Art Week 2018. Mia was Assistant Director for Time Stands Still on Broadway and Associate Director for the acclaimed immersive Sweeney Todd (Barrow St Theater) and The Tenant (Woodshed). Mia has directed new work for Playwrights Horizons, The New Group, Soho Rep, St. Anne’s Warehouse, WP Theater, NYTW, INTAR, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, NYSAF, Labyrinth, Bushwick Starr, JACK, EST, Partial Comfort, The Amoralists, and Prelude Festival. Recipient: 2 Drama League Directing Fellowships (Theater & Film/TV), MacDowell Fellowship, NYSCA Grant, New Georges Audrey Residency, P73 Yale Residency, Berkeley Rep Ground Floor, and MTC’s Alper Fellowship. Alum: Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Civilians R&D Group, The Jam, WP Theater Lab, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, St Ann’s Puppet Lab. Mia received her BS in Performance Studies from Northwestern and MFA in Directing from Brown, and is faculty of NYU Tisch’s ITP, Playwrights Horizons Theater School and Production & Design Studio. 

Tahir Carl Karmali, born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, is a Brooklyn-based conceptual and visual installation artist. He received his Masters in Photography at the School of Visual Arts. Karmali’s practice concentrates on critiquing and expressing the ramifications of technology, economic structures, and neo-colonialism. Karmali has exhibited in Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Kunsthal, Rotterdam; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; Brooklyn College Library, Brooklyn; United Photo Industries, Brooklyn; and Circle Art, Nairobi. He has done residencies at MacDowell, Triangle Arts Association, BRIC, Pioneer Works and Trestle. Karmali is faculty of the Brooklyn College Sculpture Department.

Elizabeth Thys is a Business Design Lead at IDEO, a global design and innovation consultancy. She was a founder of limeSHIFT, a creative agency that aligns people, place and purpose, that emerged from MIT through a collaboration between Sloan School of Management and Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Thys, an art and technology entrepreneur, researches the intersection of the two fields, and was a 2015 Winner of Made in NY Media Center’s Entrepreneur Innovation Grant. Her work is published with The Americans for the Arts and in the Journal of Public Space. She holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering, magna cum laude, from Tufts University and MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, where she was a Dean's Fellow and co-chair of Hacking Arts. 


ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Sean Green
Born in Jamaica and raised in Toronto, Sean Green holds a BA in Computer Science from York University. Since graduating in 2011, Sean has been the consummate entrepreneur following his instincts, which eventually lead him to the business of art. Based in Los Angeles, Sean oversees all aspects of ARTERNAL’s evolution, in partnership with his co-founders. Founded in 2015, ARTERNAL, was the first technology company to focus exclusively on bringing Client Relationship Management (CRM) technology to the art world. Sean’s goal was simple: to provide a unified resource that allows the art professional to focus on what they do best - sell art and deepen relationships with their clients. ARTERNAL is now an all-in-one platform providing Revenue & Relationship Management; Tracking client engagement streamlined with inventory management tools to optimize workflow and drive sales. Recent global events have forced dealers to revisit their model, focusing on digital platforms to sell art. As an entrepreneur in the Art + Technology industry, Sean is dedicated to providing leading software solutions to develop alongside the art market’s demands.

Lisa Nash
As a designer and data scientist in IDEO's San Francisco studio, Lisa is passionate about creating impact through human centered data science and design, be it for high-level strategy or prototyping products and services. Before joining IDEO, Lisa earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago. For her thesis, she designed, prototyped, and studied what happens if you build a material out of gyroscopes. In search of a more human-centered avenue for her quantitative skills, she discovered and fell in love with data science as a volunteer research assistant for UChicago's Data Science for Social Good Program. Lisa is deeply curious and is passionate about ethics in design/tech and educational outreach. She hosts inclusion & ethics discussion groups at IDEO and for Bay Area Women in Machine Learning and Data Science and is always looking for community building opportunities.

Jenny Gerow
Jenny Gerow is the Curator of Contemporary Art at BRIC. She has previously held positions at the International Center of Photography and the Detroit Institute of Arts. At BRIC she has curated group exhibitions Public Access/Open Networks, and Reenactment; and the solo exhibition Mary Mattingly: What Happens After. She has also co-curated three iterations of the BRIC Biennial. Gerow leads BRIC's contemporary art fellowships, residencies, and open call opportunities. She has presented talks and collaborated with numerous New York institutions including Dieu Donné, Residency Unlimited, A Blade of Grass, Electronic Arts Intermix, Wassaic Project, Green-Wood Cemetery, Trestle Gallery, and the New York Public Library.

Wendy Xiao Schadeck
Wendy is a Principal at Northzone, based in New York, and focuses mainly on companies in the consumer, health, fintech, developer and web 3 infrastructure spaces. Her portfolio includes Spring Health, Livepeer, 3Box, and OpenZeppelin. Prior to Northzone, Wendy founded co-working and childcare company CoHatchery, and consulted for retail/transportation companies at A. T. Kearney and Accenture. Wendy holds a BA in Economics, a BBA from University of Michigan and an MBA from Columbia Business School, where she serves as an advisor to the entrepreneurship program.


HOW TO WATCH

THU, OCT 8 | 7PM
Watch on YouTube Live:
http://youtube.com/bricbrooklyn

 

 


FRI, OCT 9 | 7PM
Join on Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85333004544?pwd=K0ZONTNXSTZqMTRpdkpQamNnY0xKUT09

 

 

Webinar ID: 853 3300 4544
Passcode: 897489

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BRIClab is a multi-disciplinary residency program created to advance opportunities for visual artists, performers, and media makers.

This newly reimagined program offers emerging and mid-career artists essential resources, mentorships, and opportunities to share their work. The residency aims to build a stronger and more diverse artistic community in Brooklyn by supporting long term growth and fostering relationships across disciplines.

The program's four tracks are Contemporary ArtFilm + TVPerforming Arts, and Video Art. Each track offers unique resources designed to meet the needs of varied artistic practices. Residents receive additional financial support, mentorship, skills-based learning opportunities, and documentation of their work. In-progress public programs (virtual and later live) will take place from September 2020 through June of 2021.