Sholeh Asgary | Wadi
February–April
Sholeh Asgary is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary sound artist whose immersive works, performances, and audience participatory scores implicate the viewer-participant into future mythological excavations, bridging large swathes of time and history, through water, water clocks, crude oil, movement, light, imaging, voice, and sound.
Asgary has exhibited and performed at such institutions as ARoS Kunstmuseum, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, and has received support through numerous residencies and awards, some of which include UCLA Art Sci (2021), MASS MoCA (2021), Headlands Center for the Arts (2021), and The Foundation for Contemporary Art (2022).
Wadi is an interactive, orchestral experience examining temporality, natural resources, and capitalism. With a single click, the browser transforms into a virtual river via multiple pop-up windows gushing with images and sound. The tenor of this symphony is determined by the ebb and flow of international stock prices of water.
Rachel Liu | Dear Photographs
August-September 2021
Rachel Liu is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, alternative processes, and mixed media. She is interested in photography’s capacity to be simultaneously factual and fictitious; forthcoming and withholding; clear and ambiguous. Liu is particularly interested in vernacular photography, often working with found imagery as well as her own family photos. Liu’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. Her images have been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Photography of China, Fortune, and LensCulture. Liu lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dear Photographs is an interactive journey through Liu’s photos of her grandfather, who died when she was very young. The viewer is invited to manipulate, expand, and probe various images, learning more about the subject but never gaining a full picture. The project questions what photography can tell us about an individual or if they merely provide the illusion of knowing.
Saskia Freeke | Hello, are you [`human`,`robot`]?
April-May 2021
Saskia Freeke is an artist, creative coder, interaction designer, visual designer, and educator based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her work addresses structure, geometry, and playfulness both in the digital and physical realm. Since 2015, she has created a daily digital artwork. She understands how to design with the user in mind and creates work reflecting on that process. Freeke holds a masters in Computational Art from the Goldsmiths.
Hello, are you [`human`,`robot`]? is a playful exploration of the repeated tasks we do every day on the internet, from allowing cookies to agreeing to terms and conditions you don’t read. The site asks the user to solve a series of puzzles — at the end, you see the results of your “labor.” The project provokes the viewer to consider what it means to endlessly “accept all.”
Rita Bullwinkel | Oral Florist
February - March 2021
Rita Bullwinkel is the author of the story collection Belly Up, which won the 2018 Believer Book Award. She is an Editor at Large for McSweeney’s and a Contributing Editor for NOON. She lives in San Francisco and teaches at the California College of the Arts.
Oral Florist is a sound library of authors, musicians, and artists reading aloud texts encountered in their daily lives. The library is presented as an interactive garden where visitors click on a bud to watch a flower bloom as they listen to a recording.
Return to the website for new recordings published monthly.
KunstCapades | The Ultra-Rare Telethon
December 2020 - January 2021
KunstCapades is an art-themed variety show/podcast hosted by Robyn Carliss, Josh Pieper, and Tim Sullivan. Guests from all points on the artist-curator-dealer-collector spectrum board a gondola up to the recording booth for conversation and cocktails.
The Ultra-Rare Telethon website and live event for those who dream of owning inestimable studio treasures, hoarded ephemera, and/or used household goods of famed artists. Bid on one-and-only items, including a petrified teddy bear, smuggled boiler suit, pristine cheese sponge, and much, much more! 100% of proceeds going to the artists.
Indira Allegra | Grammar of Grief Handbook
October - November 2020
Indira Allegra’s work explores memorial as a genre and a vital part of the human experience. Allegra re-imagines what a memorial can feel like and how it can function through the practices of performance, sculpture, and installation.
For Allegra’s Virtual Residency, they created the Grammar of Grief Handbook, a living online resource for people working through losses in their lives. The Handbook re-imagines bereavement through writing, audio, or physical movement that can be created at home and come out of the body’s unique relationship to grief.