JAMICA EL & GÜNSELI YALCINKAYA

Jamica El is an artist, researcher, and founder of muvaboard, an arts-based studio specializing in turning editorializing data into transformative, immersive experiences. Her work The Waiting Room Experience, 2034, “an experiential artifact from the future”, features in Blessed Foundation’s exhibition ‘Fields of Vision’.

In this episode of FUTURE-PROOF, Jamica is in conversation with Günseli Yalcinkaya, a fellow artist, researcher and Features Editor at Dazed. The pair discuss Jamica’s creative journey, her research into public assistance in the US, and key themes in her work, including Afrofuturism, motherhood, and community dreaming.

Image: Jamica El, The Waiting Room Experience, 2034, in 'Fields of Vision' Blessed Foundation, 2024, photo: Anne Tetzlaff

Blessed Foundation | 26th July 2024 | 18:00- 20:00
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POLLY DALTON & MADI BOYD

Polly Dalton is a cognitive scientist and Professor in Psychology at Royal Holloway, whose research focuses on human attention, awareness and experience in multisensory contexts.

Madi Boyd is an artist whose work uses light, space, and time as sculptural matter. She has exhibited at, among others, The Science Museum, London, The Science Gallery, Dublin, Art Laboratory Berlin, Puke Ariki Museum, New Zealand, Guangzou Province, China, Kunstkraft- werk, Leipzig, Science Discovery Centre, Kuala Lumpa, The Discovery Place, USA and Ca’ Foscari Zattere, Venice.

Having worked together on projects including Digital Forest and The Complexity of Touch; Boyd and Dalton’s expertise complement each other in an exploration of the psychological impact of immersive experiences. Digital Forest was a multi-sensory indoor forest at Royal Holloway, combining art and science to investigate the effects on attention of calming surroundings. The Complexity of Touch was a tactile immersive installation, shown at Bermondsey Project Space, and Orleans House Gallery, combining Dalton’s psychological research with Boyd’s expertise in artistic installation.

Image: Courtesy of Polly Dalton and Madi Boyd

Blessed Foundation | 19 June 2024 | 18:00- 20:00
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ANDREA KHÔRA & SOUMYA SANKAR BOSE

On the occasion of the opening of exhibitions by Soumya Sankar Bose and Andrea Khôra at Delfina Foundation and Blessed Foundation respectively, this episode brings these two artists together to discuss intriguing overlaps in their work. Co-hosted by Sylwia Serafinowicz (Managing Director at Blessed Foundation) and Erin Li (Curator at Delfina Foundation), this conversation explores the artists’ use of emerging technologies to highlight the freedom that comes from tapping into their shortcomings and subversing their intended use. From the artists’ reasons for utilising AI and VR, to the curatorial dimension of the viewer experience of artworks employing emerging technology, this conversation illuminates behind-the-scenes of these groundbreaking exhibitions. 

Image:
Courtesy of Andrea Khôra and Soumya Sankar Bose

Blessed Foundation | 17 May 2024 | 12:00 - 13:00
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FRAGMENTARIO

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María-Elena Pombo is a Venezuelan artist and researcher based in NYC. Her work is  open-ended and investigates real and speculative pasts and presents to visualise alternative  futures.

In her talk, Pombo will discuss how she centres Earth matter in her practice, gathering historical and contemporary materials through participatory actions. These materials include avocado-seeds, water samples, onion-skins, plant-starches, algae, and more. Pombo uses ancient technologies and scientific inquiry to transform these materials into textile dye, leather, plastic, clay, glass, yarn, and even electricity and fuel for vehicles. These material re-imaginations explore the possibilities and realities beyond existing, often hegemonic narratives. They show that an alternative understanding of the past can lead to imagining alternative futures.

Image:
Courtesy of Fragmentario

Blessed Foundation | 01 December 2023 | 18:15 - 20:00
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COMPILER

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Compiler is a collective for digital art, curation, and critical technical practice, implemented in institutional and alternative spaces.

Tanya Boyarkina and Oscar Cass-Darweish will discuss the hybrid and hidden roles they take on while curating and producing projects that explore complex technological processes through playful, collaborative and participative formats.

Their artistic and curatorial practice investigates socio-political challenges in digital culture, where the possibilities of digital art, curation, learning, and research are explored as part of a process of discovery through technological experiences. Creating accessible works and events through which audiences with different levels of technical awareness can delve deeper into digital technologies that shape day-to-day experience.

Image: Courtesy of Compiler

Blessed Foundation | 31 October 2023 | 18:00 - 20:00
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A VIBE CALLED TECH

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A Vibe Called Tech is a creative agency established in 2018 by Charlene Prempeh to encourage the application of a culturally diverse lens in design, technology, arts, and culture by spearheading partnerships, events, research, and workshops across London.

Since its establishment in 2018, A Vibe Called Tech has worked with brands such as Gucci, Stine Goya, Faber, Frieze and institutions like Whitechapel Gallery, White Cube, RA and V&A East to deliver ambitious creative output that nourishes communities. For the talk at Blessed Foundation, Charlene Prempeh will be joined by AVCT’s Creative Director Lewis Dalton Gilbert, to focus on the imperative of telling lesser-known stories in an accurate and credible way.

Image:
Courtesy of Serwah Attafuah for WePresent x A Vibe Called Tech

Blessed Foundation | 26 September 2023 | 18:30 - 20:00
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NEW ART CITY

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Don Hanson is a designer, electronic musician and Internet artist known for creating experimental websites and establishing New Art City, the virtual art space for digital exhibitions. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Art in America, SXSW, and CBC radio. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

New Art City is an artist-run virtual space founded in 2020 and led by Don Hanson and Sammie Veeler. Their browser-based tool for building 3D multiplayer websites supports a vibrant global community of artists, educators, and institutions. As an artist-run company, New Art City is redistributive by design, transferring knowledge, space, money and visibility from those who have it to those who don't. This year, they formed a non-profit research unit called Virtual Access Lab in partnership with Gray Area San Francisco to further advance their goals of web accessibility and preservation of digital culture.

Image:
courtesy of Don Hanson

Blessed Foundation | 16 August 2023 | 18:30 - 20:00
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MAJA SMREKAR

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Maja Smrekar is an award-winning artist and researcher. In her talk for Blessed Foundation, Smrekar focused on interspecies communication as a platform that allowed her to explore the imprint of ideology, media and technologies on human and non-human entities. Smrekar also addressed her fear of natural sciences paired with the intuitive connection with nature that formed her practice.

Smrekar used her work to speak on ecofeminism, inter-species relationships, posthumanism, technology, and ideology. In 2017, she received the Prix Ars Electronica - Golden Nica 2017 in the Hybrid Arts Category (Linz, Austria). In 2018, she was the recipient of the Prešeren Foundation Award, the highest award for artistic achievements of the Republic of Slovenia. In 2020 and 2021, she was the Science Breakthrough of the Year finalist within the Science in the Arts category of the Falling Walls Foundation and Berlin Science Week. She exhibited extensively, with over twenty solo and fifty group shows across the world.

Image: Maja Smrekar, Survival Kit for the Anthropocene - TRAILER, 2015, Photo by Borut Peterlin Produced by Aksioma Institute, Ljubljana, 2015, courtesy of the authors

Blessed Foundation | 27 June 2023 | 18:30 - 20:00
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HUNAID NAGARIA

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Hunaid Nagaria, first FUTURE-PROOF speaker, is an interaction designer, engineer and illustrator. Nagaria uses design as a medium to explore how technology interacts with human life and needs and is currently building adaptive technologies for gamers who experience muscle weakness as a result of muscular dystrophy. He has previously built interfaces for the future of human-food interaction, recreational products for people with cognitive disabilities, and interventions to tackle urban environmental challenges. He is a Masters candidate at MA + MSc Innovation Design Engineering at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.

Image: Hunaid Nagaria, Jammies, 2022, Musical instruments designed for people living with dementia, courtesy of the author

Blessed Foundation | 17 May 2023 | 18:30 - 20:00
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#futureproof

Future-proof is an open series of talks that puts accessibility and sustainability at the centre of discussion about innovation. The series highlights the resources already in the works that can help our surroundings and communities thrive. Believing that the implementation of care is a matter of future-proofing, one innovation per session, we explore prototypes in development, emerging and established artistic practices, and businesses.

For all inquiries about accessibility and bookings, please contact us on:

[email protected]