Summer Showcase 2024

 
  • Opening Reception:

    • Wednesday, June 5th, 6:00 - 8:00PM

  • Public Viewing Hours:

    • June 6th - 7th, and June 9th - 11th, 2024

    • Public Hours from 1:00 - 7:00PM

The Summer Showcase brings together a selection of recent XR projects created by artists in the Onassis ONX membership. Using a diversity of narrative and aesthetic tactics, the works on display illuminate stories of migration, marginalization, and transfiguration. The XR field is grounded here in physical space by mixed-media assemblage and sculpture. In some cases, tactile installations point to a third space of ritual. In others, physical-digital dynamics frame statements on history and identity. In all of the works on view, fantasy plays a key role in bridging the gap between what is and what could be.

Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Dreams of the Jaguar’s Daughter 

Emeline Courcier, Burn from Absence

Folly Feast Lab (Yara Feghali & Viviane El Kmati), Be.Longing XR

Georgios Cherouvim, Primitive Sounds *

LaJune McMillian, The Portal’s Keeper *^ 

Michaela Ternasky-Holland & Aaron Santiago, Kapwa

Viola He, A {room} of one’s own *


*Performances
*^Performance and Installation

Dreams of the Jaguar's Daughter

Alfredo Salazar-Caro

VR installation with video and sound

Dreams of the Jaguar’s Daughter is a three-part Surreal VR Documentary in which Achik', the spirit of a young immigrant, guides viewers through dreams and memories of her arduous journey north. Charting a path from the Guatemalan jungle through central Mexico and into the Arizona Desert, each chapter was created from real footage assembled by Alfredo Salazar-Caro of the 2018 Caravan. Using 3D scans, drones, interviews, 360 and traditional footage, this project uses Achik’s perspective to illuminate stories from among the 9,000 people who went in search of a better life. 

Additional Credits:

Writer: Génesis Mancheren Abaj

Producer: Samantha Quick 

Developer: Prashast Thapan

Assistant Producer/Videographer: Tarek Turkey

Be.Longing XR

Folly Feast Lab (Viviane El Kmati + Yara Feghali)

VR Installation with textiles

Be.Longing XR is a VR filmic road diary seen through the eyes of Amal, an immigrant who has just reached Los Angeles after a long flight from Beirut. We experience her ride through the fictitious reconstructed residential streetscape as she discovers LA for the first time in search of her own queer community. The viewer is invited into a game of finding stereotypical symbols of queer culture on the houses’ front yards, porches, and windows.Will you play? 

Additional Credits:

Music:  ArtSlop Flodur, “Wish I could be there with you by”

The Portal’s Keeper

LaJune McMillian

Installation with sculpture, live motion capture performance

The Portals Keeper is a live motion capture performance, projection sculpture, and installation that serves as a journey of transformation, healing, and self-discovery. The sculptural portal is adorned with synthetic Yak hair, which symbolizes purity and strength in Tibetan Buddhism. The portal frames ethereal projections that set the stage for a collective unburdening through the artist’s performance. 

Additional Credits: 

Sound: Rena Anakwe, Nala Duma, Zeelie Brown, RaFia Santana, MaryAnn Talavera, Nia Witherspoon 

3D Clothing: Bence Kozak

Creative Technologist: Yulai Fan - Rainy

Burn of Absence

Emeline Courcier 

Video Installation

Presented as part of the Tribeca Circle Incubator spotlight

In Burn From Absence, artist Emeline Courcier uses artificial intelligence to re-materialize her Vietnamese family’s memory - counter to the family philosophy of wiping the slate clean. It traces how her family came to want to ‘forget’, how forgetting can be an act of resilience. Conceived as a filmic journey up river, Burn from Absence is a reflection on the erosion of memory. It is also one artist’s effort to remedy the crumbling banks of her family history. 

Created with the Support of the PHI Immersive Residency 

Additional Credits: 

Producer: Coline Delbaere

Voice Over: Henri Le Hong Chau, François D Le Hong Sun, Sophie Le Thi Hong Ngoc, Caroline Le Thi Hong Yen, Michel Le Hong Long, Roselyne Le Thi Hong Loan

AI Programming: Edouard Lanctôt-Benoit, Michael Noukhov

Sound: Philippe Rochefort, Kevin Delamourd

Editor: Emeline Courcier

Scenography: Sarah Migos

Primitive Sounds

Georgios Cherouvim

XR Performance

Primitive Sounds is an experimental audio-visual performance using geoSynth, a prototype instrument invented by Georgios Cherouvim. The geoSynth is an audio synthesizer that uses 3D objects as the source input for real-time audio synthesis, in order to visually sculpt sound by manipulating the shape of each object. The instrument and accompanying performance is part of the artist’s ongoing study in data sonification and the relationships between form and sound. 

A {room} of one’s own 

Viola He

A {room} of one’s own is an XR performance about imagining creative work within a confined space. Through voice loops, motion capture, and audio-visual fragments in projected scenes, the unnamed protagonist takes on a narrative journey through their adolescence as they navigate sickness, immigration, and multilingual fiction writing across different mediums. 

Credits:

Written, Developed, Performed by Viola He

Sound Design: Brad Davis

Kapwa

Aaron Santiago and Michaela Ternasky-Holland

Kapwa, which means kindred in Tagalog, is a series of interactive video installations that act as an interrogation of cultural erasure within our diaspora and traces an outline around what is missing from the history of the global Philippine people. 

Credits:

Aaron Santiago - Creative Technologist & Producer

Michaela Ternasky-Holland - Audio/Image Editor & Producer

Anna Luisa Petrisko - Score Composer

 

(all images courtesy of the artists)