Summer Showcase 2024

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

A {room} of one’s own  Viola He XR Performance 

A {room} of one’s own is an XR performance about the hysterical journey of making creative work within a confined space. Reality and fantasy bleed together on this expedition through imagination and solitude in an ever-changing room. Through voice loops, motion capture, and audio-visual fragments within projected scenes, the unnamed protagonist warps and morphs physical-digital space, while navigating sickness and health, immigration, adolescence and multivalent adulthood.

Additional Credits: Sound Design: Brad Davis

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. 

Kapwa Aaron Santiago and Michaela Ternasky-Holland Video Installation

As artists and collaborators, we both are experienced in making immersive work and share a passion for bringing untold stories into reality. We came together based on our common Philippine ancestry to develop Kapwa. After a few initial conversations, we found a similar lack of cultural heritage.  As Filipino-Americans, otherwise known as Fil-Ams, we are both children of immigrants. Still, we discovered that our lack of knowledge goes deeper than just our parents' desire for us to assimilate.

Filipinos often self-identify as chameleons, blending in with our environment despite living and working across the world. Combining this element with the stark lack of national history due to colonial erasure, a strong cultural identity is elusive for contemporary Filipinos. This in turn often casts us as invisible people to the wider public eye or mainstream media. This distortion of culture bleeds into every aspect of the Philippine heritage: our languages, our food, our media, and even our self-image have adopted aspects of our geographical neighbors and dominant world powers. 
Kapwa is not only a visceral representation of our struggle to understand what is truly Filipino culture but also a raw demonstration of the inquiry itself. The installation uses the way that AI mutates its training data as a metaphor for what has happened to Philippine culture, both within the Philippines and for its wider diaspora: indigenous Philippine concepts and words have been morphed into modern-day stereotypes and assimilated into western ideology. Join us as we attempt to map not only the manipulation but ultimately the erasure of our Philippine culture over time.

Credits: Aaron Santiago - Creative Technologist & Producer Michaela Ternasky-Holland - Audio/Image Editor & Producer Anna Luisa Petrisko - Score Composer

(all images courtesy of the artists)