Tribeca Immersive 2025: IN SEARCH OF US
EVENT DETAILS: 🗓 June 6-15, 21-22, & 28-29, 2025 📍 WSA, 161 Water Street, NYC
In times of uncertainty and global change, creative expression becomes a vital avenue for exploration. "In Search of Us" celebrates the immersive field as a space to ask questions, uncover hidden truths, and create shared space through storytelling. Reflecting on Tribeca Immersive's 14-year legacy, this show continues the festival's commitment to the diversity of perspectives that shape who we are. There is no "us vs. them", there is only the search for us.
The selected immersive installations approach some of our era's most urgent questions with depth and nuance. They demonstrate the ongoing impact of artists using new technology to tell important stories. Some projects are calls to action, while others invite contemplation and forge interpersonal connections.
Here you'll find creative experiments across the senses, close looks at bias, and reflections on climate futures. There are opportunities to discover untold stories, as well as celebrations of culture across medium and genre. Through eleven dynamic installations, "In Search of Us" embraces immersion as a means to venture into the unknown together.
Tickets grant entry for the full day of purchase. Learn more about the Tribeca Festival programming, or buy individual tickets/packages at TribecaFilm.com.
Building on 14 years of Tribeca Immersive, the 2025 edition highlights works across filmmaking, futurism, activism, video games, XR and music, created by award winning artists including Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Kidus Hailesilassie, Cameron Kostopoulos and Tribeca alumni Idris Brewster (TF ‘21, ‘23), Meghna Singh (TF ‘21) and Simon Wood (TF ‘21).
There are 11 groundbreaking projects—including six world premieres—by visionary artists working at the forefront of immersive storytelling.
AI & Me: The Confessional and AI Ego Daniela Nedovescu and Octavian Mot
Part of the AI & Me series, The Confessional and AI Ego dive into the provocative dynamics between humans and artificial intelligence. Sit down and see what AI thinks of you—funny, raw, and completely unapologetic.
A Father’s Lullaby / Lullabies Through Time Rashin Fahandej
A Father’s Lullaby is a poetic, community-based interactive installation centering on formerly incarcerated fathers as a locus for collective memory, care, and transformative change. The accompanying AR, Lullabies Through Time, is a site-responsive experience designed to bridge past, present, and future – tracing the enduring legacies of racialized systems of control and confinement, in order to reclaim public spaces as sites of healing, reconnection, and future-building
Fragile Home Ondřej Moravec and Victoria Lopukhina
Fragile Home is a mixed reality experience that transforms its surroundings into a Ukrainian home, populating the virtual domestic space with objects, voices, and melodies that tell a story of displacement, memory, and resilience
In the Current of Being Cameron Kostopoulos
In the Current of Being is a haptic VR experience that shares the true story of Carolyn Mercer, a survivor of electroshock conversion therapy. Physically connect with Carolyn’s story through wearable haptic vests, sleeves and gloves that will allow the participant to share her experience through the profound sensation of touch.
Scent Alan Kwan
Scent is a cinematic interactive experience in which, as a dog, the player roams a war-torn city, witnesses mass atrocities and carries out one quiet task—guiding human souls toward reincarnation.
Uncharted Kidus Hailesilassie
Enter Uncharted, an immersive cosmic choreography where the body becomes a vessel for ancestral storytelling. Mapping 6,500 characters from African and diasporic writing systems, the piece fuses AI Data sculpture with one of the world’s oldest technologies - the human body. Through dance, this language archive comes alive in a new form of pan-African storytelling.
Boreal Dreams Jakob Kudsk Steensen
In this dynamic simulation, Boreal Dreams delves into the relationship between climate and consciousness, exploring how environmental shifts impact how we dream, think, and sleep. Traverse the Boreal zone in a fully realized virtual world based on fieldwork, data collection, and real time technology.
The Founders Pillars / The Power Loom Lesiba Mabitsela, Meghna Singh, and Simon Wood
The Founders Pillars is a two-part installation: The Power Loom, a multimedia installation that digitally weaves African textiles, and a site-specific Augmented Reality (AR) experience that uses those very patterns and visualizations to transform the columns of the New York Stock Exchange into a memorial to enslaved peoples.
The Innocence of Unknowing Ryat Yezbick and Milo Talwani
The Innocence of Unknowing is an AI archival project, two-channel essay film, and live performance examining news media coverage of mass shootings in the U.S. since the 1960s. By studying footage of retreat over time, the work investigates the impact of public violence on contemporary culture, using AI as a collaborator.
New Maqam City MIPSTERZ
New Maqam City invites you to remix, manipulate, and vibe to music from across North Africa and the Middle East. Incorporating everything from Gnawa beats to synthpop, Macrou, and 808 drum patterns, this interactive installation catalyzes a transcendental state inspired by Sufi mysticism and communion through music.
There Goes Nikki Idris Brewster, Michele Stephenson, and Joe Brewster
There Goes Nikki is an AR ode to the late poet Nikki Giovanni in which Giovanni recites her poem “Quilting the Black-eyed Pea (We’re going to Mars)”. Set against a cosmic backdrop and guided by her voice, the experience leads viewers on a journey through black memory, imagination, and liberation. Poetry becomes a portal to the universe Giovanni imagined for herself, and for all of us.
(All images courtesy the artists and Tribeca Festival)
ABOUT THE TRIBECA FESTIVAL The Tribeca Festival, presented by OKX, brings artists and diverse audiences together to celebrate storytelling in all its forms, including film, TV, music, audio storytelling, games, and immersive. With strong roots in independent film, Tribeca is synonymous with creative expression and entertainment. Tribeca champions emerging and established voices, discovers award-winning talent, curates innovative experiences, and introduces new ideas through exclusive premieres, exhibitions, conversations, and live performances.
The Festival was founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in 2001 to spur the economic and cultural revitalization of lower Manhattan following the attacks on the World Trade Center. The annual Tribeca Festival will celebrate its 24th year from June 4–15, 2025 in New York City. In 2019, James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems bought a majority stake in Tribeca Enterprises, bringing together Rosenthal, De Niro, and Murdoch to grow the enterprise.
ABOUT AGOG: THE IMMERSIVE MEDIA INSTITUTE Agog: The Immersive Media Institute is a philanthropic organization founded by Chip Giller and Wendy Schmidt that helps people use extended reality (XR) to create human connection, cultivate empathy, and inspire action toward a more just and sustainable future. Agog brings together nonprofit leaders, thinkers, and creators to harness the power of emerging media like virtual and augmented reality to develop new ways to communicate, learn, inspire, and collaborate. Agog’s initial areas of focus include social justice and equity; high-impact storytelling and world-building; policy and ethics; education and outreach; and research. To learn more, visit agog.org.
ABOUT WATER STREET PROJECTS & WSA Water Street Projects is a roving interdisciplinary nonprofit platform amplifying creative voices. Our projects include performance art, fairs, festivals, music shows, culinary experiences, and visual arts which champion diversity and global points of view. WSA is a cultural ecosystem and hub of artists, producers, and creative businesses. Housed in an iconic Fox and Fowle 1980s skyscraper, WSA interweaves working, production, wellness, and social spaces. WSA takes an artist-first approach, and provides a new anchor and catalyst for cultural life within Lower Manhattan. The WSA ethos is indebted to entrepreneur Mark Wadhwa, whose cultural venue 180 Strand in London serves as a model.
