FUTURE-PROOF: Maja Smrekar

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.  Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and the Artists featured on the podcast.

Madi Boyd is an artist whose work uses light, space, and time as sculptural matter. She has worked on several projects with Polly Dalton, a cognitive scientist and Professor in Psychology at Royal Holloway, whose research focuses on human attention, awareness and experience in multisensory contexts. In this talk, Dalton and Boyd discuss their collaborative works, Digital Forest, 2018, and The Complexity of Touch, 2023, and how they illuminate the impact of immersive experiences on human perception, memory and imagination. Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and the Artists featured on the podcast.

DEEP-DIVE is a series of public talks, each delving deeper into a specific topic already highlighted by a project at Blessed Foundation, enabling the nuances of important questions to be explored. The first DEEP-DIVE episode coincides with the exhibition currently on display at Blessed Foundation - RAPTURE by Andrea Khôra. We explore key themes in Andrea’s work, focusing on psychedelics and AI. Hear from Shaneihu Yawanawá, Utxi Yawanawá, Yawatume Yawanawá and Maria Fernanda Gebara, who share their views on the psychedelics boom from the perspective of indigenous traditions and ethics. We're also joined by Neşe Devenot, whose research was a major influence in Andrea’s work, offering a critical assessment of the collision of psychedelics and capitalism. With further insights from Andrea Khôra and Sylwia Serafinowicz (Managing Director at Blessed Foundation), dive into this episode for an inspiring and thought-provoking exploration of ancestral intelligence vs artificial intelligence. RAPTURE by Andrea Khôra is showing at Blessed Foundation until 27th June 2024. Contact [email protected] for more information.

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.  RAPTURE, by Andrea Khôra is on display at Blessed Foundation until 27 June 2024: https://www.blessed-foundation.org/projects Braiding Dusk and Dawn by Soumya Sankar Bose is on display at Delfina Foundation until 7 July 2024: https://www.delfinafoundation.com/whats-on/soumya-sankar-bose-braiding-dusk-and-dawn/ 

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 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. Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and the Artists featured on the podcast.

Compiler is a collective for digital art, curation, and critical technical practice, implemented in institutional and alternative spaces. 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. Tanya and Oscar discuss the hybrid and hidden roles we are adopting in our current practice. They aim to demystify topics in contemporary digital culture that affect everyday life through artistic, critical and technical methods. Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and the Artists featured on the podcast.

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.   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. Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and the Artists featured on the podcast.

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. Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and the Artists featured on the podcast.

Maja Smrekar is an award-winning artist and researcher. In her talk for Blessed Foundation, Smrekar, will focus 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 will also address her fear of natural sciences that she has managed to overcome thanks to her intuitive connection with nature. Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and the Artists featured on the podcast.

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. Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and the Artists featured on the podcast.