2019 Artists in Residence

Zeelie Brown is an interdisciplinary artist whose spiritual work conjures together Afro-Atlantic religious cultures to form Soulscapes–black, transfeminine, utopic, technopolitical sanctuaries. By utilizing sound, textiles, and installation, her practice manifests revolutionary beauty to offer spaces of anti-patriarchal gentleness, light, and warmth. Zeelie has performed at RISD, Flux Factory, Elsewhere, Recess Gallery, Project Row Houses and Harvard University, and has been featured in Art in America and the Village Voice.

Zahra Poonawala was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1983. She lives in New York and studied art in France with a degree from Haute Ecole des Arts du Rhin (Hear, Strasbourg) followed by New Media at the Fresnoy, Contemporary Art Studio. She collaborates regularly with composers, programmers, constructors and interprets.

Sabine Gruffat is an artist who works with experimental video and animation, media-enhanced performance, participatory public art, and immersive installation. By actively disrupting both current and outmoded technology, she questions standardized ways of understanding the world around us. She is also a filmmaker with a special interest in the social and political implications of media and technology, creating films that seek to empower people, encourage social participation, and inspire political engagement. Currently she is Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and a co-founder of the Cosmic Rays Film Festival.

Ranjit Bhatnagar works in music, installation, and text, with a particular interest in algorithmic techniques and in improvisation at all stages of creation. His works have been exhibited across the United States and in Europe. He has performed recently with Lea Bertucci, Qubit and Margaret Leng Tan, and recently published a book of algorithmic poetry, “Encomials: Sonnets from Pentametron”.

Pure Rave, a collective based in Detroit, Michigan, is an ongoing experiment in “chance dance”. Set amidst the context of contemporary Detroit electronic music, rhythmic sonic collage is created from various prepared turntables, “damaged” records, drums machines, and 133.33 bpm loops. At Harvestworks they will take their self-proclaimed “old-world indeterminate” production style to another level and create a program that bridges experimental DJ performance style and electronic music composition.

Core members Nick George and Bryan Dulaney expand on techniques developed by experimentalists Christian Marclay, Pierre Schaeffer, Otomo Yoshihide, Maria Chavez, Qbert, and Graham Dunning, approaching the Pure Rave project as a set of rules and limitations for an inaccessible academic experimental music scene and vapid modern DJ culture.

Natacha Diels’ work combines choreographed movement, improvisation, video, instrumental practice and cynical play to create worlds of curiosity and unease.

Mollye Bendell makes digital and analog sculptures for digital and analog worlds. Her practice explores the dissolving line between the digital and the physical that defines the human/user experience of “things.” In her work, she experiments with virtual reality, 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC machining, circuit building and bending, and codeable objects. The intangible nature of electronic media is used as a metaphor for exploring vulnerability, visibility, and longing in a world that can feel isolating. Mollye currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

Matthew Ortega is an artist, designer and musician working at the intersection of art and technology. Beyond the use of traditional media such as cut and torn paper, he also worked with video and sound by using archival film and youtube clips to create fictional narratives. After a brief hiatus working as a digital designer, he acquired the skills to start creating custom software to further expand his artistic expression. Though he still works with ideas of refuse, decay, and distortion that come from remix culture, he also began to explore what technology can offer to one’s art practice.