Feminist Media Histories published an essay by Matthew Harrison Tedford in its most recent issue on decolonial feminisms, edited by Debashree Mukherjee and Pavitra Sundar. The essay, "Is a Non-Capitalist World Imaginable? Embodied Practices and Slipstream Potentials in Amanda Strong’s Biidaaban," analyzes Michif artist Amanda Strong's stop-motion film about urban syrup making Biidaaban (The Dawn Comes) (2018). Biidaaban is set in a world ravaged by environmental destruction and state oppression (that is to say, a more or less realistic world), but it rejects nihilism and despondency. Matthew's essay examines how embodied practices—from syrup making to stop-motion animating—can create new, more just worlds.

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“The Kilohana Art League: The Aesthetics of Annexation, 1894–1913” Kamehiro's essay shows us how the genre of landscape painting was similarly employed to affect U.S. politics. She looks at the Kilohana Art League in Hawai‘i, a largely white male organization founded by U.S. annexationists. The landscape paintings of the league excluded representations of local Native communities, so as to recast the Hawaiian landscape as a white American one. The work of the Kilohana Art League, she argues, was essential in the political transformation of the Hawaiian Islands at the turn of the century from an independent, Native Hawaiian kingdom to a U.S. territory. The essay appears in Imperial Islands: Art Architecture, and Visual Experience in the U.S. Insular Empire, ed. J.R. Hartman (University of Hawai`i Press).

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Several years ago, finding herself on her own as a single mother, UC Santa Cruz Arts Division development assistant, Susan Moren, decided to take what for many would be an overwhelming situation and forge ahead to earn a degree in computer engineering.

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With his new show, Floating Windows, currently at AF Projects in Los Angeles (through April 2, 2022), artist Fritz Chesnut’s artistic practice continues to soar.

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Professor cárdenas will read excerpts from her new book Poetic Operations at the Stamp Gallerie’s upcoming closing event for alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms. On view through April 6, 2022, this curated exhibition places themes of speculative futures, queerness, gender, and survival in conversation with our current world. A juxta-position of different mediums and focuses, from augmented reality artwork, game design and trans of color theory, to mixed-media and cooperative and anti-capitalist work, alternate universe ultimately engages in the questions: What are the responses to the current state of our universe, our Earth, our world as queer/queered people? And how do we create and build alternate universes to survive?

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Janet Chen was a panelist on the Asian American Women In Breaking Generational Pressures & Defining Success Through Film And Media Arts presented by UCLA Public Affairs Undergraduate and Visual Communications Media. A recording will be available on Wednesday, March 30.

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Media artist and game designer A.M. Darke is reimagining the future of Black representation in tech, gaming, and beyond. See how her work is changing digital media and reshaping images of Blackness online. Learn how her contributions to the Open Source Afro Hair Library, a database for 3D models of authentic Black hair textures and styles, create a more inclusive society and address the lack of respectful Black representation in digital media.

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First-year Ph.D. candidate (SocDoc M.F.A. 2020) Mahshid Modares’s interactive documentary, Sanctions on the Sky, has won three awards: Silver Medal, Anthem Awards, Human and Civil Rights Category; Award of Merit, IndieFEST Film Awards, Contemporary Issues/Awareness Raising (Student) Category; and Award of Recognition, IndieFEST Film Awards, Documentary Short (Student) Category. The film explores U.S. economic sanctions on Iran’s civil aviation industry as a contributing factor for plane incidents in Iran.

The documentary is available online.

Los Guardianes del Maíz/Keepers of the Corn, directed by Gustavo Vazquez, UCSC film and digital media professor, presents the story of native corn told by the indigenous farmers, artisans and cooks in Mexico whose ancestors shepherded the ever-evolving seeds from the dawn of agriculture into the 21st Century—a story of collective labor spanning more than 350 generations. Their voices are joined by community leaders, scientists, chefs, and others whose knowledge and activism stand not only in defense of food sovereignty and the genetic integrity, diversity, and community ownership of native seeds, but in defense of a durable cultural legacy and a way of life.

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Apply Now! Visualizing Abolition Opportunity



The Institute of the Arts and Sciences at the UC Santa Cruz invites applications for a one-year postdoctoral scholar appointment to support the Visualizing Abolition Initiative, under the direction of Professor Gina Dent, Feminist Studies, and in collaboration with Dr. Rachel Nelson, Director, Institute of the Arts and Sciences. Visualizing Abolition, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is a public scholarship initiative designed to foster creative research and to shift the social attachment to prisons through art and education. Application Deadline: April 18, 2022

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Superheroes and Other Misfits Visiting Artist Program

Applications due May 1



The Arts Research Institute is pleased to announce a new program designed to bring visiting artists to campus for both short- and longer-term visits, from classroom events to week-long residency opportunities. The Superheroes and Other Misfits program engages artists and scholars whose work explores critical issues related to freedom of expression, censorship, race and representation, and which promotes critical examinations of justice, equity and diversity through the arts.

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