Digital Arts Research Center, UC Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
- April 22, 4pm, Digital Arts Research Center Room 308: Opening Reception
- April 23, 1pm, Digital Arts Research Center Room 308: Symposium and artist presentations
- eXperimental Theater, UCSC, performances: May 20-29
The UC Santa Cruz Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA program presents unforgetting, the culminating exhibition of the 2022 MFA cohort. Five artists,
Mohamadreza Babaee, Laura Boutros, Dave Crellin, Forest Reid, and dani wright present new works of media art in the form of installations, games, experimental theater, video, and site-specific installation, curated by Yolande Harris.
The exhibition will take place in person at the Digital Arts Research Center, April 22 through May 1, 2022 and the eXperimental Theater, May 2029 at UCSC main campus, with extensive information about the exhibition and the artists available at https://danmmfa.ucsc.edu/.
unforgetting captures the essence of the five individual voices that have formed out of two years of concentrated artistic research and development at DANM. Common threads of lost histories, hidden realties, and hauntings permeate the works. The artists are questioning and actively participating in the destruction of old systems of oppression by imagining new systems in their place. Envisaging a better outcome, one that arises by refusing to accept continuing erasures of histories and identities, they engage with technologies and digital media as forms with which to critique the very systems of oppression that engender them, a kind of subversive turning inside out of digital media.
What results is socially engaged, politically conscious and deeply empathetic experiences which, rather than confront or exclude, effectively draw diverse audiences into these processes.
Mohamadreza Babaee’s Global (re)Entry creatively simulates and redesigns the Customs and Border Protection agency’s “Global (re)Entry” software as a pro-immigrant 2D video game and installation. The experimental theater performance by Laura Boutros, Amduat: The Twelve Hours of Ra, explores the Egyptian-American diaspora through a museum’s journey into the ancient Egyptian underworld. Dave Crellin presents Troubled Waters: The Ocean as a Contested Space in California Surf Culture, a site-specific installation exploring the history of white supremacy, racialized exclusion and erasure in the formation of the so-called “California Dream” in surf and beach popular culture throughout Pacific Coast leisure spaces. Forest Reid’s The Last Galician Switchboard is an interactive video installation that lyrically composites archival footage with Yiddish folklore, literature and music. dani wright’s blood play explores their concept of a ‘queer gothic’ genre through game fragments, printed zines, installation and theory.
* * * * *
ADMISSION
Attend in person.
Opening: April 22
Ongoing Exhibition: open hours for self-guided viewing of the exhibition April 22–24 and April 29–May 1.
Free and open to the public.
Please review the COVID-19 Protocols in advance of the event (see below).
RELATED EVENTS
- April 22, 4pm, Digital Arts Research Center Room 308: Opening Reception
- April 23, 1pm, Digital Arts Research Center Room 308: Symposium and artist presentations
- May 20–22 & May 26–29, Theatrical Production: Amduat More info on Amduat here.
* * * * *
COVID-19 Protocols
After April 10, face coverings are no longer required but remain highly recommended by UCSC.
Attendees are required to show the following documents prior to admission to the event.
UCSC students: green clearance badge
UCSC employees: symptom check clearance email
Visitors:
1. complete the UCSC Symptom Check on the day of the event and show the clearance email to the ushers at the door
2. Show proof of vaccine -OR- negative PCR test completed within 72 hours (home tests/antigen tests are not accepted)
Please familiarize yourself with the full COVID protocols here; we recommend you review this in advance.
All attendees must wear an approved face covering, while inside the venue, for the duration of the event.
* * * * *
PARKING
Purchase a permit in advance or use ParkMobile.
The closest parking area is Lot #126.
See Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS) for visitor parking information, ParkMobile instructions, and a campus parking map.