2018 MDOCS Forum gallery talk and performances feature Tami Kashia Gold, Sha Sha Feng, Abram Stern, Candace Thompson and Alexis Powell, and Dayna McLeod, who use the tools of surveillance to interrogate and play with governmental, technological, and medical surveillance.

SURVEILLANCE: Silence = Death

Tami Gold and Sha Sha Feng’s art installation is inspired by souvenir decks of cards that were sold around Ground Zero within days of the attack on 9/11. One deck vilifies the Iraqi military. Another deck of cards called “Operation Iraqi Freedom, US Military Heroes” promoted the US military. Simulating airport security checkpoints SURVEILLANCE: Silence = Death looks at the history of Muslims in America, the emotional toll on Muslim Americans living under FBI and police surveillance, and the expansion of legalized surveillance in Congress and in courts. “Are we safer now?”

Oversight Machines

Abram Stern’s work consider the dual meanings of oversight (supervision and the failure to notice) in a world in which media is increasingly made for and by machines. These images oversee (and overlook) public documents/metadata related to the US Intelligence Community, subjecting these collections to techniques from intelligence (signals intelligence, communications intelligence, and open source intelligence). These projects are exhibited as “work in progress,“ what is shown is not the result of these processes of sense-making, but the work of sense-making itself.

Ok Gurgle

Alexis Powell and Candace Thompson’s 15 minute performance piece explores the complicated, scary, and error-filled relationships we have with our (increasingly capable) digital assistants, as well as the government spies and big data servers lurking behind them. Using music, comedy, live performance, projection mapping, and the seemingly innocuous techno surveillance tools we all carry everywhere, Powell and Thompson will transform their own personal search data (and their terrible speech-to-text transcriptions) into a farcical commentary on surveillance.

Uterine Concert Hall

Uterine Concert Hall is a vaginal media project that features artist Dayna McLeod’s uterus as the scene of the performance as well as the instrument of its production. In this work, her vaginal canal acts as the stage with her cervix as the proscenium. McLeod equipped with a 54khz internal speaker (Babypod™), exposed her uterus to sound. In Uterine Concert Hall, sound shapes the body. The artist invites the audience to perform for her uterus. Karaoke, academic paper presentation excerpts, poetry, and spoken word are just a few of the formats that are encouraged.

About the Artists

Tami Gold is broadly recognized in the documentary field as a pioneer for her early work using handheld video tools to document social movements and advocate for community objectives. She has created more than 15 highly visible and critically acclaimed documentary films on a variety of topics at the center of public debate in the US and internationally, including women’s rights, public health, conditions for workers and labor organizing, violence and discrimination against LGBT people, police accountability and community relations, and the US relationship with South Africa. Her films have screened at film festivals, including the Sundance, Tribeca, and New York Film Festival, and have won many awards including the Audience Award at Tribeca. Her work has also been screened on POV, the PBS World Channel, and on HBO. She is also known for her work in grassroots distribution, and the use of media for advocacy and the expression of alternative viewpoints. Tami is a Professor at Hunter College and is a recipient of Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships, as well as a Fullbright.

Sha Sha Feng is a multimedia programmer and designer who combines arts and technology to develop socially conscious media. Her work includes a range of experiments which integrate web based art and open source technologies. She has presented her work at various galleries and events including The Kitchen, Eyebeam, 3LD, Conflux, George Washington Carver Gallery, and Staten Island Museum. Sha Sha produces iArt (an interactive art show) with her students in the Department of Film & Media and the Integrated Media Arts MFA program at Hunter College. She is also the co-founder of DIVAS (Digital Interactive Visual Arts Sciences) for Social Justice, a grassroots community organization that aims to bridge the digital divide and teach media literacy and cultural awareness in underserved communities.

Alexis Powell is a NYC-based performer and interdisciplinary artist. She has performed several original works with her ensemble, Hearsay & Hyperbole, at venues such as Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Salvage Vanguard Theater, Union Docs, Provincetown Playhouse, Dixon Place, AUNTS, and New Museum. She holds an MA in drama therapy from New York University, and recently premiered an arts-based research performance exploring Queerness written with playwright Jess Barbagallo called Not For Resale.

Candace Thompson is a performer and interdisciplinary media maker fascinated with the feedback loops generated by place, culture, identity, climate, economics, and daily human interaction. She makes video, audio, web projects, and ritualistic installations— both IRL and online—that examine and challenge the truths we purportedly hold to be self-evident. Perhaps they aren’t so self-evident after all. As a freelance video producer and editor, Candace has made music videos, documentaries, and experimental narratives. As a performer she has worked in music, theater, voiceover, and television, most recently on the second season of HBO’s High Maintenance, and with artist Pablo Helguera at such venues as BAM and the Guggenheim. Her project The National Registry of White Men, a response to Trump’s proposed Muslim registry, was featured on HuffPo, Fox News, AV Club, Dazed, and Bustle. She is working towards her MFA in Integrated Media Art from Hunter College.

Dayna McLeod is a performance and video artist living in Montreal. Her work uses humor and capitalizes on exploiting the body’s social and material conditions using cabaret, duration, single channel video, and installation practices. Dayna is PhD candidate at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University, pursuing an interdisciplinary degree in Humanities that combines studies in performance art, feminism, queer theory, age, and research-creation practices. Dayna’s dissertation research examines how over-40 feminist performance artists use the body (their own or bodies-for-hire) within their practices, and work in relationship to mainstream mass culture. As part of this research, McLeod embarked on a one-year durational performance piece that investigated and lived the stereotypes of a "cougar,” a woman over-40 who aggressively demonstrates her sexuality, by wearing nothing but animal print clothing 24/7 (archived at: www.CougarThis.com).

About MDOCS Forum

This event is organized by the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative (MDOCS) at Skidmore College as part of its annual Storytellers’ Institute’s MDOCS Forum. This year documentary makers who explore the theme of surveil/surveilled through film, sound, interactive media, museum curation, scholarship, etc. connect with Skidmore and community members during the weekend-long event. Join an international group of storytellers to explore these questions in events including film screenings, audio experiences, dialogues, and star gazing. Visit MDCOS website for more information on all of the events taking place at various locations on Skidmore campus from June 7-10, 2018. This event is free and open to the public.