January 15 – April 3, 2022
Project Room
Performances:
For the most up-to-date information please visit the festival page at performingmediafestival.com.
Exhibition Reception:
April 1, 2022 | 5:00–8:00 p.m. EST
Please join us for a free and public reception as we celebrate [PMF~ 2022] and Enmeshed: Our Changing Relationship With Space and Time in a World of Digital Interdependence.
The Performing Media Festival [PMF~] is an annual showcase of audio-visual performance works in which artists working with emerging technologies unapologetically cross disciplinary boundaries to create new works of integrated media. The premise dates back to Debora Bernagozzi’s 2014 curated exhibition entitled Performing Media: Works by Signal Culture Artists in Residence at the Everson Museum. “Performing media”, as Debora called it, eloquently encapsulated the performance of multimedia works that underpins all the events of the current festival, named after that exhibition. Over the years, co-directors Ryan Olivier and Eric Souther have come to define performing media as a genre that uses multimedia elements in a performative manner which so far has come to include live audio-visual performances, generative media processes, and edits/recordings of real-time captures. To date, the festival has brought guest artists from across the country and abroad to present their works in South Bend and thus weave new thoughts and ideas about art and media into the fabric of the community. For this, the 6th annual Performing Media Festival, there will be in-person performance events held at Indiana University South Bend, virtual events and live streams to access through the website, and this specially curated installation at the South Bend Museum of Art. Additionally, each year, hosts Eric Souther and Ryan Olivier invite one special guest artist to perform and speak about their artistry during the festival. This year, PMF is proud to welcome Null-State’s Melody Chua and Benjamin D. Whiting (nullstate.org) who will give a performance presentation at IU South Bend as part of the festival. The festival will also feature faculty and students from Indiana University South Bend and Alfred University as well as artists selected from an international call for works.
The Performing Media Festival is proudly sponsored by the IU South Bend Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts at Indiana University South Bend.
Featured artists in the exhibition at the South Bend Museum of Art:
Sara Bonaventura is an Italian visual artist and educator. She works at the intersection between visual and media arts, lens based media and new media. As an independent videographer she has been collaborating with performers and musicians, directing clips, ads and curating visuals. Her video works have been screened worldwide, including at the NYC Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco Independent Short Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Asolo Art Film Festival, Studio 303 for the Montreal Nuit Blanche, Miami New Media Festival, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Rome MACRO Museum, Cinemateca do MAM in Rio for Dobra Festival, and more. She won the Veneto Region Award at the 10th Lago Film Fest and a merit for the 2019 Sino per NIIO Illumination Art Prizes. She has been selected for several residencies and was recently selected for the ISEA 2019, the International Symposium for Electronic Arts, in Gwangju, South Korea. She also recently debuted her first documentary, Forest Hymn for Little Girls, which was shot in the US and entirely funded through a Kickstarter campaign.
Matthew D. Gantt is an artist and composer based in Queens, NY. His practice focuses on (dis)embodiment in virtual spaces, procedural systems facilitated by idiosyncratic technology, and the recursive nature of digital production and consumption. He has presented or performed at a range of institutional and grassroots venues, including Panoply Performance Laboratory, New Museum, The Stone, Issue Project Room, and internationally at IRCAM (Paris) and Koma Elektronik (Berlin). Gantt releases music with Orange Milk and Oxtail Recordings, teaches extended media and experimental composition at Harvestworks, and worked as a studio assistant to electronics pioneer Morton Subotnick from 2016–2018.
In his work, Leslie Rollins engages and holds space as a collaborative ally for the emergence of indeterminate phenomena and entities often encountered when energizing hybrid analog/digital synthesis instruments, feedback systems, and the gathering of field recordings. Rollins combines these elements from multiple sources in celebration of their shapes, patterns, and possibilities. He earned an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University at the New York College of Ceramics in Alfred, NY; and BAs in Art/English from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI. His art has been exhibited in South America, Europe, and the United States.
Simone Sims Longo is a sonic and intermedia artist. His sound activity ranges from composition for electronic solo to sound design and sound installations. As a composer he is interested in the creation and manipulation of sound in the digital domain especially focusing on timbre. In his works he often uses a multilevel iteration of samples, investigating asynchronous and polyrhythmic variations of sound textures. Through multichannel speaker diffusion he explores the musical space and exploits the interaction of the sound with architectural elements, fascinated by the natural reverberation and by sound diffusion through different materials. He also focuses his activity on the relation between audio and video in real time, performing acts of visual music that explores the perception of audiovisual phenomena.
Bengisu Uykusu is a multidisciplinary artist working in the fields of photography, video and sound-art. She studied at SAE Institute İstanbul (Cinema & TV), Bahcesehir University Music Department (Jazz) and received her BA degrees from Istanbul Bilgi University (Music). As part of the Erasmus exchange program, she studied at the Malmö Music Academy-Electroacoustic Music Composition Department in Sweden. Uykusu is currently studying philosophy through Istanbul University-Distance Education Centre and works for documentary video production companies and advertising agencies. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions and performances around the world.
