Embodiments presents the thesis research and culminating projects of the Digital Art and New Media (DANM) M.F.A. graduating cohort of spring 2024. The exhibition features multimedia performances and interactive installations, visual novels, games, virtual reality, sound art and an interactive puzzle-based experience exhibited throughout the Digital Arts Research Center at UC Santa Cruz.
Building from spaces of self inquiry, performance, and play, the spring 2024 graduating M.F.A. cohort, Jordan Fickel, Kristopher Funk, Robbie Trocchia, Saul Villegas, and Elliot Rex White, explore questions of queer and trans bodies, academic ableism, personal memoir and mythology. The resulting work is a powerful statement on memory, perception, imagined futures, and the production and consumption of erotic energy through art and experimental technologies.
FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
• Preview of Saul Villegas's work April 9 from 6–8:00 p.m.
• Opening Reception April 26 at 4:00 p.m.
• Full Exhibition April 26, 27 & May 1, 2, 3, 4
• Open admission from noon–5:00 p.m.
• This exhibition is part of the April in Santa Cruz Festival Apr 7–27
ADMISSION
• Free and open to the public
PARKING
• Lot 126 is the closest parking lot to the event
• Parking is by UCSC permit or Park Mobile
• More visitor parking information here
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Their work critiques and calls out, but also invites us into and beyond our own bodies and understandings through the convergence of art, technology, community and the collective. The artists’ resilience, commitment and ambitions encompass far more than a culminating MFA thesis, rather an act of survival and institutional adaptation, revealing the power of art to provoke critical reflection through experiences of embodiment, experimentation, catharsis and play.
The title of the show, Embodiments, was created through one-on-one conversations with the artists to focus on the conceptual and creative ambitions of their individual thesis projects. Students then worked with faculty curator G. Craig Hobbs to brainstorm possible exhibition titles encapsulating aspects of the group exhibition. In a process of co-curation and collective decision-making, graduate students voted upon and made the final decision on the title. The resulting title, Embodiments references not just one way of being in a body but a myriad of ways of being in our bodies, and in the world through creative experiences of experimentation, catharsis and play.
ABOUT THE SERIES
• This event is part of the April in Santa Cruz (AiSC) Creative Music and Arts Festival 2024
• AiSC 2024 is co-sponsored by the UC Santa Cruz Music Department and Digital Arts and New Media Program (DANM) with additional generous support from Chancellor Cynthia Larive’s ACEI Digital Art Project on Policing and Campus Climate grant, and Arts Division Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu’s DEI funds