HFSGS Graduate Symposium "Speculative Futures" with Keynote Mashinka Firunts Hakopian
October 05, 2021
The Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies presents the annual Graduate Symposium SPECULATIVE FUTURES November 19 + 20
This symposium will consider how contemporary artists render algorithmic harms visible, and imagine speculative futures optimized for just outcomes. Inspired by the work of Amelia Winger-Bearskin, an artist who innovates with artificial intelligence in ways that make a positive impact on her community and the environment, Algorithmic Justice League, Morehshin Allahyari, Kate Crawford, and Stephanie Dinkins, as well as scholarship on algorithmic oppression by Ruha Benjamin, Safiya Noble, and others.
The two-day event will facilitate conversations on the ethical, environmental, political, social, and economic impacts of artificial intelligence and machine learning for artists, designers, makers, writers, researchers, and cultural workers.
Keynotes: Amelia Winger-Bearskin and Mashinka Firunts Hakopian
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an artist, writer, and researcher born in Yerevan and residing in Glendale, CA. Her work is concentrated in media studies, visual culture, and West Asian diasporas. She is a 2021 Mellon Professor in the Practice at Occidental College, where she is co-curating the exhibition “Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI” at Oxy Arts with Meldia Yesayan. She is an Associate Director of Research at the Berggruen Institute, and an Associate Editor for Noema Magazine. Prior to this, she held a two-year teaching appointment in UCLA’s Department of English. Her book, Algorithmic Bias Training, or, Lectures for Intelligent Machines, is forthcoming in 2021 from X Artists’ Books.
With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she comprises one-third of Research Service, a media collective that pursues performative and practice-based forms of scholarship. Their performances and projects have been presented at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Drawing Center (NY), Judson Memorial Church (NY), and in the New Museum (NY) Voice Registers Series. Her writing and reviews have appeared in Performance Research Journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Art Papers, Hyperallergic, Georgia Journal, and Art in America.
Keynotes will be Livestreamed and Live Captioning Will be Provided
All lectures in the Graduate Lecture Series will be presented on
PNCA LiveVideo, PNCA’s YouTube channel
Free and Open to the public. All are welcome to attend.