EDUCATION
PhD, History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, 2018
…….Graduate Certificate, Cinema and Media Studies
MA, Modern Art: Curatorial Studies, Columbia University, 2010
BA, Interdisciplinary Studies, UC Berkeley, 2007
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Books
The Institute for Other Intelligences. Los Angeles: X Artists’ Books, X Topics Series. Edited by Ana Iwataki and Anuradha Vikram. 2022.
Articles and Essays
“Art Histories from Nowhere: On the Coloniality of Experiments in Art and Artificial Intelligence.” AI and Society. Special Issue on Decolonizing the Art/AI Ecosystem. Forthcoming.
“Valley View: An Armenian Diasporic Account In Lieu of a Glendale Biennial Review.” Reprinted in We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora. Ed. Aram Mrjoian. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2023.
“Live Data.” (On Lauren Lee McCarthy’s SURROGATE) Data Relations (Digital Exhibition Catalogue). Melbourne: Australian Center for Contemporary Art, 2023.
“Algolinguicism.” A New AI Lexicon (AI Now Institute), 2021.
“Shushi’s Occupied Museums.” Hyperallergic, 2021.
“Memory Work and Militancy: Performing Feminist Diasporic Remembrance at a Distance.” Art Papers, 2020.
“On the Struggle for Indigenous Self-Determination in the Republic of Artsakh.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020.
“Updating the Human Algorithm.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020.
“Cross-Border Data: Visiting Gelare Khoshgozaran’s Medina Wasl.” Georgia Journal, 2020.
“On Gariné Torossian’s Diasporic Cinema,” Hyperallergic, 2019.
“Bot Pedagogy.” In Intersubjectivity Vol. II: Scripting the Human. Edited by Lou Cantor and Katherine Rochester. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2018.
“Valley View: An Armenian Diasporic Account in Lieu of a Glendale Biennial Review,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018.
“Learning from LA/LA: Critical Pedagogy at Pacific Standard Time,” Art in America, 2017.
“‘From Now The Burning Will Take Place’: Annotating Fire Bill’s Spook Kit.” Fire Bill’s Spook Kit (Exhibition Catalogue). Ypres: In Flanders Field Museum, 2017.
“Staging Professionalization: Lecture-Performances and Para-Institutional Pedagogies,” Performance Research Journal 21.6, “On Radical Education” (December 2016).
“Lecture.” With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson. Shifter Magazine 22: Dictionary of the Possible, 2016.
“Teleconference.” With Avi Alpert, Danny Snelson, et al. Audio essay and interview for the New Museum VOICE Registers Series, 2014.
Reviews, Interviews, Questionnaires
“A Jinn Rather Than a Cyborg.” Interview with Morehshin Allahyari. Art Papers. Spring 2023 Issue on Artificial Intelligence. Forthcoming.
“The Duality of Diva.” Meghan Markle’s Archetypes. 2022.
“Monuments Under Occupation.” Interview by Patricia Eunji Kim. Art Papers, 2021.
“Shifting Public Spaces.” Monument Lab, 2020.
“Valley Visionaries,” Interview with Gildia Davidian, Meldia Yesayan, and Sara Wintz, Art Papers, “Borders and Barriers” Issue, 2018/2019.
“Review: Ghostly Desires by Arnika Fuhrmann,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 58.1 (Fall 2018): 183-6.
“Data Maintenance: On Ecologies of Labor,” Ecologies of Data Series, ed. Patricia Kim, 2017.
“Michael Robinson: Mad Ladders,” Art in America, 2016.
“Off the Page: Staging Poetic Language at IN>TIME.” Art in America, 2016.
“Kathryn Andrews: Run for President,” Art in America, 2016.
“Our Literal Speed: Doing Things with Words in the Vicinity of Art.” Culturebot, 2012.
“Thirty Years After the End of Art and Articles: A Conversation with DISBAND,” Culturebot, 2012.
“Talking to Annie Dorsen,” Culturebot, 2011.
“Felicity Nussbaum’s ‘Actresses and Patrons: A Jury of Their Peers.’” Feminist News 29 (August 2010): 4-18. Columbia University Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
“Micro-Lecture.” In Selected Essays About a Bibliography. Philadelphia: Edit Publications, 2010.
Dramaturgical Statement. Prelude Festival Catalogue. New York: CUNY Graduate Center, 2010.
Edited Collections, Magazines, & Dossiers
Co-Editor. Art Papers Spring 2023 Issue on Artificial Intelligence. Co-Edited with Sarah Higgins.
Co-Editor. “Remote Intervention.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020. Co-Edited with Medaya Ocher.
Co-Editor. Present Tense Pamphlets. Evanston: Northwestern University and Block Museum of Art, 2016.
Co-editor. 7CV: A Critical Reader to Accompany Tan Lin’s Seven Controlled Vocabularies. Co-edited with Danny Snelson. Philadelphia: Edit Publications, 2010.
INVITED LECTURES & DISCUSSIONS
“Infidelities: Armenian Studies Otherwise.” University of Pennsylvania, 2023. Forthcoming.
“Uncanny Intelligences.” A Conversation with Nora Khan and Anuradha Vikram. X-TRA and MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 2022.
“Witches and Witch Hunts: A KCHUNG Salon.” MOCA LA, 2022.
ANCA Western Region Grassroots Conference on Artsakh, 2022.
“Creative Tech in Society,” Creative Tech Week, ArtCenter College of Design, 2022.
“Critical Dialogue: Mashinka Firunts Hakopian.” Tyler School of Art and Architecture, 2022.
“Algolinguicism and Armenian Futures,” Intra-Disciplinary Seminar Series, Cooper Union, 2021.
Keynote Lecture, “Speculative Futures Symposium,” Pacific Northwest College of Art, 2021.
“Towards an Armenian Futurism,” Dumanian Lecture Series, University of Chicago, 2021.
Guest Lecturer, “Virtual Monument-Making Toward Speculative Futures,” for “Prosthetic Landscapes” taught by Aroussiak Gabrielian and Alison Hirsch, USC, 2021.
Artists Imagining Armenian Liberation, organized by Hrag Vartanian, 2021.
Algorithms of Oppression Book Club. Women’s Center for Creative Work and Feminist AI, 2020.
“Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Discourse.” Guest Lecture for Introduction to Film and Media, taught by Mellon Assistant Professor Iggy Cortez, Vanderbilt University, 2020.
Humane Infrastructures: A Workshop in the Experimental Humanities. UCLA, 2020.
“Cultural Erasure in Nagorno-Karabakh.” Zoravik Collective Series, 2020.
“World Building Through Intelligent Systems.” UCLA Art|Sci Lab LASER Talks, 2020.
Panel on Intersubjectivity Vol. II: Scripting the Human, Feature Extraction, Hosted by the UCLA Department of Information Studies, 2019.
Panel Discussion on Intersubjectivity Vol. II: Scripting the Human, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, 2018.
“Documenting and Archiving Performance: A Panel Discussion.” Brooklyn Academy of Music/Wendy’s Subway Reading Room, 2016.
“Lecture-Performances and Para-Institutional Pedagogies,” Guest Lecture for “Podium Works,” Instructor Josh Rios, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2016.
Presenter. Counter Cinema | Counter Media Series. University of Chicago, 2016.
SELECTED PAPERS, PRESENTATIONS, & DISCUSSIONS
“Predictive Models for Future Diasporans,” College Art Association Annual Conference, 2022.
“Algorithmic Infrastructures of Remote Liveness,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Annual Conference, 2022.
Moderator, Art + Technology Series, Honor Fraser Gallery, 2021.
“The Dialogic Boycott,” ASAP10: Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Annual Conference, 2018.
“Feminist Interventions in Bot Pedagogy,” Feminist Poetics, Emergent Pedagogies Symposium, 2018.
“On ‘Sensible Dialogue:’ The Languages of Boycott and Artistic Withdrawal,” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Conference, Los Angeles, 2018.
“Of Speech Acts and Direct Action: From the Berkeley Free Speech Movement to Art Strike,” College Arts Association (CAA) Annual Conference, Los Angeles, 2018.
“A Pedagogy of Protest,” ASAP9 Conference: Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, Oakland, CA, 2017.
“Performing Invisibility in Public: Queer Opacity in Andy Warhol’s Thirteen Most Wanted Men (1964) and Lecture Tour (1967),” Art in Public Life & the Public Life of Art Symposium, Yale University, 2017.
“Mobile Pedagogy Units: Video Tutorials, Lecture-Performances, and Hito Steyerl’s ‘Didactic Educational .MOV’ Files.” SCMS Annual Conference, 2017.
“Staging Mobile Pedagogy: Video Tutorials, Lecture-Performances, and Hito Steyerl’s ‘Didactic Educational .MOV’ Files.” Ordinary Media Series. Northwestern University, 2016.
“Joseph Beuys: Untitled (Blackboard).” Philadelphia Museum of Art, April 2-4, 2015.
Moderator, “Author Meets Critics: Gabriel Rockhill’s Radical History and the Politics of Art,” American Society for Aesthetics Conference, March 21, 2015.
“Post-Digital Poetics,” with Danny Snelson, Bruce High Quality Foundation University, October 19, 2014.
“Joseph Beuys: Earth Telephone.” Philadelphia Museum of Art, October 16-18, 2014.
“Kara Walker’s Ruffneck Constructivists.” Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, April 13, 2014.
“Gilded Rot Recut,” with Danny Snelson, Snippets, Splinters, Shreds, Shards: The Fragment in Russian Culture Conference. University of Pennsylvania, March 22, 2013.
“Semiospectacle: Staging the Aesthetics of Discourse.” Anxieties of Overexposure: Second Annual National Graduate Student Conference in Performance Studies. UCLA, April 30, 2010.
SELECTED PERFORMANCES
“Dispatches from the Institute for Other Intelligences,” in conjunction with the “The Future Isn’t What it Used to Be,” Centre Pompidou, Co-organized with Kadist, July 13, 2023.
“The Nearness of,” with Research Service, in conjunction with the “What Is Distance?” Festival, Bard Graduate Center, January 20, 2018.
“Ambiguity Forum,” Renaissance Society, Chicago, January 14, 2017.
“Addenda to the Dictionary of the Possible.” Regards Gallery, November 5, 2016.
“Radios/Radio Armenia,” with Danny Snelson, in conjunction with the Step and Repeat Festival, Geffen Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, July 17, 2015.
“Systems Say What Words Cannot,” with Research Service, in conjunction with User Agent, curated by Rachel Valinsky in association with NYPAC. Judson Memorial Church, March 29, 2015.
“If Your Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me,” with Research Service and Lanny Jordan Jackson, in conjunction with the exhibition Itself Not So, Lisa Cooley Gallery, August 28, 2014.
“No Results Found,” with Research Service, in conjunction with the exhibition Eternal Flame, organized by Thomas Hirschhorn. Palais de Tokyo, Paris, May 23, 2014.
“The Lives of Things,” with Research Service, in conjunction with the launch of Shifter 21: Other Spaces. Moore College of Art & Design, PA, November 20, 2013.
“Gilded Rot Recut,” with Danny Snelson, in conjunction with the Second Saturdays Series. AUX Performance Space, Vox Populi Gallery, June 8, 2013.
“Card Catalog/Data Formats,” with Danny Snelson, in conjunction with Excursus IV: Primary Information. Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, June 2, 2013.
“Zero for Conduit,” with Research Service, in conjunction with Drafts: Phase III: Information Transmission. Drawing Center, New York, May 10, 2013.
“Report on a Day’s Proceedings at the Initiative for Directed Coopetition,” with Research Service, Intimate Collaborations Conference, organized by Kaja Silverman. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, January 18, 2013.
“Everyone’s A Critic,” with Jeremy Barker & Andy Horwitz, commissioned by On the Boards Festival. Prelude Festival, CUNY Graduate Center, October 4, 2012.
“Unsearchable,” with Research Service, in conjunction with the exhibition First Among Equals. Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, May 23, 2012.
SELECTED READINGS
Speculative Poetics for Video Games and AI, Kelly Writers House, 2023. Forthcoming.
Institute for Other Intelligences Launch, Poetic Research Bureau / 2220 Arts + Archives, 2023.
“Queer Armenian Literature: A Reading,” International Armenian Literary Alliance and the Queer Armenian Library, 2021.
Don’t Look Away: A Literary Series for Artsakh, International Armenian Literary Alliance, October 17, 2020.
Night of Armenian Writers, The Pop-Hop, Los Angeles, April 14, 2018.
Poetic Research Bureau, Los Angeles, January 6, 2018.
Random Name Poetry Series, Dahlak, Philadelphia, May 31, 2015.
89plus: Poetry Will Be Made by All!, LUMA Foundation, Zurich, January 30, 2014.
Some Transliterations, Little Berlin Exhibition Space, Philadelphia, September 21, 2013.
Segue Reading Series, Zinc Bar, New York, April, 27, 2013.
Principal Hand Series, L’Etage, Philadelphia, September 27, 2012.
EVENTS & CURATED EXHIBITIONS
Co-Curator, “Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI,” co-curated with Meldia Yesayan, Ford Foundation Gallery, 2023. Forthcoming.
Co-Curator, “Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI,” co-curated with Meldia Yesayan, Oxy Arts, 2021.
Co-Curator, “Sites of Fracture: Diasporic Imaginings of Occupied Artsakh,” ReflectSpace Gallery, co-curated with Anahid Oshagan and Ara Oshagan, 2021.
Co-curator, “Vulnerable Systems: A Screening of Video Works,” co-curated with Jeanne Dreskin and Roksana Filipowska. In conjunction with Biocode: Performing Transgression After New Media. Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, April 10, 2015.
Curator, At Your Leisure, RISD MFA Summer Painting Exhibition, 111 Front Street Gallery, Brooklyn, August 1-28, 2013.
Co-curator, Semiospectacle No. 2, co-curated with Danny Snelson. IRT Theater, November 20, 2011.
Dramaturg, Prelude Festival 10, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, September 29-October 1, 2010.
Curator, Semiospectacle, Performance Space 122, March 22, 2010.
AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
Artsakh Research Grant, Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), 2021.
History of Art McCoubrey/Campbell Travel Award, University of Pennsylvania, 2017.
Dean’s Grant for New Media and Research, University of Pennsylvania, 2015.
Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by Graduate Students, University of Pennsylvania, 2015.
Striker Travel Award, University of Pennsylvania, 2015.
Spotlight Educator, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014-2015.
Spotlight Lecturer, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 2014-2015.
GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation, with Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, University of Pennsylvania, 2013.
Benjamin Franklin/Mellon Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2012-2016.
Research Grant, UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender, 2005.
MEDIA COVERAGE & BIBLIOGRAPHY
Evan Nicole Brown. “How Sci-Fi Films Use Asian Characters to Telegraph the Future While Also Dehumanizing Them.” Hollywood Reporter, November 16, 2021.
Matt Stromberg and Elisa Wouk Almino. “Your Concise Los Angeles Art Guide for October 2021.” Hyperallergic, September 30, 2021.
Carolina A. Miranda. “Armenian Monuments Are at Risk in Azerbaijan. L.A. Artists Make Their Own to Keep Memory Alive.” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2020.
Lillian Avedian, “Web Panel Documents Cultural Erasure in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Armenian Weekly, December 9, 2020.
Catherine Yesayan, “The New Generation is the Guardian of Our Lands.” Asbarez, November 20, 2020.
Siranush Ghazanchyan, “Augmented Reality Monument in Glendale Raises Awareness About Artsakh.” Public Radio of Armenia, November 19, 2020.
Hrag Vartanian, “Required Reading.” Hyperallergic, August 8, 2020.
Hrag Vartanian, “Required Reading,” Hyperallergic, June 3, 2018.
Carolina A. Miranda, “Essential Arts,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2018.
Editors of ARTNews, “Morning Links,” ARTNews, May 29, 2018.
“Present Tense Pamphlets Look to the History and Future of Score-Based Performance.” Block Museum of Art Blog, August 31, 2016.
“Score-Based Work is Given Presence in Present Tense Pamphlets.” Harriet Blog, Poetry Foundation, August 24, 2016.
“The Agenda: This Week in New York.” Art in America, March 24, 2015.
Rachel Valinsky, “Itself Not So,” Avant, January 1, 2015.
Excursus I-IV. Excursus Series Catalog, ed. Alex Klein. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art and the University of Pennsylvania, 2014.
“Itself Not So,” The New Yorker, August 2014.
Thomas Micchelli, “A Fundamental Rupture: ‘Itself Not So’ at Lisa Cooley,” Hyperallergic, August 16, 2014.
Karen Rosenberg, “Lisa Cooley Displays Itself Not So,” New York Times, August 14, 2014.
First Among Equals Catalog. Eds. Alex Klein, Kate Kraczon, et al. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art and the University of Pennsylvania, 2013.
Jennifer Burris, “Guest Post: Q&Q,” Miranda Blog, Institute of Contemporary Art, July, 2, 2012.
Jeremy Barker, “Mashinka Firunts and Danny Snelson’s ‘Semiospectacle No. 2 at IRT Theater,” Culturebot, November 15, 2011.
Nicola Trethowan, The Cosmological Cosmetics Regimen: Metamorphosis and Monolingualism in the Text of Identity, University of Melbourne Undergraduate Thesis, 2010.
Jordan Hruska, “Society of the Semiospectacle,” Art in America, March 24, 2010.