Le Sony'r Ra, better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led The Arkestra, an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up.
Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, philosophy of science, and history that explores the intersection of the African diaspora culture with science and technology. It addresses themes and concerns of the African diaspora through technoculture and speculative fiction, encompassing a range of media and artists with a shared interest in envisioning black futures that stem from Afro-diasporic experiences. While Afrofuturism is most commonly associated with science fiction, it can also encompass other speculative genres such as fantasy, alternate history and magic realism, and can also be found in music.
Wangechi Mutu is a Kenyan American visual artist, known primarily for her painting, sculpture, film, and performance work. Born in Kenya, Mutu now splits her time between her studio there in Nairobi and her studio in Brooklyn, New York, where she has lived and worked for over 20 years. Mutu's work has directed the female body as subject through collage painting, immersive installation, and live and video performance while exploring questions of self-image, gender constructs, cultural trauma, and environmental destruction and notions of beauty and power.
Suzan Pitt Kraning, known professionally as Suzan Pitt, was an American film director, animator, painter, and fashion designer best known for her surrealist animated shorts, including Asparagus (1979).
Keiichi Tanaami was a Japanese pop artist who was active as multi-genre artist from the 1960s as a graphic designer, illustrator, video artist and fine artist.
Storm de Hirsch (1912–2000) was an American poet and filmmaker. She was a key figure in the New York avant-garde film scene of the 1960s, and one of the founding members of the Film-Makers' Cooperative. Although often overlooked by historians, in recent years she has been recognized as a pioneer of underground cinema.
Richard Roger Reeves is a Canadian animated filmmaker. He is known for his whimsical abstract animated films created using a drawn on film technique.
Swedish artist Gunvor Grundel Nelson was born in 1931 in Kristinehamn, Sweden, where she now resides. She has worked as an experimental filmmaker since the 1960s. Some of her most widely known works were created while she lived in the Bay Area in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, where she became well established among other artists in the avant-garde film circles of the 1960s and to the present. As of 2006, she has to her credit 20 films, five videos, and one video installation.
Jennifer West is an American artist. She is known for her digitized films that are made by hand manipulating film celluloid. She serves as faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) at the Roski School of Art and Design. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D printing, immersive installation and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts such as architecture, painting or sculpture.
Mike Stubbs is a curator/director and filmmaker based in the UK, currently, the Creative Producer at Doncaster Creates. For 11 years he was the Director/CEO of FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, a leading arts organisation for the commissioning and presentation of new media art forms. He has been a key contributor to the development of culture and cultural policy in Liverpool, UK. Stubbs was jointly appointed in May 2007 by Liverpool John Moores University, where he is Professor of Art, Media and Curating. He is father to two daughters Saskia and Lola Czarnecki-stubbs.
Alexis Krasilovsky is an American filmmaker, writer and professor. Krasilovsky's first film, End of the Art World documented artists including Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. Krasilovsky moved from New York to Los Angeles in the 1970s to pursue filmmaking, writing and directing through her company, Rafael Film. She is the writer and director of the documentary features, Women Behind the Camera and Let Them Eat Cake.
Dinorah de Jesús Rodríguez is an experimental film artist based between Miami, Florida, and La Habana, Cuba.
Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker who explores landscapes and systems. Her body of work spans multiple media, including public sculpture, photography, drawing and audio.
Aram Han Sifuentes is a Korean American social practice fiber artist, writer, curator, and an adjunct professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Drylongso is a 1998 American coming-of-age drama film directed by Cauleen Smith, who co-wrote the film with Salim Akil. The film, which was shot on location in Oakland, California on 16-millimeter film, centers on a young black photography student and deals with numerous issues relating to race, gender and identity. The title is derived from the Gullah word for "ordinary."
Annette Mangaard is a Danish/Canadian filmmaker, artist, writer, director, and producer, whose films and installations have been shown internationally at art galleries, cinematheques and film festivals. With a practice rooted in theatrical drama and explorative documentary, Mangaard's films investigate notions and nuances of freedom within the confines of structural expectations. Mangaard's early films are filled with experimental visual effects, footage is often shot in Super 8 and reshot in 16mm and then printed optically frame by frame. The result is a grainy textured look, with images that are saturated in colour.
M. Asli Dukan is an American independent media producer, filmmaker and visual artist based in Philadelphia working with themes of speculative fiction and Afrofuturism.
Lisa E. Harris, also known as Li, is a multimedia artist, opera singer, and composer. She is renowned for her interdisciplinary work using voice, text, installation, movement, and new media.
Allison Schulnik is an American painter, sculptor and animated filmmaker. She is known for her heavily textured, impasto oil paintings and her animated short videos. Schulnik is married to fellow artist Eric Yahnker. They live and work in Sky Valley, California.
