Complex Movements’ 2016 Detroit exhibition of Beware of the Dandelions. Photo by Doug Coombe
New Collaborative “Exploded Lab” Format Supports Artists as They Explore Creating Across Disciplines
Los Angeles, CA — The Sundance Institute’s Interdisciplinary Program (IDP) is pleased to announce supported artists of two new cohorts: the 2021 Interdisciplinary Program Grantees and the 2021-2022 Art of Practice Fellows. The nonprofit Institute’s mission and values have nurtured a powerful community of artists throughout its 40-year history, and developed a flexible and innovative approach to artist support. This allowed the Institute to evolve nimble solutions in tenuous times, as the current global pandemic disrupts artists whose work is based on location, synchronicity, and new technology.
The Interdisciplinary Program
To address these circumstances created by the pandemic, in 2020 the Institute united its Film Music, New Frontier labs and Theater programs to create the Interdisciplinary Program, which brings a holistic approach and an equitable focus to supporting creators. Cultivating the cross-pollination of artists at various stages in their respective practices, the IDP fosters a dynamic, year-round interdisciplinary community, bridging silos by scaffolding experimentation and collaboration.The team responsible for the program includes Ruthie Doyle, Peter Golub, and Ana Verde.
The Art of Practice Fellowship: An “Exploded Lab”
Starting this month, the program’s pilot Art of Practice Fellowship will focus on these newly convened communities, offering opportunity, exploration, and inclusive recovery. Rooted in the qualitative research with artists and field leaders that helped shape the program’s design, including the commissioned Emerging from the Cave field study, the Art of Practice Fellowship uses long-standing Institute program infrastructures as a foundation. Testing, prototyping, and co-creating, the fellowship keeps a generous community of unique voices at its heart.
With the goals of expanding and strengthening artists’ overall creative practice, fellows will engage in peer-to-peer and peer-to-mentor conversations, have the opportunity for in-person residencies at MASS MoCA and UCross Foundation, have access to granting and a developing online collaboration and timebanking application, and gather virtually to further social, career, and project needs. The fellowship is facilitated by IDP staff and five IDP artist community leaders, with the ultimate goal of a sustainable artist-centered structure.
“With an ‘exploded lab’ ecosystem, a cultural incubator community, we will extend the collaboration and generative environment of a Sundance lab across a full year, involving a larger, more varied group of artists. This comes at a pivotal time in the pandemic landscape for artists in these fields, especially artists whose voices have been marginalized or excluded,” said Interdisciplinary Program Director Ruthie Doyle.
The cohort is a mix of backgrounds, expertise, and career stages, centering artists from historically underrepresented groups. The program identified 68 artists as part of the Art of Practice Fellowship this pilot year — 40 are theater, composing, emerging media and innovative cross-disciplinary artists previously supported by Sundance; and 20 are artists who had not previously been supported, selected via a pool of nominations from alumni, key regional peer and partner organizations, and advisors. Incorporating a collaborative approach to artist advisory, the cohort is rounded out by five community leaders selected for their singular voice and excellence in activating their respective communities: Sarah Ellis, Adil Mansoor, Cat Rodriguez, Wesley Taylor, and Xin Xin; and three Sundance Institute Board artist advisors: Lisa Kron, Junaid Sarieddeen, and Lynette Wallworth. Quarterly artist advisors include Jesse Alick, Dr. P Carl, Kat Cizek, Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, and Adaora Udoji.
Grantees
While developing the Art of Practice Fellowship in 2021, the IDP answered an urgent call to address financial gaps caused by the pandemic, offering artists more than $240,000 in total financial relief.
More than 90 percent of the supported artists announced today are from historically underrepresented, marginalized, or excluded groups. They reflect a wide range of backgrounds, with practices spanning from deepfakes to dramaturgy, biohacking to bass violin, and ethnomusicology to engineering. The total cohort includes both emerging artists, as well as mid-career and lifelong artists who are winners of Emmys, Grammys, a MacArthur Genius Grant, Obies, Pulitzers, Tonys, as well as those recognized by BAFTA, PEN, The Black List, and Academy Award nominations, among many others. Their work has appeared at BAMcinemaFest, the Berlinale, the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Venice Biennale, as well as the United Nations and the White House during the Obama presidency.
Each fellow and grantee was supported in a designated field or combination of fields, including emerging media, interdisciplinary, music, and/or theater.
The Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program is supported by an endowment from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, with generous additional support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Film Music Foundation, The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, The Carrie Louise Hamilton Foundation, and Francena T. Harrison Foundation.
2021-2022 Art of Practice Fellows
Javaad Alipoor: Artistic Director of Javaad Alipoor Company, Alipoor is a writer, director and performer working across theatre, emerging media and screen making playful political work. Theater / Interdisciplinary / Emerging Media
Robert Reid Allan: Scottish composer, pianist and activist based in London, UK, making hard-hitting, political and collaborative interdisciplinary work. Music
Janani Balasubramanian: Janani Balasubramanian is an artist and researcher working at the intersections of contemporary art and science. Interdisciplinary
Jonathan Bepler: Composer Jonathan Bepler makes music in a wide range of collaborative contexts, including film, dance, theater and installation. Music
Agnes Borinsky: Agnes is a theater-maker and writer, living on Chumash and Kizh land in Los Angeles. Theater
Layale Chaker: Layale Chaker is a violinist and composer. She composes and performs for various ensembles, cinema, theatre and dance. She is currently developing her debut opera. Interdisciplinary
Shayok Misha Chowdhury: Shayok Misha Chowdhury is a many-tentacled writer and director who likes making things that are intimate, epic, theatrical, cinematic, messy, and musical. Interdisciplinary
Cora Yi-Huan Chung: Cora (Yi-Huan) Chung is a classically trained composer and cellist from Taiwan. She is a fellow of the Sundance Film Music and Sound Design Lab. Music
Connor Cook: Composer/storyteller/accordionist Connor Cook hopes to earnestly connect with people, our memories and the moments in-between, and maybe create something special too. Music
Chanell Crichlow: Chanell Crichlow is a low brass multi-instrumentalist, composer, performer, and educator residing in sunny California. Music
Drew Denny: Nominated for a 2021 Podcast Academy Award, Drew Denny is directing a queer nature documentary, creating a multi-media musical, and adapting her work for TV. Interdisciplinary
Heather Dewey-Hagborg: Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an artist and biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. Emerging Media
Stephanie Dinkins: Stephanie Dinkins is a transmedia artist who creates platforms for dialog about race, gender, aging, and our future histories. Emerging Media
Yasmin Elayat: Yasmin Elayat is an Emmy-award winning immersive director and Co-Founder at Scatter, an immersive company pioneering Volumetric Filmmaking. Emerging Media
Sarah Ellis: Sarah Ellis is an award-winning producer currently working as Director of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company to explore new artistic initiatives and partnerships. Emerging Media / Interdisciplinary / Theater
Nicholas Fortugno: Nicholas Fortugno is an artist, designer, and entrepreneur working in games and interactive storytelling, works including Diner Dash, Frankenstein AI, and Come Out & Play. Emerging Media
David Greenspan: David Greenspan has worked with many contemporary playwrights; appeared in his own plays; performed solo renditions of dramatic and non-dramatic texts; honors include six Obies. Theater
Ro Haber: Ro Haber is an aesthetically-driven narrative, documentary and new media filmmaker interested in horror, futurity, queerness, and beyond. Interdisciplinary
Ryan J. Haddad: Ryan J. Haddad is an actor and playwright whose work is unapologetically gay, disabled, horny, and fabulous. Theater
Maya Daisy Hawke: Maya Daisy Hawke is an editor and experimental filmmaker who makes and performs live cinema. Interdisciplinary
Sultana Isham: Sultana Isham explores sound as biology through composition and ethnomusicology. Interdisciplinary
Marisa Morán Jahn: Of Ecuadorian-Chinese descent, Marisa Morán Jahn codesigns public art and creative media with immigrants and working families. She is a Visiting Artist at MIT. Interdisciplinary
Valencia James: Valencia James is a performer/researcher working in the intersection between dance, theatre, technology and activism, creating tools that push the bounds of live performance. Interdisciplinary
Lars America Jan: Lars Jan is a director, artist, writer, and activist known for visually striking, genre-bending performance and installation works exploring emerging technologies, live gatherings, and unclassifiable experience. Emerging Media
Daniel Alexander Jones: Award-winning performance artist, playwright, singer and speaker, Daniel Alexander Jones exemplifies the artist-as-energy worker. His newest work is www.aten.life Interdisciplinary
Kalaisan Kalaichelvan: Kalaisan Kalaichelvan is a composer, music producer and classically trained pianist whose work spans across the screen, concert, theatre, dance and visual media. Music
Raja Feather Kelly: Raja Feather Kelly is an award winning choreographer, director, and artistic director of the feath3r theory. Theater / Media
Naomi Ko: Naomi Ko (she/her) is a Korean American filmmaker, writer, actor, performance artist, and cultural producer based in Minnesota and Los Angeles. Interdisciplinary
Olivia Komahcheet: Olivia Komahcheet is a nomadic-bred multi-instrumentalist and emerging score composer of Comanche and Otoe heritage, blending the genres of alternative indie and neo soul alike.
Lisa Kron: Kron is a Tony Award-winning writer and performer. Her work includes Well, 2.5 Minute Ride, and Fun Home. Co-founder: Five Lesbian Brothers collaborative theater company. Theater
Andy Lanning: Andy has drawn lots of comic books, including for Marvel and DC Comics, and written for animation and games. He was the Executive Creative Director for Magic Leap, developing Augmented Reality experiences. Emerging Media
Yo-Yo Lin: Yo-Yo Lin 林友友 is a Taiwanese-American, interdisciplinary media artist who explores the possibilities of self-knowledge in the context of emerging, embodied technologies. Interdisciplinary
Andres Burbano Lopez: XR Artivist and researcher. Andres works in the decolonization of art and technology, working with misrepresented communities that go from audience to becoming creators. Emerging Media
Dana Lyn: Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Dana Lyn collaborates regularly with artists such as Stew, Taylor Mac and Vincent D’Onofrio; she also enjoys making hand-drawn stop-motion animations. Music
Adil Mansoor: Adil Mansoor is a theatre director centering the stories of queer folks and people of color. Theater
Rosario Perazolo Masjoan: Crippled, filmmaker and disability rights activists. She is co-director and co-writer of “4 Feet High”, a series about pride, sexuality and disability. Interdisciplinary
Lauren Lee McCarthy: Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living, and is the creator of p5.js. Emerging Media
Katya Mihailova: Katya is a versatile composer for film and media based in NYC. She scored many award-winning documentaries and narrative features and was nominated for a 2018 BAFTA in the original score category. Music
Angelo Madsen Minax: Angelo Madsen Minax is a multi-disciplinary artist. His projects have shown at Berlinale, Tribeca Film Festival, BAM CinemaFest, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and numerous others. Interdisciplinary
James Harrison Monaco: James Harrison Monaco is a writer, storyteller, composer, performer, and translator (Spanish & Italian). His work explores new ways of combining narrative and music. Theater
Gregg Mozgala: Gregg Mozgala is an award winning actor, playwright, producer and artistic director. Theater
Marie Hanhnhon Nguyen: Marie is a Vietnamese writer whose work has been supported by CTG, Sundance Institute, Fringe Festival, The Black List and WIF. Theater
Lynn Nottage: Lynn Nottage is a playwright whose work has been produced throughout the United States and internationally. She is a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and the first woman to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Theater
Alison O’Daniel: Alison O’Daniel is a visual artist and filmmaker working across sound, narrative, sculpture, installation and performance. Interdisciplinary
Yea Bin Diana Oh: Diana Oh (they/them) is a Senior Dog Rescuer, an Unboxable Artist and an Open Channel to the Art that Feels Good to Their Body. Oh is driven most by pleasure, mutual care, and keeping things heart-centered. Interdisciplinary
Linda May Han Oh: Linda May Han Oh is a bassist/composer whose “innovative range and stellar improvisations has made [her] one of the most dynamic rising stars” – The Wall Street Journal. Music
Gabriela Ortega: Gabriela Ortega is a Dominican writer/director and actor. Her work explores ancestral memory and its relationship to our present through a Caribbean lens. Interdisciplinary
Aaron Parks: Aaron Parks is a pianist, composer, songwright, and educator exploring the seams between genres. Music
Paola Prestini: Composer Paola Prestini is a leader in the global new music scene, with a body of work that has crossed genres and shattered glass ceilings. Music
Ellen Reid: Ellen Reid is a composer and sound artist. She was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera, p r i s m. Music
Emily Rice: Emily Rice is a British born composer for film and TV. Music
Ainslee Alem Robson: Ainslee Alem Robson, an Ethiopian-American writer-director and media artist, crafts emancipatory narratives about intersectionality, nostalgia and growing up in diaspora, using film and emerging technologies. Interdisciplinary
Cat Rodríguez: Cat Rodríguez werqs as a feral performer / director / core member of Fake Friends (Circle Jerk, 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Finalist); hecha en NOLA+Nicaragua. Theater / Emerging Media
Devin Ronneberg: Devin Ronneberg is a multidisciplinary artist working between sculpture, sound, image-making, networking, engineering, and computational media, to explore the creative and destructive capacity of artificial intelligence. Emerging Media
Jake Sally: Industry-leading, Emmy-nominated producer, public speaker and champion of independent artists dedicated to building the next-generation content ecosystems for audiences worldwide. Emerging Media
Junaid Sarieddeen: A theatre actor, director, dramaturge, a founding member of Beirut-based Zoukak Theatre Company (2006), and a member of the Sundance Institute Board of Trustees since October 2019. Theater
Andrew Schneider: Andrew creates human experiences using the forms of theater, lighting, music, dance, interactive tech, and installation through the subjects of Physics, Philosophy, and Cosmology. Interdisciplinary
Wesley Taylor: Design, animation, activism, social movements, collectives, hip hop, education, space and place making, prints, fashion, writing, interdisciplinary, anti-disciplinary, all the things. Interdisciplinary
Tamiko Thiel: Pioneering the use of new media for over 35 years to explore place, space, the body and cultural memory in political and socially critical artworks. Emerging Media
Camilla Uboldi: Camilla Uboldi is an Italian-born, Mexico City-based music composer and animator who has written music for theater, film, animation, and TV series. Music
Lynette Wallworth: Lynette Wallworth is an Emmy award winning multidisciplinary filmmaker/artist from Australia who loves emerging technologies. She is currently a trustee on the Sundance Institute Board. Interdisciplinary
ill Weaver: ill Weaver is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural organizer. They co-founded Emergence Media, Complex Movements, and the Detroit Narrative Agency (DNA). Interdisciplinary
Whitney White: Whitney White is an Obie award and Lily Award winning musician, filmmaker and writer. She is a believer in interdisciplinary art forms and collaborative processes. Interdisciplinary
Missy Whiteman: Missy Whiteman (Northern Arapaho and Kickapoo) is an Emmy nominated writer, director, producer, interdisciplinary publiX artist and curator. Whiteman understands her work to be a voice for her ancestors, their stories and ancestral wisdom. Interdisciplinary
Amelia Winger-Bearskin: Amelia is an Artist and Technologist who innovates with Artificial Intelligence and immersive technologies in ways that bring positive change to our world. Emerging Media
Xin Xin: Xin Xin is an interdisciplinary artist and organizer currently making socially-engaged software that explores the possibilities of reshaping language and power relations. Interdisciplinary
Kit Yan: Kit Yan is a New York- based, Hawaii raised Yellow American transgender writer for stage and screen. Theater
Rasmus Zwicki: Rasmus Zwicki is a Danish composer of operas, concert music and music for film/media. His compositional approach is transdisciplinary, often involving words and movement. Interdisciplinary
2021 Interdisciplinary Grantees
Melis Aker: A writer, actor, and musician, Melis Aker has developed scripts through Off-Broadway/regional theatres, Revelations Entertainment, and appears on shows currently on CBS, NBC and HBO Max. Theater
Shariffa Ali: Shariffa Ali, co-founder of AliAlea Productions is an interdisciplinary creative committed to working with an open heart at the intersection of the performing arts and humanitarianism. Interdisciplinary
DeAndre James Allen-Toole: DeAndre is a Detroit-raised, Los Angeles-based composer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in film, television, games, and new media. Music
Fabian Almazan: Fabian Almazan was born in Havana Cuba and lives in New York City. He is a pianist and composer, and the founder of Biophilia Records. Music
Lily Baldwin: Baldwin is known for her compelling, intricate narrative forms. As director and performer, she combines dance and film to craft visceral stories. Interdisciplinary
Mariam Bazeed: Mariam Bazeed is an Egyptian immigrant; alliteration-leaning writer of prose, poetry, plays, and pantry lists; spoken word and performance artist; stage actor; and cook living in Brooklyn. Interdisciplinary
Carla LynDale Bishop: Carla LynDale Bishop is a filmmaker whose work documents, preserves and celebrates black communities through documentary production, immersive technologies, youth media training, and community partnerships. Emerging Media
Kathryn Bostic: Kathryn Bostic is an Emmy nominated and award winning composer. Her credits include original music for critically acclaimed films, TV, theater and concert music. Interdisciplinary
William Caballero: William D. Caballero is a multimedia filmmaker and animator that tells big stories using small figures. Interdisciplinary
William Calhoun: Will Calhoun is a Berklee Graduate, and two-time Grammy winner with Living Colour, and an interdisciplinary artist who toured and produced a plethora of international artists. Interdisciplinary
Raven Chacon: Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Interdisciplinary
Penelope Jagessar Chaffer: Penelope is the Sundance Institute Artist in Residence in partnership with Johns Hopkins University and concurrently an MIT Research Fellow in the OpenDoc Lab. Emerging Media
Layale Chaker: Layale Chaker is a violinist and composer. She composes and performs for various ensembles, cinema, theatre and dance. She is currently developing her debut opera. Interdisciplinary
Maya Chami: Practitioner in design, digital arts, and live audio-visual performances, Maya works hasI have been working in the cultural sector including to include publication management and exhibition and design. Interdisciplinary
Heather Christian: Heather Christian is an Obie and Richard Rodgers award winning composer/playwright/performer who makes original modern music-centric performance works from the bones of archaic forms. Theater
Cora Yi-Huan Chung: Cora (Yi-Huan) Chung is a classically trained composer and cellist from Taiwan. She is a fellow of the Sundance Film Music and Sound Design Lab. Music
Ryan Cohan: Composer, pianist, recording artist and Sundance Music & Sound Design Lab Fellow Ryan Cohan writes music for films, concerts and a wide range of studio productions. Music
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos: Colectivo Los Ingrávidos is a Mexican film collective founded to dismantle the commercial and corporate audiovisual grammar and its embedded ideology. Interdisciplinary
Ty Defoe: Grammy Award winning interdisciplinary artist, Ty Defoe is a citizen of the Oneida and Ojibwe Nations. Ty shape-shifts in circles of celestial rainbows, ritual, and liberation. Interdisciplinary
Heather Dewey-Hagborg: Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an artist and biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. Emerging Media
Angèlica Ekeke: Angèlica Ekeke is a journalist, filmmaker, and composer known for her new form of storytelling,- “Visual Symphonies,”, a fuse of live journalism, music, and film. Emerging Media
JJJJJerome Ellis: JJJJJerome Ellis is a blk disabled animal, stutterer, and artist working in music, literature, and performance. Interdisciplinary
Tim Fain: Tim Fain is a composer and concert violinist working in film, extended media, and as a live performer and recording artist with collaborations with Philip Glass and Darren Aronovsky. Music
Kelley Nicole Girod: Kelley Nicole Girod is an award winning playwright/producer, and founder of Obie award winning The Fire This Time Festival in NYC. Theater
Ben Goldberg: Ben Goldberg is a clarinetist and composer living in Berkeley, California. Music
Robert Casey Goodwin: Robert C. Goodwin explores intersections of performance, immersive participatory storytelling, and digital media. Sundance- supported “Obstacle Course” is a 360 film/location based experience chronicling Black Male identity development. Interdisciplinary
Fernando Gregório: Fernando Gregório is a Brazilian mixed media artist based in Brooklyn. He works at the intersection of visual and, performing arts and new digital media. Interdisciplinary
Porpentine Heartscape: Porpentine Charity Heartscape is a writer and game designer, exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, and MCA. Works include Psycho Nymph Exile, With Those We Love Alive, and Eczema Angel Orifice. Interdisciplinary
Dov Heichemer: Immersive Director working within the realm of intimacy, the grotesque, and the political. Their work has been shown at Cannes, SXSW, and IDFA amongst others. Emerging Media
Sultana Isham: Sultana Isham explores sound as biology through composition and ethnomusicology. Interdisciplinary
Modesto “Flako” Jimenez: Modesto Flako Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised theater maker, producer, and educator known for original productions and signature festivals produced with his company Oye Group. Interdisciplinary
Somi Kakoma: Somi is an award-winning Rwandan-American vocalist, composer, and playwright whose work explores transnationalism, global constructions of Blackness, modern African womanhood, and social justice. Interdisciplinary
Raja Feather Kelly: Raja Feather Kelly is an award winning choreographer, director, and artistic director of the feath3r theory. Theatre / Emerging Media
Vassiliki Khonsari: Vassiliki Khonsari is an award winning producer/director pushing on the boundaries of tech and impact forward storytelling in video games, immersive realities and films. Interdisciplinary
Eve-Lauryn LaFountain: Eve-Lauryn Little Shell LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, and educator who specializes in analog film, community cinema, and empowerment through storytelling. Interdisciplinary
Nancy Lee: Nancy Lee 李南屏 is a queer Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary media artist, curator, filmmaker, DJ, XR educator, and cultural producer. Interdisciplinary
Irene Lema: Documentary filmmaker and XR creator,. Irene is a pioneer in the creation of multiplatform and immersive content in Latin America. Interdisciplinary
Stephanie Lepp: Stephanie Lepp is an artist and producer whose work strives to hold up a mirror, — inviting us to grow from what we see. Interdisciplinary
Rosario Perazolo Masjoan: Rosario is crippled, a filmmaker and disability rights activist , and the co-director and co-writer of “4 Feet High”, a series about pride, sexuality and disability. Interdisciplinary
Jillian Mayer: Jillian Mayer is a Cuban-American artist and filmmaker based in Miami, FL.
Her work shows nationally and internationally at galleries, museums, and film festivals. Interdisciplinary
Lauren Lee McCarthy: Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living, and is the creator of p5.js. Emerging Media
LaJuné McMillian: LaJuné is a Multidisciplinary Artist, and Educator creating art that integrates performance, extended reality, and physical computing to question our current forms of communication. Emerging Media
Katya Mihailova: Katya Mihailova is a composer for film and media based in NYC, a BAFTA 2018 Nominee and a Film Composer Fellow at the Sundance Institute. Music
James Harrison Monaco: James Harrison Monaco is a writer, storyteller, composer, performer, and translator (Spanish & Italian). His work explores new ways of combining narrative and music. Theater
Gregg Mozgala: Gregg Mozgala is an award winning actor, playwright, producer and artistic director. Theater
AriDy Nox: AriDy Nox is a multi-disciplinary black femme storyteller and social activist who creates out of the vehement belief that creating a future in which marginalized peoples are free requires a radical imagination. Theater
Yea Bin Diana Oh: Diana Oh (they/them) is a Senior Dog Rescuer, an Unboxable Artist and an Open Channel to the Art that Feels Good to Their Body. Oh is driven most by pleasure, mutual care, and keeping things heart-centered. Interdisciplinary
Linda May Han Oh: Linda May Han Oh is an award-winning Australian acoustic/electric bassist and composer based in NYC. Specializing in jazz/improvised music, she has been described as “a planetary force”. Music
Judith Okonkwo: Judith Okonkwo is the founder of Imìsí 3D, an extended reality (XR) lab focused on the development of the African XR ecosystem. She is also an immersive media Creative, Director and Producer, whose credits include Lagos At Large and Daughters of Chibok. Emerging Media
Talia Paulette Oliveras: Talia Paulette Oliveras (she/they) is a Blk Latinx artist who builds interdisciplinary, experiential, and ritualistic community spaces within the medium of theatre. Theater
Haig Papazian: Haig papazian (Beirut,1986) is a multidisciplinary artist and composer currently based in New York, where he’s developing works exploring the multifaceted meanings of home. Interdisciplinary
Aaron Parks: Aaron Parks is a pianist, composer, songwright, researcher, and educator interested in the seams where different “genres” intersect. Music
Ronee Penoi: Ronee Penoi is a Laguna Pueblo/Cherokee composer (#Resist and The Carlisle Project, with Annalisa Dias), and newly appointed Director of Artistic Programming at ArtsEmerson. Interdisciplinary
Samora Pinderhughes: Samora Pinderhughes is a composer, filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist known for his radical honesty and his use of art to examine sociopolitical issues and fight for change. Interdisciplinary
Maria Belen Poncio: Argentinian filmmaker, director and co-writer of award-winning cross-platform series 4 Feet High, currently working on new projects also exploring diverse narratives and formats. Interdisciplinary
Tiare Ribeaux: Tiare Ribeaux is a Kānaka Maoli artist and filmmaker. Her work employs storytelling to reveal social and ecological imbalances while imagining more regenerative futures. Interdisciplinary
Emily Rice: Emily Rice is a British born composer for film and TV. Music
Michelle J. Rodriguez: Michelle J. Rodriguez (she/her) is a music/theater artist who explores kids-of-immigrants stories, divine femininity, intuition, healing and spaces in-between. Music
Machel Ross: Machel Ross is Dominican American creative collaborator and director, invested in new plays and aesthetic world building. Theater
Kaneza Schaal: Kaneza Schaal is a New York City based artist working in theater, opera, and film. Interdisciplinary
Indigo Sparks: Indigo Sparks is a performance artist and arts administrator currently working as an ACM on the Broadway show “Girl From The North Country.” Interdisciplinary
Amanda Strong: Amanda Strong is a Michif Indigenous filmmaker, media artist and stop-motion director based out of the unceded Coast Salish territory in Vancouver, British Columbia. Interdisciplinary
Ruth Tang: Ruth Tang writes performance texts & poetry & makes weird internet experiments out of Brooklyn, NY. Theater
Marleine van der Werf: Marleine van der Werf (1985, NetherlandsNL) creates films & XR-installations in which she explores how someone else’s experience can become a tool against polarisation. Interdisciplinary
Whitney White: Whitney White is an Obie award and Lily Award winning musician, filmmaker and writer. She is a believer in interdisciplinary art forms and collaborative processes. Interdisciplinary
Lauren Whitehead: Lauren Whitehead is a writer, performer and professor of drama at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Theater
Amelia Winger-Bearskin: Amelia is an Artist and Technologist who innovates with Artificial Intelligence and immersive technologies in ways that bring positive change to our world. Emerging Media
Alisha B Wormsley: Alisha B. Wormsley (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Wormsley views her art as a rebellion. In the same way being a Black womxn in America is an act of rebellion. Interdisciplinary
Kit Yan: Kit Yan is a New YorkNY based, Hawaii raised, Yellow American transgender writer for stage and screen. Theater
Nathan Young: Nathan Young is an interdisciplinary artist working in an expanded practice that incorporates sound, video, documentary, animation, installation, socially engaged art and experimental music. Interdisciplinary
Sundance Institute
As a champion and curator of independent stories for the stage and screen, Sundance Institute provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, film composing, and digital media to create and thrive.
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. Sundance Collab, a digital community platform, brings artists together to learn from each other and Sundance Advisors and connect in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported such projects as Clemency, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Zola, On The Record, Boys State, The Farewell, Honeyland, One Child Nation, The Souvenir, The Infiltrators, Sorry to Bother You, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Hereditary, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, The Big Sick, Mudbound, Fruitvale Station, City So Real, Top of the Lake, Between the World & Me, Wild Goose Dreams and Fun Home. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
