Conflux 2008 Curatorial Team:

Jeffrey Barke—Jeffrey Barke is the senior developer and information architect at theMechanism - New York where he oversees all aspects of application development. He is firmly committed to standards-based development and the open source ethos.

Jonah Brucker-Cohen—Jonah Brucker-Cohen is a researcher, artist, and Ph.D. candidate as an HEA MMRP (Multimedia Research Programme) fellow in the Disruptive Design Team of the Networking and Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG), Trinity College Dublin. He is an adjunct assistant professor of communications at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). He worked as an R&D OpenLab Fellow at Eyebeam in NYC from 2006/7. From 2001-4 he was a Research Fellow in the Human Connectedness Group at Media Lab Europe. His writing has appeared in numerous international publications including WIRED Magazine, Make Magazine, Rhizome.org, and Gizmodo, and his work has been shown at events such as Institute of Contemporary Art in London (04), Whitney Museum of American Art’s ArtPort (03), Ars Electronica (02,04), ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art (04-5),Museum of Modern Art (MOMA - NYC)(2008), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) (2008).

Odin Cappello—Odin Cappello is an industrial designer and artist who’s work deals with seeing and perception. As an urban interloper, Odin often uses low tech analog means to stimulate a viewers shift into a new way of looking at the surroundings. As a maker of products, Odin designs eyeglasses so people can see better.

Amanda McDonald Crowley–Amanda McDonald Crowley is Executive Director of Eyebeam in New York http://www.eyebeam.org. She is a cultural worker, curator and writer who specialises in creating new media and contemporary art events and programmes that encourage cross-disciplinary practice, collaboration and exchange. Amanda was executive producer for ISEA2004, the International Symposium for Electronic Arts 2004, held in Tallinn and Helsinki and on a cruiser ferry in the Baltic sea. She was Associate Director, Adelaide Festival 2002 and in this position was also Chair of the working group that curated the exhibition and symposium ‘conVerge: where art and science meet’. From 1995 to 2000 she was Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) where she made significant links with science and industry by developing a range of residencies for artists in settings such as science organisations, contemporary art spaces and virtual residencies online. She has done residencies in Berlin, Germany (1994/5) and at Sarai in Delhi, India (2002/3), regularly speaks at international conferences and festivals, occasionally writes for journals such as Artlink, RealTime and the Sarai Reader, and lurks on a lot of media, technology and culture related lists.

Winnie Fung/Not an Alternative—Winnie Fung is a founding member of Not An Alternative whose mission aims to integrate art, activism and theory in order to affect popular understandings of events, symbols and history. Winnie is a practicing artist and arts administrator based in New York. In the past 10 years she directed a number of artist-run centers in Canada, and completed a year long curatorial residency funded by the Canada Council. She also co-founded Saskatoon Warehouse ArtSpace, an umbrella service organization and Khyber Digital Media Center, both in Canada.

Ellis Gallagher—Ellis Gallagher is a native New Yorker. As a former graffiti writer, his work can be found in New York City and beyond, in Autograf: New York City’s Graffiti Writers by Peter Sutherland (Powerhouse Books 2004), as well as in numerous newspapers, magazines, on television and in films. Currently a Contemporary/Street Artist known as (C)ELLIS G., Gallagher’s work has appeared on the cover of Time Out New York, in the New York Daily News, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, The Brooklyn Paper, Mass Appeal Magazine, Artnet Magazine, Overspray Magazine, Der Spiegel Germany, The Area Revue France, H Magazine Spain, as well as on NY 1, RAI TV Italy, Chinese News Network, NYCTV, The Hallmark Channel, Current T.V., WPIX 11 (NYC), NBC 4 (NYC), WNET 13 PBS(NYC) and the streets of New York City and beyond. Gallagher will publish his first book “Adhesives,” the ultimate compendium of graffiti, graphic design and street art stickers with Miss Rosen Editions for Powerhouse Books. Check out some of his work at www.myspace.com/ellis_gee.

Brian House—Brian House is an artist, programmer and conceptual bricoleur investigating how people learn, experience narratives, and relate to everyday spaces. His work has been presented by MoMA, The New Museum for Contemporary Art / Rhizome.org, The Beall Center, Stockholms Kulturhust, Art Interactive, Glowlab, STEIM, and Dorkbot, and has been featured in the New York Times, Dagens Nyheter, and Wired Magazine. He holds an MS in Innovative Design from Chalmers University in Göteborg, Sweden, and studied computer science and religion as an undergraduate at Columbia University. He comes from Denver and lives in Brooklyn.

Calvin Johnson—Calvin Johnson is a well-rounded urbanist with a wide range of experience from municipal budgeting and economic development to community planning and psychogeography. Since 2001, he has collaborated with Kurt Braunohler and Scott Knowles, occasionally under the name Psychogeography Project, on various exploratory and interactive projects. These have included the “Life Map of Objects” at Trading Places (New York, 2002), the “Urban Disorientation Game” at Conflux (New York, 2007) and the Enzimi festival (Rome, 2007), and the “24 Hour Roadtrip” at Conflux (New York, 2004, 2006) and with Next American City (Philadelphia, 2007, New Orleans, 2008).

Tianna Kennedy—Tianna Kennedy is free103point9’s Brooklyn Program Coordinator. Kennedy holds a Masters degree from NYU’s Performance Studies Program, and is actively involved with public and live-art; beginning in 1997 as a staff member of liveartmagazine in Nottingham, England. Tianna has curated countless events with fellow Brooklyn-based art organizations, activists, and artists, and is, herself, an active artist performing and showing locally and internationally. She is also deeply involved in New York’s experimental music scene as a cellist, recording and performing frequently. Kennedy co-founded the August Sound Coalition in 2004 and the Empty Vessel Project in 2005. Kennedy joined free103point9 as a staff member in 2003.

David Mandl
Conflux Co-Founder Dave Mandl is a writer, radio producer (WFMU), music editor at the Brooklyn Rail, and amateur linguist, among other things.  During the day he leads a shadowy existence as a tech geek at a Wall Street investment bank. 

Amy Owen–Amy Owen is Director of Exhibitions at Artists Space, a non-profit alternative gallery space in New York City. She was previously Exhibitions Associate and Publications Coordinator at Independent Curators International, where she organized such exhibitions as Mark Lombardi: Global Networks and High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-75. Owen recently curated Facts on the Ground, an exhibition exploring the intersection of architecture and research in contemporary art, and is currently sitting on the curatorial panel for the 2008 Conflux Festival. Forthcoming curatorial projects include Other Certainties at the New York Center for Art and Media Studies. Owen received her MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College.

Sal Randolph–Sal Randolph lives in New York and produces independent art projects involving internet-mediated gift economies, social architectures and one-on-one interactions. She is the founder of Opsound, an open sound exchange of copyleft music (opsound.org). Other projects include The Free Biennial (freebiennial.org) and Free Manifesta (freemanifesta.org) which brought together several hundred artists in open shows of free art in the public spaces of New York and Frankfurt am Main, Germany, as well as Free Words (freewords.org) in which 3000 copies of a free book have been infiltrated into bookstores and libraries worldwide by a network of volunteers. Recently, she has created an open publishing house to which anyone could contribute at Röda Sten Contemporary Art Space in Göteborg, Sweden and given away money in one on one interactions at the LIVE Biennale in Vancouver, Canada . Website: http://salrandolph.com

Michael Sarff—Michael Sarff (aka Mark River) is one half of the artist collaboration MTAA as well as the curator and co-founder of the monthly exibition space Over The Opening (OTO). Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden formed the artist collaboration MTAA in 1996. MTAA has presented artworks and performances at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Postmasters Gallery and Artists Space, all in New York city; The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; The Beall Center for Art and Technology in Irvine, CA and at The Getty Center in Los Angeles. International exhibitions include the Seoul Net & Film Festival in Korea and Videozone2 - The 2nd International Video Art Biennial in Israel. The collaboration has earned grants and awards from the Creative Capital Foundation, Rhizome.org, Eyebeam and New Radio & Performing Arts, Inc.

Radhika Subramaniam—Radhika Subramaniam is an independent curator, editor and writer based in New York. Her curatorial practice is cross-disciplinary and dialogic, committed to public pedagogy, critical urbanism and questions of political and social justice. Her research interests lie in South Asian urban modernity and cultures of catastrophe. She was the founding and Executive Editor of an interdisciplinary art journal, Connect: art.politics.theory.practice published by Arts International. While the Director of Cultural Programs at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, she commissioned several public art projects in downtown Manhattan and oversaw a program of art and ideas. She also curated a major two-year international initiative, Cities, Art and Recovery (www.lmcc.net/recovery) focused on the work of art and culture in the aftermath of catastrophe. She has a PhD. in Performance Studies and a Masters in Anthropology.

David Felix Sutcliffe—Mr. Sutcliffe is an emerging barnacle and still firmly committed to standards. Loosely reminiscent of a moose munching clover, his practice is sporadic and suspicious of everything. He considers Fitz Greene Halleck a close personal friend and Mr. Potter a nemesis not to be trifled with. In the middle of winter ‘99 he changed the mind of a man from Manitoba. It was dark when he got back to the cabin.

Chen Tamir–Cḥen Tamir is a curator and art writer dividing her time between Toronto, Tel-Aviv, and New York. She holds an M.A. in Curatorial Studies from Bard College, a B.F.A. in Visual Art and a B.A. in Anthropology from York University. She is a curator at Flux Factory, an artist-run center in Queens. One project she is currently working on with Flux Factory is a collection of site-specific artworks to be held in conjunction with openhousenewyork in October.

Jessica Thompson—Jessica Thompson is a new media artist whose practice encompasses sound, performance and mobile technologies. Her projects enable audience members to create user-defined spaces and situations within urban environments. Her projects have been shown in exhibitions and festivals such as New Territories, (ARCO 2005, Madrid) MACO, (Mexico City) dp003, (Dundee, Scotland) ISEA 2006, (San Jose, CA) the 2006 Conflux Festival, (New York), the Kunsthallen Brænderigården (Denmark) and InterAccess Artist Run Centre. (Toronto) Her project, SOUNDBIKE, was curated into Art Projects at Art Basel Miami Beach by Canadian curator, Natalie Kovacs, in 2005 and in 2007 she was one of five international artists invited to participate in Reinventing the Wheel, a residency held at *.artlabs in Sibiu, Romania. Her work is represented by p|m Gallery in Toronto, Canada.