Please join us February 28th at 2PM for a dynamic debate on the future of artificial intelligence. From embracing its potential to advocating for its abolition, the moderated discussion will include diverse perspectives and thought-provoking insights from speakers, Anuradha Vikram, Steven Vargas, and Holly Willis . The debate will be moderated by curator Jesse Damiani

Jesse Damiani is a curator, writer, and advisor in new media art. At Honor Fraser Gallery, he curated SMALL V01CE, Synthetic Wilderness, and helped develop the Art and Technology Speaker Series. He is Senior Curator at Nxt Museum, Arts and Culture Advisor for Protocol Labs, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in USC’s Media Arts + Practice program. Recent curated exhibitions include Lilypads: Mediating Exponential Systems at Nxt Museum; PROOF OF ART at Francisco Carolinum Linz, the first museum retrospective on the history of NFTs; and Simulation Sketchbook: Works in Process at Feral File/Vellum LA. He is the host of Adobe’s Taking Shape, a hub for 3D art and design; an Affiliate of the metaLAB at Harvard and Institute for the Future; and his writing appears in Architectural Design, Flash Art, NBC News, The Verge, and WIRED. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, where he runs the Reality Studies newsletter and the Urgent Futures podcast.

Anuradha Vikram is a writer, curator, and educator based in Los Angeles. As a curator and critic of contemporary art, she works with process-based, public, and participatory art forms, with a focus on transcultural approaches to technology, social engagement, and the body. Vikram is co-curator of the upcoming Getty Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x LA exhibition in 2024, Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption with Victoria Vesna and UCLA Art Sci Center, she is also curating Jaishri Abichandani‘s 2022 retrospective Flower-Headed Children at the Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles and an upcoming performance art festival with LA Freewaves in 2021.

Steven Vargas is a journalist, actor and dancer who focuses his work on theatre, dance and social change. He graduated from USC in 2020 with a B.A. double major in theatre and journalism with a minor in dance and in 2022 with an M.A. in specialized journalism (the arts). He is currently an arts reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He's previously written for Entertainment Weekly, E! News, USA Today, BuzzFeed News and more. In theatre, he has worked with organizations like USC Arts in Action, Sojourn Theatre Company of Chicago, Black Lives Matter LA, and Reform LA Jails Coalition. He studied dance with A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, Movement Migration and Imprints Dance Company (later performing as a guest artist of the company). Outside of USC, he studied Shakespeare at The Globe with a Fulbright Summer Institute scholarship and was part of the second cohort of The Kennedy Center’s BIPOC Critics Lab led by Jose Solís. Steven utilizes his skills and experiences on and off stage to communicate poignant stories through theatre and dance.

Holly Willis is the Chair of the Media Arts + Practice Division in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she teaches classes on digital media, post-cinema and feminist film. She also co-directs the AI for Media & Storytelling (AIMS) initiative of the USC Center for Generative AI and Society. She is the author of Fast Forward: The Future(s) of the Cinematic Arts and New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image, as well of Björk Digital, and the editor of both The New Ecology of Things, a collection of essays about ubiquitous computing, and David O. Russell: Interviews. She is also the co-founder of Filmmaker Magazine dedicated to independent film; she served as editor of RES Magazine and co-curator of RESFEST, a festival of experimental media, for several years; and she writes frequently for diverse publications about experimental film, video and new media, while also exploring experimental nonfiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in publications such as Film Comment, Afterimage, Los Angeles Review of Books, Variety, River Teeth and carte blanche.

This event is hosted in conjunction with SMALL V01CE, curated by Jesse Damiani

On view at Honor Fraser through March 23, 2024

Exhibiting artists: Memo Akten, Minne Atairu, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Lins Derry, Linda Dounia Rebeiz, Behnaz Farahi, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Sara Ludy, Parag K. Mital, New Mystics*, Alexander Reben, Reeps100 & Trung Bao, Landon Ross, Rachel Rossin, Caroline Sinders, and Kira Xonorika.

*New Mystics, organized by Alice Bucknell, features the work of Rebecca Allen, Zach Blas, Ian Cheng, CROSSLUCID, Patricia Domínguez, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Sadia Pineda Hameed & Beau W Beakhouse, Joey Holder, Evan Ifekoya, Bones Tan Jones, Lawrence Lek, Haroon Mirza, Tabita Rezaire, Tai Shani, Himali Singh Soin, Jenna Sutela, Saya Woolfalk, and Zadie Xa.