Artist Conversation: Sondra Perry and Morehshin Allahyari, Manual Override

Morehshin Allahyari is a media artist and activist who uses computer modeling, 3D scanning, and digital fabrication techniques to explore the intersection of art and activism. Inspired by concepts of collective archiving and cultural contradiction, Allahyari’s 3D-printed sculptures and videos challenge social and gender norms. She wants her work to respond to, resist, and criticize the current political and cultural situation that is experienced on a daily basis. Recent accolades include a commission by the Whitney Museum of American Art (2018), residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn (2018), a research residency at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (2016 – 17), and a sculpture award from the Institute of Digital Art (2016). Foreign Policy magazine named her a Leading Global Thinker of 2016. Her work has been part of numerous exhibitions, festivals, and workshops at venues throughout the world, including the New Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, Venice Biennale di Archittectura, and Museum für Angewandte Kunst among many others.

Nora N. Khan is a writer. She writes criticism on emerging issues within digital visual culture, experimental art and music practices, and the philosophy of emerging technology. She is a professor at RISD, Digital and Media, where she teaches graduate courses in critical theory and artistic research, critical writing, and the history of digital media. She is a longtime editor at Rhizome, and is currently editor of Prototype, Google’s Artist and Machine Intelligence Group’s book forthcoming in 2019.

Khan’s writing practice extends to a range of collaborations, which includes shows, performances, exhibition essays, scripts, and sometimes, librettos. Last year, she collaborated with Sondra Perry, Caitlin Cherry, and American Artist to create A Wild Ass Beyond: ApocalypseRN at Performance Space, New York. She has contributed essays and fiction to exhibitions held at Serpentine Galleries, Chisenhale Gallery, and the Venice Biennale, as well as to books published by Koenig Press, Sternberg Press, and Mousse.

Her writing has been supported by many awards over the last decade, including, most recently, a Critical Writing Grant given through the Visual Arts Foundation and the Crossed Purposes Foundation (2018), an Eyebeam Research Residency (2017), and a Thoma Foundation 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art for an emerging arts writer. She publishes criticism in forums like 4Columns, Art in America, Flash Art, Mousse, California Sunday, Spike Art, The Village Voice, and Rhizome. Last year, she wrote a small book with Steven Warwick, Fear Indexing the X-Files, published by Primary Information.

Sondra Perry makes videos and performances that foreground the tools of digital production as a way to critically reflect on new technologies of representation and to remobilize their potential.