Wednesday, August 8, 2018
6:30pm door | 7pm Start
Free and open to the public

Join us for an evening with our Summer 2018 Workspace residents, Avye Alexandres (Buffalo, NY), Devin Hentz (Dakar, Senegal), and Emily Martinez (Glendale, CA), at the first public event as part of their residency. The artists and researchers will be delivering ~20 minute presentations on their work and projects. This free event is an excellent opportunity to get to know the residents and their projects as they begin their three-week time at Squeaky Wheel!

Research resident Devin Hentz will be investigating the linguistic implications of the vocabulary that develops around second-hand clothing in African countries. She will also design and construct new textiles that play or refer to these local names and their literal meanings / translations through the use of 3D models in Blender. Artist Resident Emily Martinez will be working on a series of videos for an escape room that builds towards a live-action multimedia escape room game Eternal Boy Playground. The game explores cultural tropes and trends that spring up around cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as they relate to the utopian ideals of a group of self-proclaimed “Puertopians” who are flocking to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Finally, Silo City Resident Avye Alexandres will be utilizing Buffalo’s most well-known public landmark, Silo City, to present an absurdist performance sparked by the manipulative tactics and rhetoric used in housing market investment education workshops.

Bios of the residents
Avye Alexandres was born in Athens, Greece, and moved to the United States at the age of six. Her multidisciplinary art practice, which investigates the psychosocial ramifications of structures and space, stems from her background in photography and theatre. Evolving from site-based performances her work now encompasses immersive sculpture, locative media, experimental digital narratives, conceptual works, photography and video, as well as participatory experiences and installations. In 2015, she received her MFA in Art and Emerging Practices from the University at Buffalo, and has exhibited at venues such as the Burchfield Penney Art Center, The Soap Factory, IFP-MN Center for Media Arts, and the Weismann Art Museum.

Devin Hentz is a researcher and writer based in Dakar, Senegal. She recently participated in the second session of the RAW Academie, directed by Chimurenga, at RAW Material Company before working there as a librarian and researcher. She is the founder of the B/Look Club which meets once per month to activate the archive of RAW Base (RAW’s Library). Her writings have been published in LESS Magazine and the upcoming issue of Something We Africans Got. Her areas of interests include, Afro/African futures, development narratives in Africa, dress practices, and radical pedagogy.

Emily Martinez is a new media artist, front-end developer, digital strategist, educator, and serial collaborator. She believes in the tactical misuse of technology, and makes artworks that take on the sharing economy, digital labor struggles, algorithmic bias, surveillance capitalism, crypto colonialism, tech bros, and tech culture at large. Emily’s art and research has been published in Leonardo Journal (MIT Press), Entreprecariat (Institute of Network Cultures), Temporary Art Review, and Filmmaker Magazine. She has exhibited at The Wrong Biennale, Transmediale, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, MoMA PS1, V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, WRO Media Art Biennale, and The Luminary.

About the program
Workspace Residency is a unique artist residency which supports local, regional and national media artists and researchers who are working on projects in film, video, audio, interactive media and emerging technologies in any stage of production. Founded in 2016 by Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center in Buffalo, New York, in collaboration with local partners Buffalo Game Space, The Foundry, and Silo City, the residency provides support through equipment, facilities, and technical support for artists experimenting across a range of old and new technologies, such as video, sound, digital platforms, interactivity, virtual reality, and 3D printing. Community outreach and public engagement components include presentation and education activities.