Monday, April 19, 6 pm ET
Free; click here to see how to attend

University at Buffalo’s Department of Media Study’s PLASMA (Performances, Lectures, and Screenings in Media Art) brings to Buffalo celebrated theorists and artists who are exhibiting in some of the world’s most renowned museums and galleries, and writing on the cutting edge of new media theory and expression. Squeaky Wheel is excited to co-present an artist talk with filmmaker Sindhu Thirumalaisamy; this co-presentation follows our screening with Thirumalaisamy in Spring 2020 of her film The Lake and the Lake.

Each PLASMA event brings internationally celebrated artists to discuss varied arts practices, models, modes, examples, and experiences in media arts.

The series serves as a kind of hub as to how courses in new media, digital poetics, game studies, locative media, robotics, installation, media theory and performance arts can be experienced.

In this series you can see and interact with artists that you would encounter in New York, Europe and Latin America, offering of a rich experience for the University at Buffalo, the city and Western New York.

The series provides, not expressive answers, but raises intriguing questions, exploring new avenues in the digital age, who we are, how we interact and where we are going.

Sindhu Thirumalaisamy‘s work across moving images, sound, and text, is rooted in a critical listening practice. It engages common places such as hospitals, parks, streets, temples, mosques, and lakes, as sites of collective resistance and care, paying close attention to possibilities for speech and action with/in them.

Sindhu holds a diploma in digital video production from Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology, Bangalore, and an MFA in visual art from the University of California, San Diego. She has participated in the Whitney Independent Study program, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, and the SOMA Summer program. She is a 2020-21 Core artist-fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Sindhu’s most recent film, The Lake and The Lake, won the Best Documentary Award at the 58th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Recent exhibitions include programs at Camden International Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, DokuFest, Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM), Kinodot Experimental Film Festival, EFA Project Space, Union Docs, Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Center, Artists’ Television Access, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Current:LA Triennial, The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and San Diego Museum of Art.

PLASMA 2021 is sponsored by the University at Buffalo’s Department of Media Study and funding is provided by the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The series is curated by Dr. Paige Sarlin, Assistant Professor of Media Study, in collaboration with Liz Park – UB Art Galleries and Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center.