Join us for a free public talk by our two Workspace residents! Artist resident Elizabeth Tannie Lewin (Brooklyn, NY) and researcher resident Dana Tyrrell (Buffalo, NY) will be giving presentations on their ongoing projects at the tail-end of their two week residency with Squeaky Wheel.

Elizabeth Tannie Lewin is a digital media artist interested in: technology, landscape, identity, disappearance, history, and utopia. Lewin uses various technologies to achieve special effects such as: 3D modeling landscapes, hacking a computer mouse to scan images, and webcameras programmed to initiate, or pause, video playback. Lewin received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2009) and her MFA from Hunter College (2016).
Project Proposal
My current work is focused on the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), its nuclear history (the RMI, was once known as the Pacific Proving Grounds, and the location of 67 United States nuclear tests). The Castle Bravo nuclear test was conducted on Bikini, Atoll on March 1, 1954 and was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States. To this day, Bikini remains uninhabitable due to radiation. Hundreds of Bikinians remain displaced. Additionally, the RMI is faces increasing fragility due to climate change (the RMI is on average, 2 meters above sea level, scientists predict that the sea levels will rise between 0.8-2 meters by the end of the century).
My time at Workspace will be devoted to producing creating a 3D virtual “game” landscape of the RMI, recording video audio, and editing scanned military photos which that will be incorporated into a developing video (working title: Nuclear Set).

Dana Tyrrell is an artist, curator and writer living and working in Buffalo, New York. He holds an MFA in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo (2015), a BA in Drawing & Painting and a BA in Art History, both from the State University of New York at Fredonia (2012). His work has been shown widely throughout Western New York, including solo exhibits with the Castellani Art Museum (2017) and Dreamland Art Gallery (2015). His curatorial practice includes exhibits at Anna Kaplan Contemporary (formerly BT&C Gallery), the Benjaman Gallery, Dreamland Art Gallery, and Sugar City Art Gallery. Photograph courtesy of Julian Montague.
Project Proposal
My intent for this Workspace Residency would be to research, and eventually curate a show focused upon emergent technologies. My interest lies at the intersection of technology and performance art -vis-a-vis academics like José Esteban Muñoz and Kara Keeling, as well as performance artists such as Zach Blas, Micha Cárdenas and Hito Steyerl – wherein the point of the juncture between emergent technologies and performance art becomes the human body, in all of its mutability, foibles and inconsistencies. I am interested in the interplay between the technological self and the realized, physical self and how those two things, while not always mutually exclusive, bend and blur under the ever-present and growing weight of technology.
The understanding of these artists and their further articulation within the context of a yet-to be-realized exhibit would be thus predicated upon Keeling’s own description of what is known as a “Queer OS” (Cinema Journal, 2014); a speculative project which sees the formulation of queer function as an operating system, which straddles both technical and cultural understandings. At its core, a Queer OS offers up a space in which LGBTQ+, Women, Black and Latinx people can meet – both online and off – connect to one another, and reaffirm alternative modes of technological disbursement and exploration as we delve further into the twenty-first century.

About the program

Workspace Residency is a unique artist residency that 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. Initiated in 2016 by Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center in Buffalo, New York, in collaboration with local partners Buffalo Game Space, Buffalo Lab, 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.

We encourage people of color, women, queer, trans and gender non-conforming people to apply. The residency welcomes applications from both emerging and established artists and researchers. A list of previous residents can be found here.