Distributed Presence is a screening, performance, and panel event inviting artists, curators, and critics to explore the politics of media art within the context of representation of artists of color, and in consideration of all their intersecting identities.

Screenings and performances are curated by video and performing artist Samantha CC, organizer of ongoing series The Great BE, and will feature Jerome Austin Bwire, Alima Jennings, Miko Revereza, Ololade Adeniyi, and Alison Nguyen. In addition to a discussion of the work presented during the event, panelists will address a range of topics, including the clash between an "obligation" to political content versus abstraction or other various subject matter, and how to ensure long term inclusivity in the art world rather than a temporary wave of tokenism.

About the Artists:
Alison Nguyen
Alison Nguyen is a New York-based artist working in film, video, photography, and installation. She questions the circulation of images and the cultural surrounding. Often integrating appropriated footage from mass media, Nguyen investigates systems of control found within the visual codes of this material.

Ololade Adeniyi
Ololade Adeniyi is a Nigerian-Australian artist captivated by cross cultural habitation. To date, her artworks have been grounded in the research of rural landscapes and mark making symbols as metaphors for memory, history, and the slow passage of time.

Miko Revereza
Miko Revereza is a narrative and experimental filmmaker, teacher, “Undocumented Immigrant” and fine artist.

Jerome AB
Jerome AB is a Kenyan-born architectural designer, movement artist and choreographer based in Brooklyn. His current body of work is focused on an ongoing video performance series featuring an expressionless humanoid character of unintelligible African origins portrayed by Jerome, dubbed Masculine Ken. In these works, Masculine Ken observes and confronts various psychological defense mechanisms and falsified intrapersonal realities defined by human exchanges through movement and visual audio manipulation.

Alima Lee
Alima Lee is a Los Angeles based filmmaker & visual artist creating work based in race & personal identity. She creates video art using VHS and analog film mediums.

About Distributed Presences Curator:
Samantha CC is a performance artist, curator, filmmaker, videographer and vocalist living and working in New York City. Her work often uses mythological tropes to connect lived experience in a black woman's body to the divine. In particular, her performance practice often manifests as an alchemical exercise, moving from pain to peace. Since 2016 since has been curating a performance and video series, along with a zine called The Great BE, or Great Black Expanse. The goal of the project is to center work by artists from the African Diaspora whose work defies the confines that the art world likes to place around black artists. Samantha has performed at spaces such as Secret Project Robot, The Glove, Outpost Artist Resources, Pioneer Works, The Knockdown Center, Wild Project, and Otion Front Studios to name a few. She is currently a 2017-2018 ProjectArt artist in Residence.

Distributed Presence is a term that comes from advertising and media theory referring to a brand's approach to disseminating their content over various media formats. Here we are using it to address the dissemination of ideas, aesthetics, and approaches to identity.