PEOPLE

FIAMMA MONTEZEMOLO

Associate Professor / UC Davis

Fiamma Montezemolo is both an artist (MFA, San Francisco Art Institute) and a Cultural Anthropologist (Ph.D, University Orientale of Naples). She is an established scholar in border studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema & Digital Media at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of La Mia Storia Non La Tua: La Dinamica Della Costruzione Dell’identita’ Chicana Tra Etero- e Auto-rappresentazioni (Guerini, 2004) and Senza volto: L’etnicità e il genere nel Movimento Zapatista (Liguori, 1999). She is also a co-author of Here is Tijuana (Blackdog Publishing, 2006) and co-editor of Tijuana Dreaming: Life & Art at the Global border (Duke UP, 2012). As an artist she situates her work as a critical extension of the ethnographic turn in contemporary art. She works with various media, including installation, video, performance, digital photography, archives, cartography and ethnography. Her artwork has been widely exhibited both nationally and internationally.
She is represented by the Magazzino Dell’Arte Moderna gallery in Rome.

www.fiammamontezemolo.com

TOBIAS REES

Associate Professor / McGill University

I think of my work as a study of the human/after ‘the human.’

the human –– the object of the human sciences is a figure not known before the late eighteenth century.

prior to 1800, no one was a member of ‘humanity,’ a collective that only gradually appeared plausible (and still is fragile).

over the long nineteenth century the human sciences emerged and invented an analytical vocabulary meant to stabilize both ‘the human’ and ‘humanity.’

the body, experience, subjectivity, culture, the social, the individual, nature.

for over two hundred centuries the human sciences –– chief among them anthropology –– were busy establishing these concepts as human universals.

I am tired of ‘the human.’

and curious about events that exceed it –– and thereby not only open up new, yet unknown venues for being human and living a life, but also release humans (and the world) from the already thought and known.

precisely insofar as I am curious about that which exceeds the human, my work is not constrained by the human.

I am as curious about the brain, about bacteria and snails, about the weather, and the immune system of squids.

https://www.mcgill.ca/ssom/staff/rees

KRISS RAVETTO-BIAGIOLI

Professor / UCLA TFT

Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli (UCLA, Professor) is a film and media scholar whose work focuses on representations and theorizations of violence in film, media, and social media.

She is the author of The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), Mythopoetic Cinema: On the Ruins of European Identity (Columbia University Press, 2017), Digital Uncanny (Oxford University Press, 2019) and is currently working on a co-authored book project with Martine Beugnet entitled The Trouble with Ghosts.

Ravetto-Biagioli has published articles on film, performance, installation art, computational media, the hacker group Anonymous, surveillance and dance in Theory, Culture & Society, Body & Society, Screen, Film-Philosophy, Camera Obscura, Representations, [In]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image, Film Quarterly, LEA, PAJ, Screen, International Social Science Journal, Third Text, ARTMargins and numerous collected volumes. She is the co-editor with Professor Martine Beugnet of the Edinburgh University Press series in Film and Intermediality.

Ravetto-Biagioli is the recipient of the Mellon-Sawyer on Surveillance and Democracy (2015-2016), and the Mellon Research Initiative Grant in the Humanities for Digital Culture (2012-16).

Before coming to UCLA TFT, she taught at UC Davis, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh.

CRISTIANA GIORDANO

Associate Professor / UC Davis

Cristiana Giordano is Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Davis. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Pavia, Italy. She works on foreign migration, mental health, the body, and cultural translation in contemporary Italy. Her research addresses the politics of migration in Europe through the lens of ethno-psychiatry and its radical critique of psychiatric, legal, and moral categories of inclusion/exclusion of foreign others; and through the lens of research on the human microbiome and migrant health in Europe. Her broader research interests also engage the relation between psychic life, therapy, clinical sites, and images. She is the author of Migrants in Translation. Caring and the Logics of Difference in Contemporary Italy (University of California Press, 2014).

Giordano’s other line of inquiry involves finding new ways of rendering ethnographic material into written texts and/or artistic forms. She explores new ways in which anthropology can contribute to and learn from perfomative endeavors such as theater plays and installations. To this end, she has been training in the devising theater technique of Moment Work (invented by New York based Tectonic Theater Project) which draws from nontheatrical source material (interview transcripts, legal and medical reports, news articles, archival documents, visual material, etc.) to devise theater pieces on current events. She has been collaborating with playwright and director Greg Pierotti (Tectonic Theater Project) on two theatrical projects using this devising technique: one on police violence in the US, and one on movement, borders, and the current “refugee crisis” in Europe.

http://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/people/cgiordan

ALAN KLIMA

Professor / UC Davis

My research has concerned pro-democracy activism in Thailand, military massacre, and the representation of death in Buddhism, public media and political ritual.

Currently my research concerns the formation of “global moralities” and their political effects as they are furthered in and through local and national communities. In particular, I am concerned with the local application of global moralities of finance, including ideas and practices of debt, reason, and haunting in Thailand since the currency crash of 1997. My film Ghosts and Numbers and current ethnographic writing project, entitled The Nextworld, concern local money-lending, gambling, and other irregular financial instruments among small-time local organizations in Thailand, including spirit-mediumship and other religious phenomena connected with money. I am currently also exploring what I call "The Meditation Machine," a social bio-feedback mechanism in which meditation practice is being reformulated in cultures of Biomedicine and Education.

http://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/people/klima

MOHAMED TAHER SRAÏRI

Hassan II Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary of Rabat / Professor

EMANUELE COCCIA

Associate Professor / École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

Emanuele Coccia is an Associate Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He received his PhD in Florence and was formerly an Assistant Professor of History of Philosophy in Freiburg, Germany. He worked on the history of European normativity and on aesthetics. His current research topics focus on the ontological status of images and their normative power, especially in fashion and advertising. Among his publications: La trasparenza delle immagini. Averroè e l’averroismo (Milan 2005, Spanish translation 2008), La vie sensible (Paris 2010, translated in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian; English translation in press) and Le bien dans les choses (Paris 2013 translated in Italian and Spanish; English and German translation in press). With Giorgio Agamben as a co-editor, he published an anthology on angels in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic contexts: Angeli. Ebraismo Cristianesimo Islam (Milan 2009).

http://cehta.ehess.fr/index.php?682

ERIN GRAFF ZIVIN

FACULTY / USC

Erin Graff Zivin (Ph.D., New York University, 2004; M.A., UC Berkeley, 1998) is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature, and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.  Her research and teaching interests focus on constructions of Jewishness and marranismo in the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic, aesthetic representations of torture and interrogation, the relationship between ethics, politics, and aesthetics (particularly in the context of Latin American literary and cultural studies), and the intersection of philosophy and critical theory more broadly. Prof. Graff Zivin is the author of Figurative Inquisitions: Conversion, Torture, and Truth in the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic (Northwestern University Press, 2014, winner of the 2015 Award for Best Book, Latin American Jewish Studies Association)—translated into Spanish and published in 2017 by Ediciones La Cebra in Buenos Aires—and The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary (Duke University Press, 2008). She is the editor of The Marrano Specter: Derrida and Hispanism (Fordham University Press, 2017) and The Ethics of Latin American Literary Criticism: Reading Otherwise (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Graff Zivin has written over three dozen articles and book chapters, published in journals such as the Yearbook of Comparative Literature Modern Language Notes (MLN), SubStance, CR: The New Centennial Review, Política Común: A Journal of Thought, the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Revista Pléyade, Variaciones Borges, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Chasqui, the Journal of Jewish Identities, and Modern Jewish Studies. Her most recent book, Anarchaeologies: Reading as Misreading, will be published by Fordham University Press in January 2020. She is currently at work on a new project, “Transmedial Exposure,” which evaluates the aesthetic, ethical and political consequences of the exposure of one medium to another.

SILVIA GRUNER

Artist

Silvia Gruner

Born 1959 in Mexico City, where she lives and works.

EDUCATION
Bachelor in Fine Arts from Betzalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem Israel,1982. Master in Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston Massachusetts,1986.

In her installations she combines sculpture, photography, video and film. Her work has been exhibited in:  Americas Society, NY, 2016; Museo de San Ildefonso, Mexico D.F. 2016, CIFO, Cisneros Fontanals Foundation, Miami , U.S.A, 2015; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 2009; Museo Experimental El ECO, Mexico City,2007; MUCA UNAM, Mexico City, 2007;The Jewish Museum, N.Y. USA, 2006;Participant, INC. NY, 2005;Centro Contemporaneo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain,2005; SAPS Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City,2004;Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, 2003;Bienal de la Habana, Pabellon Cuba, La Habana, Cuba 2003,The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, 2003;Art in General, N.Y. USA, 2003; Haus der Culturen der Welt, Berlin Alemania, 2002; Biennal de Fortaleza, Brazil, 2002; Guggenheim Museum, N.Y., 2001;Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2001; Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City,2000 and1994; Kwanju Biennale, Kwanju Korea, 2000; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de San Diego, USA, 2002 and1998; Casa de América, Madrid, Spain,2000 and 1993; Musee de Beaux Arts, Montreal, Canada, 1999;Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, Venezuela 1998; Museo del Barrio, Nueva York,1997;
2nd Johannesburg Biennale,Cape Town, South Africa,1997; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada,1996;Camden Arts Center, London 1996; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland 1996, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA ,1996; Biennale of Sydney, Australia,1996; Ikon Gallery, Birgminham, UK, 1995;Fargfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995;Insite 2000, Insite 1994, Tijuana – San Diego; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, 1992; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston , 1991; Art Center of Design, Pasadena, Cal. 1991; Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio, Texas; 3a Bienal de la Habana,1989.

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS

2012-2015    Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, FONCA, México
2008-2011    Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, FONCA, México
2002-2005    Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, FONCA, México
1999-2000     Rockefeller Mac Arthur Film, Video and Multimedia Fellowship, USA
1999-2002     Sistema Nacional de Creadores, FONCA, México.
1993-1994     Apoyo del FONCA para Proyectos Especiales y Coinversiones Culturales,México D.F
1990-1991     Beca del FONCA para Jóvenes Creadores, México.
1986                MFA con honores, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston    Massachusetts,    E.U.A.


 BOOKS AND CATALOGS

Un chant d'amour, Artist book , texts by Jose Luis Barrios e Irmgard Emmelhainz, edited by RM México- Barcelona, Marzo 2009
Circuito Interior, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Magali Arriola, Mónica de la Torre, Artist Catalog, México D.F., 2000
Collares / Reliquias, Centro de la Imagen, Kellie Jones, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Osvaldo Sánchez, Artist catalog, México D.F., 1998
Destierro, Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo Televisa, artist book,
México D.F., 1992

INSTITUTO 17

CIUDAD DE MEXICO / INSTITUTO DE ESTUDIOS CRITICOS

17edu.org

ROUTES AGENCY

CURA OF CONTEMPORARY ART / ROME

ARI CONTERATO

Graduate Student / UC Davis

http://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/people/adconter

RODRIGO SOMBRA

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro / Graduate Student

Rodrigo Sombra is a researcher, writer and photographer from Brazil. Sombra holds an MA in Cinema Studies from San Francisco State University and now he’s a Ph.D student at the Communications & Culture department of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). His work has been published in several Brazilian publications and he recently contributed to the book "Race in American Film: The Complete Resource"(Greenwood Press, 2017). His photographic work was exhibited in The Afrobrazilian Museum (São Paulo) and in art galleries in San Francisco, California. 

www.rodrigosombra.com

JOSHUA WEISS

Graduate Student / UC Davis

http://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/people/jzweiss

ROBERT DEAKIN

Graduate Student / UC Davis

MELISSA SALM

PostDoc / Stanford University

Dr. Melissa Salm earned her Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology with an emphasis in science and technology studies from UC Davis. In support of her thesis, Dr. Salm conducted multi-sited fieldwork across Peru, examining how the 'One Health' model was incorporated into epidemiological field investigations of zoonoses and integrated into global health governance tools for systematizing global health security capacities across the Americas. Her research was funded by the NIH-FIC, for which she conducted a qualitative study identifying the definitions, practices, and visions of 'global health' among PI's in Latin America and the Caribbean compared to those of PI's in North America.

In her research, Dr. Salm examines conceptualizations and operationalizations of risk in the biosciences and biosecurity management. Her guiding questions are: in what concrete ways do controversial techniques for predicting viral risks, such as GOF/PPP, translate into effective pandemic preparedness and response measures? What tools must be invented and standardized to facilitate coordinated institutional responses to public health threats and to move pro-actively from a state of preparedness to response?

EVELEEN SIDANA

Graduate Student / UC Davis

Research Interests: I am a third-year Ph.D. Candidate in the Sociocultural Anthropology program at the University of California, Davis. My research interests include design, aesthetics, urban space, infrastructure, cities, media, bodies, platforms, and networks. I have worked as a programmer and find the conceptual interfaces between programming, aesthetics and urban space fascinating. Having done my M.A, M Phil and Journalism in beautiful cities in India, my present research continues to explore and create new ways of theorizing the dynamic movements of and in urban space.

YAWEN TAN

Graduate Student / UC Davis

Yawen Tan is a PhD student in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Trained in continental philosophy and modern art history, she works in the discursive space where anthropology, art, and philosophy cohabit. She hopes that her work can contribute to an understanding of visual arts as they touch upon human cognition and political ontology. Yawen is currently doing research on how governmental projects gather “high bohemians” – visual artists, architects, dancers, and musicians – to curate the image of Shanghai city. She is passionate about exploring the intersection of urban space art and the city dwellers’ political perceptions of citizenship, and related issues of space/place/non-place, locality and identity, the rhetoric of walking, and the classic tension between art’s autonomy and social commitment. Before coming to Davis, Yawen received her M.A. from Stanford University and her B.A. from Fudan University, China. 

KYMBERLEY CHU

Graduate Student / UC Davis

I recently graduated from the University of California, Davis. Taking a “leap” year, I will be conducting preliminary fieldwork in the countries of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. My current scholarship touches upon the intersection of media anthropology, visual culture, and postcolonial theory. In fact, I am currently writing about how national landmarks envision specific futurities that may or may not cultivate specific ways of cultural belonging. I am also intellectually keen on exploring how post-humanist assemblages and human-nonhuman interactions destabilize so-called anthropocentric narratives.

YINGRU CHEN

Graduate Student / UC Davis

 I am currently a PhD student in Anthropology at UC Davis. My work addresses how immersive media/technological mediations define our contemporary collective life and tries to render possible ways in which we may think along with, not just about, technologies. My current research is concerned with the institutionalization and digitalization of elderly care in China. More specifically, I am following how aging as an experience is mediated by technology; how aging is lived with and through technical devices in the everyday, how this techno-bio-political regime works towards rendering formerly disparate entities (aging and technology) interconnectable and sensible, and how human-technology hybrids together co-create new ethical values and realities for “aging.”