CHAIRS: Ellen Levy and Patricia Olynyk
NY LASER is a series of lectures and presentations on art and science projects, in support of Leonardo/ISAST’s LEAF initiative (Leonardo Education and Art Forum). Former LEAF Chairs, Ellen K. Levy, former IDSVA Special Advisor in the Arts and Sciences and Patricia Olynyk, Director, Graduate School of Art, Washington University co-direct these presentations to promote dialogue at the highest level among artists, scientists, scholars, and historians. Space is limited, so please rsvp by sending an email to levy@nyc.rr.com or olynyk@wustl.edu. There will be feature presentations by Margaret Cogswell, Jennifer McGregor, and Wong Kit Yi.
Margaret Cogswell is a New York based artist whose work explores the interdependence of people, industry and rivers through her ongoing series of research-based River Fugues projects. She is a recipient of numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Presenting videos from Moving the Water(s): Ashokan Fugues (2014-18) and Zhujiajiao River Poems (2014), Margaret will explore issues surrounding access to clean water in New York City and in China. Zhujiajiao River Poems explores life along the Caogong River and access to water in a 1,700 year-old river town in China.
Jennifer McGregor is an American curator and arts planner. Based in New York, she is the Senior Director at Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in the Bronx, New York City. There, she curates exhibitions and oversees performances that relate to nature, culture and site. She will discuss some of the developments in the ecoart movement that the program at Wave Hill has helped to foster, including exhibitions, winter workspace programming, and a STEM program in education. She will discuss her curatorial approach through the current exhibition Avifauna: Birds + Habitat, and the upcoming Ecological Consciousness: Artist as Instigator.
Wong Kit Yi is a Hong Kong-born artist based in New York. Cohabitating a body with her business manager, Ali Wong, she often addresses--through interactive painting displays, installations, performances, and karaoke-style documentary films--the relationship between ancient modes of quantifying and ordering information about the world (astrology, feng shui, numerology, fortune-telling) and contemporary science. Wong will discuss her participation in the Arctic Circle residency and also her examination of the widespread fascination with immortality and ownership, through a melding of Chinese mythology and human genetic engineering—including CRISPR technology and reverse aging.
SPONSORS:
NY LASER is a series of lectures and presentations on art and science projects, in support of Leonardo/ISAST’s LEAF initiative (Leonardo Education and Art Forum). Former LEAF Chairs Ellen K. Levy and Patricia Olynyk co-organize these presentations on behalf of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts and Washington University in St. Louis, respectively.
LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) Talks is Leonardo's international program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations. LASER Talks were founded in 2008 by Bay Area LASER Chair Piero Scaruffi and are in over 30 cities around the world. To learn more about how our LASER Hosts and to visit a LASER near you please visit our website.
The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking.