Onassis ONX presents seven artworks at its Summer Showcase in New York

VR installation with video and sound

Dreams of the Jaguar’s Daughter is a three-part Surreal VR Documentary in which Achik', the spirit of a young immigrant, guides viewers through dreams and memories of her arduous journey north. Charting a path from the Guatemalan jungle through central Mexico and into the Arizona Desert, each chapter was created from real footage assembled by Alfredo Salazar-Caro of the 2018 Caravan. Using 3D scans, drones, interviews, 360 and traditional footage, this project uses Achik’s perspective to illuminate stories from among the 9,000 people who went in search of a better life.

Additional Credits:

Writer: Génesis Mancheren Abaj
Producer: Samantha Quick
Developer: Prashast Thapan
Assistant Producer/Videographer: Tarek Turkey

Video Installation

Presented as part of the Tribeca Circle Incubator spotlight

In Burn From Absence, artist Emeline Courcier uses artificial intelligence to re-materialize her Vietnamese family’s memory - counter to the family philosophy of wiping the slate clean. It traces how her family came to want to ‘forget’, how forgetting can be an act of resilience. Conceived as a filmic journey up river, Burn from Absence is a reflection on the erosion of memory. It is also one artist’s effort to remedy the crumbling banks of her family history.

Created with the Support of the PHI Immersive Residency

Additional Credits:
Producer: Coline Delbaere
Voice Over: Henri Le Hong Chau, François D Le Hong Sun, Sophie Le Thi Hong Ngoc, Caroline Le Thi Hong Yen, Michel Le Hong Long, Roselyne Le Thi Hong Loan
AI Programming: Edouard Lanctôt-Benoit, Michael Noukhov
Sound: Philippe Rochefort, Kevin Delamourd
Editor: Emeline Courcier
Scenography: Sarah Migos

VR Installation with textiles

Be.Longing XR is a VR filmic road diary seen through the eyes of Amal, an immigrant who has just reached Los Angeles after a long flight from Beirut. We experience her ride through the fictitious reconstructed residential streetscape as she discovers LA for the first time in search of her own queer community. The viewer is invited into a game of finding stereotypical symbols of queer culture on the houses’ front yards, porches, and windows.Will you play?

Folly Feast Lab (Viviane El Kmati + Yara Feghali)

Additional Credits:
Music: ArtSlop Flodur, “Wish I could be there with you by”

XR Performance

Primitive Sounds is an experimental audio-visual performance using geoSynth, a prototype instrument invented by Georgios Cherouvim. The geoSynth is an audio synthesizer that uses 3D objects as the source input for real-time audio synthesis, in order to visually sculpt sound by manipulating the shape of each object. The instrument and accompanying performance is part of the artist’s ongoing study in data sonification and the relationships between form and sound.

Installation with sculpture, live motion capture performance

The Portals Keeper is a live motion capture performance, projection sculpture, and installation that serves as a journey of transformation, healing, and self-discovery. The sculptural portal is adorned with synthetic Yak hair, which symbolizes purity and strength in Tibetan Buddhism. The portal frames ethereal projections that set the stage for a collective unburdening through the artist’s performance.

Additional Credits:
Sound: Rena Anakwe, Nala Duma, Zeelie Brown, RaFia Santana, MaryAnn Talavera, Nia Witherspoon
3D Clothing: Bence Kozak
Creative Technologist: Yulai Fan - Rainy

Installation

Kapwa, which means kindred in Tagalog, is an interactive video installation that acts as an interrogation of cultural erasure within our diaspora and traces an outline around what is missing from the history of the global Philippine people. Created by Philippine-American artists and collaborators Aaron Santiago and Michaela Ternasky-Holland, Kapwa foregrounds a sense of loss and disconnect from ancestry by using found media of contemporary Filipinos, all asking in unison: “Who are we?”

Additional Credits:
Score Composer: Anna Luisa Petrisko

XR Performance

A {room} of one’s own is an XR performance about the hysterical journey of making creative work within a confined space. Reality and fantasy bleed together on this expedition through imagination and solitude in an ever-changing room. Through voice loops, motion capture, and audio-visual fragments within projected scenes, the unnamed protagonist warps and morphs physical-digital space, while navigating sickness and health, immigration, adolescence and multivalent adulthood.