BAM And Onassis ONX Present TECHNE This January

Onassis ONX and BAM have announced TECHNE, an experimental program comprising four large-scale digital artworks, presented as part of BAM's Next Wave festival and Under The Radar Festival.

Brought to life through generative AI, immersive soundscapes, and virtual ecosystems, TECHNE runs from January 4—19, 2025, at BAM Fisher (321 Ashland Pl.).

The Vivid Unknown by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio

Jan 4—5 at 2:00pm, 3:30pm, 7:00pm & 8:30pm

Jan 7 at 7:00pm & 8pm

The Golden Key by Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser

Jan 8—10 at 7:00pm & 8:30pm

Jan 11 at 2:00pm, 3:30pm, 7:00pm & 8:30pm

Voices by Margarita Athanasiou

Jan 12 at 2:00pm, 3:30pm, 7:00pm & 8:30pm

Jan 14—15 at 7:00pm & 8:30pm

Secret Garden by Stephanie Dinkins

Jan 16—17 at  7:00pm & 8:30pm

Jan 18—19 at 2:00pm, 3:30pm, 7:00pm & 8:30pm

Additionally, as part of Under the Radar's Under Construction series, Onassis ONX will present two live productions: RUNWAY and a {room} of one's own. Created by Christiana Kosiari and Viola He, respectively, these performance-driven narratives interrogate personal identity, societal constructs, and existential struggles. Performances will be held from January 10 - 14, 2025, at Onassis ONX (645 5th Avenue).

Together, TECHNE, RUNWAY, and a {room} of one's own showcase Onassis ONX's commitment to fostering radical experimentation at the forefront of art and technology, from large-scale installations to intimate performances. TECHNE follows ONX's widely successful presentation of Group Hug in November, a boundary-breaking exhibition of large-scale video game installations by some of the most talented artists in the field.

“The key themes of this program are relationships, kinship, and affection. From Athens and Amsterdam to Taipei and New York, we present works that celebrate what brings us together rather than what drives us apart. Onassis ONX, a global innovation program for world-builders harnessing advanced technologies, consistently supports cutting-edge productions that transcend the boundaries of space, place, and identity,” said Afroditi Panagiotakou, Director of

Culture at the Onassis Foundation. “TECHNE, hosted by BAM, a landmark cultural institution, represents the values we uphold: myths and ancestral stories, nature as a shared origin and ultimate destination, and technology as an open-ended question rather than a definitive answer.”

“Fundamentally, TECHNE is about how we tell stories and how we share them,” says Jazia Hammoudi, Program Director of Onassis ONX NY. “TECHNE, derived from ancient Greek, refers to making or doing, art and craft. This program was inspired by a vision of how we, as artists, use technology– the very tool that defines our craft. What emerged are four distinctive works which harness the power and endless potential of new media and digital art, and speak to the expansiveness of narrative when we embrace it as polyphonic, participatory, and ever-unfolding.”

"Providing a dynamic home for Techne reinforces our interest in presenting and elevating new media engagements," said BAM's Artistic Director, Amy Cassello. "As we did with Journey LIVE earlier this season, we are excited to be a hub for audiences interested in this form of art-making. We are also thrilled to partner again with Under The Radar Festival, connecting with the city, the nation, and the world through the voices of innovative multidisciplinary artists."

Across four multimedia installations, TECHNE invites audiences to engage deeply with the nexus of humans, nature, and technology in innovative and thought-provoking ways. Mining folktales, films, oracles, and other enduring narrative forms, visionary artists Margarita Athanasiou, Marc Da Costa, Stephanie Dinkins, John Fitzgerald, Godfrey Reggio, and Matthew Niederhauser transform the art of storytelling for a digital age. Each project expands, interrogates, and deconstructs narrative, from reimagining cinema to exploring mediumship as female empowerment and crafting AI-generated mythical fantasies.

The Vivid Unknown (Jan 4, 5 & 7) by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio, is a collective experience that uses AI and computer vision to reimagine Reggio's iconic 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi. Visitors will explore the primal nexus of humans, nature, and technology, dynamically participating in shaping the unfolding narrative. As part of this special program, Koyaanisqatsi will be screened in its original form at BAM Rose Cinemas on January 7.

The Golden Key (Jan 8—11) by Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser, immerses visitors in the mythical fantasies of an artificially intelligent machine as it composes a never ending story. The work imagines a future world that has endured the severest impacts of climate change. Winner of the Jury Award in the 2024 SXSW XR Experience competition, The Golden Key allows audiences to encounter and intervene in the new narrative and myth-making powers imagined for AI.

Voices (Jan 12, 14 & 15) by artist Margarita Athanasiou dives into the hidden histories of Victorian-era mediums and New Age spiritualists, as well as her own grandmother. What emerges is a story about female empowerment, capitalism, and the unexpected relationship between information technology and the spirit world. Her riveting video essay makes the case for the body as the ultimate communication device.

Secret Garden (Jan 16—19) by Sundance Prize winner Stephanie Dinkins, cultivates a virtual oasis populated with Black women who share stories of perseverance and achievement. Multigenerational narratives collapse past, present, and future across interactive vignettes in this stirring compendium of stories.

For the full TECHNE programming schedule, click here.  

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Margarita Athanasiou is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and organizer based in Athens, Greece. She is a digital collagist working with video and print, while a significant part of her practice revolves around artist publishing. Her text-based work explores sidelined female histories, often combining research with autobiography and humor. Athanasiou is the co-founder of the Athens Art Book Fair, an Onassis AiR fellow, an ARTWORKS fellow, an active participant in various queer/feminist projects, and a passionate meme artist. She was a participant in the Exchange Residencies Program of Onassis AiR 2019-20 at CAPACETE (Brazil), the Tailor-made Fellowships program 2022-23, and the Tailor-made Residencies program.

Marc Da Costa is an artist and anthropologist whose work explores the relationship between emerging technology and lived experience. His artistic research and interactive installations examine how data and technical infrastructures focus our attention on the world in particular ways, thereby shaping the structures of experience available to us. Da Costa's anthropological scholarship has explored these themes through studies of placemaking practices in the Anthropocene, with a particular focus on Antarctic research expeditions and critical cartography. His work has been exhibited widely in the US and Europe, and his writing on the intersection of data and society has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vice, and elsewhere. Marcdacosta.com

Stephanie Dinkins is a visionary artist and educator whose career spans over twenty years of artistic inquiry. Her pioneering work in artificial intelligence centers on equity, transparency, and social engagement through an ethics of participation, dialogue, and care. In 2023, Dinkins was named one of the 100 most influential people in AI by Time Magazine, and she won the LG-Guggenheim Award for art at the intersection of technology and society. Dinkins is a professor of art at Stony Brook University, where she founded the Future Histories Studio and holds the Kusama Endowed Professorship in Art.

John Fitzgerald is an artist and co-founder of the experiential studio Sensorium. Recent co-creator credits include “Polymorphic” (Plásmata, Athens '22), “Metamorphic” (Sundance '20 & SIGGRAPH ‘20), “Zikr: A Sufi Revival” (Sundance '18 & IDFA ‘18), and objects in mirror AR closer than they appear (Tribeca '18). His work has also been presented at the Panama Biennial, Telluride, Berlinale, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, and the Simón Patiño Foundation in Bolivia. He holds an honors degree from the Department of Modern Culture and Media Studies from Brown University. He is a former Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art Science and Technology, Visiting Scholar at the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism, Pulitzer Center Grantee, RLab XR Resident, and a founding member of the New Museum's incubator NEW INC. John is currently the Innovation Director at the Onassis ONX.

Matthew Niederhauser is an artist and educator who pushes the limits of emerging AI and XR technologies within a wide range of mediums. He studied anthropology at Columbia University before earning his MFA in Art Practice from SVA. He is a Pulitzer Center Grantee, Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST), and a member of NEW INC. At NEW INC, he co-founded Sensorium, an experiential studio working at the forefront of immersive storytelling. When not focusing on projects that have premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Sundance New Frontier, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and IDFA DocLab, he teaches at NYU Tisch and Tandon. Most recently, Matthew became the Technical Director at Onassis ONX in New York. matthewniederhauser.com

Godfrey Reggio is an American filmmaker and creator of a unique experimental cinematic poetry. He is widely known for his wordless filmography, especially the pre-eminent trilogy of “Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance” (1982), “Powaqqatsi: Life in Transition” (1988), and “Naqoyqatsi: Life as War” (2002). His work reveals a humanist philosophy about our planet, the encroachment of technology on nature, ancient cultures, and the splendor that disappears as a result. They chronicle the impact of the modernizing world on our physical and psychological environment. Godfrey's work is a clarion call to resistance and a call to hope: “Hope is not something that is in the mind, it is something real—it is to act. In the end, it asks the evocative  question: which age is this, the sunset or the dawn? This age is indeed a liminal zone. A threshold to our vivid unknown."

Christiana Kosiari is an Athens-born professional dancer, dance teacher and choreographer. She graduated from the Greek State School of Dance in 2012 and from the Athens University of Economics and Business in 2008. From 2021 to 2022, she participated in the U(R)TOPIAS Academy of Choreography in the context of 2023 ELEVSIS European Capital of Culture, where she presented two works, Bouboulina and Bouboulina's. In the 2022/23 season, she was selected to continue her studies at the Academy for a second year and present Bouboulines as site-specific work in July of 2023. As a choreographer, she premiered RUNWAY at the Onassis Dance Days 2024 at the Onassis Stegi in February 2024. In August 2024, RUNWAY was hosted in a Residency Program by the association Credixa/Anima Fluo in Bologna, Italy. Kosiari presented Chained at the Arc for Dance Festival 15, the Dance Laboratory Rhodes 7, the Patras Art Festival 3 and the Masdanza Dance Festival 28 in the Canary Islands, where she received the second prize from the jury. She has choreographed video versions of Sink and Bouboulina which have been presented at various festivals in Greece and abroad, including the Dance Days Chania, the Athens Video Dance Project, the Patras Art Festival, the Land Art Moving Biennial Video-dance Contest in Portugal, the Emergentia in Switzerland, the Lift-Off Global Network in England, and many others. As a dancer, she participated in MA by Romeo Castellucci and toured Lamenta with the Siamese Dance Co from 2021 to 2023. She has attended many workshops in Greece and abroad and has been teaching dance since 2007.

Viola He is a Shanghai-born, Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, performer and cultural organizer. Their creative practices engage with DIY electronics, programming, dance/movements and various time-based media, exploring pathways towards alternative structures, systems and interfaces. They create immersive experiences, installations and improvisational performances using algorithmic approaches to enhance, alternate and obfuscate audio-visual assets, investigating the contradictions of analog aesthetics and digital tools. Viola often dreams about infiltrating digital spaces with physical bodies as tools for intervention, wielding their love/hate relationship with technology to challenge the rigid infrastructures around them. Viola is an Onassis ONX member and is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Interactive Media Arts (IMA) at NYU Shanghai. Viola holds a B.A. in Communication from University of Southern California, and a M.P.S. from NYU's Interactive Telecommunication Program.