Crit Night with Pioneer Works

Ace Hotel Brooklyn and Pioneer Works join in creative arms to foster artistic communities.

Crit Night is a seasonal series, where Pioneer Works artists-in-residence share works in progress during an intimate evening focused around experimentation and discourse.

Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne will share work in progress on Offset, a new body of work that examines emerging carbon markets and practices of carbon offsetting. What does it mean to view the world through the lens of carbon? What would a radical carbon offset look like?

Kameelah Janan Rasheed will discuss her year-long research into the poetics and politics of play. The audience will hear about a few projects in 2024, learn about the future of this research, and have the opportunity to play.

Designer and technologist Mindy Seu will moderate our presentations.

Music Resident Alum Matt Evans will DJ in the Lobby Bar following the program.

About the Artists

Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne are artists whose work examines the shifts in behaviors, desires, language and economics catalyzed by computational systems and the internet. In their collaborations they have simulated international organizations, run a real dating service in NYC, and read the entire Enron email archive. Recent works include Synthetic Messenger commissioned by STRP Festival, The New York Apartment commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Good Life commissioned by Rhizome. They are 2023 Creative Capital awardees and their work has been widely discussed in the media, in outlets such as Art Forum, The New Yorker, Marie Claire, The Ellen Show, Art in America, The World Almanac, Slovenian Public Radio and India Today. In 2015, the UN filed a complaint with the US Department of State about their work.

A learner, Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores Black knowledge production and fugitivity. Her recent solo exhibitions include REDCAT (2024), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). Rasheed is the author of five artists’ books: in the coherence, we weep (KW Institute, 2023); i am not done yet (Mousse Publishing, 2022); An Alphabetical Accumulation of Approximate Observations (Endless Editions, 2019); No New Theories (Printed Matter, 2019); and the digital publication Scoring the Stacks (Brooklyn Public Library, 2021).

Tega Brain, Sam Lavigne, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed are inaugural Working Artist Fellows. The Working Artist Fellowship is part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s The Artist Impact Initiative.

Mindy Seu is a designer and technologist based in New York City and Los Angeles, currently teaching as an Associate Professor at University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Design Media Arts. Her expanded practice involves archival projects, techno-critical writing, performative lectures, and design commissions. Mindy’s ongoing Cyberfeminism Index, which gathers three decades of online activism and net art, was commissioned by Rhizome, presented at the New Museum, and awarded a Graham Foundation Grant.

Matt Evans is a Brooklyn based drummer and producer creating electro-acoustic music that considers the interconnectedness of landscapes, both real and imagined. His compositions draw inspiration from millennial esoterica, natural phenomena, and science fiction, resulting in hypnotic soundscapes and surreal sonic worlds. Combining a meticulous drum-driven approach with imaginatively processed keyboards and samples, Matt crafts a rhythmic, post-ambient music that’s been described as “hyperreal and phantasmal” (Wire Magazine), and “a form of chill complexity” (New York Times). Matt has presented solo projects at the Guggenheim, The Kitchen, Roulette, and 2220 Art+Archives and has released records with Moon Glyph, Whatever’s Clever, Dinzu Artefacts, NNA Tapes, Deathbomb Arc, New Amsterdam, Cantaloupe, Perfect Wave, and Thrill Jockey.

Crit Night is co-presented with Ace Hotel Brooklyn.

This program is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the National Endowment for the Arts.