During her Electronic Media / Film residency (Oct 29 – Nov 2) Alison Nguyen worked on two projects. First, she worked on developing ‘every dog has its day’ a single-channel video which explores the notions of iconicity, immortality, and terror in consumer-produced media. Drawing from home movies, social media, soft pornography, and videos created by religious cults/extremists, the appropriative work explores the porous visual relationships between domestic intimacy, terror and technology. Initially conceived as a triple-channel installation, Alison’s experimentation at IEA in the Snodgrass Gallery resulted in a parsed down single-channel piece. For her second residency project, Alison worked on ‘Dessert-Disaster’ – A double-channel found footage video work which compares the parallel cinematic language of dessert commercials with that of ‘disaster porn’ found in the news and on the Internet. The sound pulled from pedestrian-produced videos of demolitions, disasters, and storms expresses the conditions of the contemporary crowd; its insatiable appetite for destruction and arousal; its inattention, its inability to look away; its anxiety and its ecstasy. At IEA Alison worked with Rebekkah Palov to create a new quadraphonic sound piece for the installation version of this work, which expanded the creative possibilities of the movement of sound in the Immersive Gallery’s installation space.

Alison Nguyen is a New York-based artist working in video and installation. She received her B.A from Brown University, Providence, RI. Nguyen’s work has been screened at  Ann Arbor Film Festival, Crossroads presented by SF MoMA/SF Cinemateque, True/False Film Festival, San Diego Underground Film Festival, Unseen Film Festival, Microscope Gallery, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Leeds International Film Festival, L’Alternativa, Marfa Film Festival, San Francisco Art Book Fair at Minnesota Street Projects, Traverse Vidéo, Palace Film Festival, Outpost Artists, and Zumzeig Cine. Her work has been exhibited at Centre Des Arts Actuels Skol, The University of Oklahoma, BOSI Contemporary, and Satellite Art Show, Miami. She has participated in group performances at The Whitney Museum of Art: Dreamlands Expanded, The Parrish Museum, and Mana Contemporary (in collaboration with Optipus).

Nguyen has received residencies and fellowships from the International Studio and Curatorial Program, BRIC, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, Signal Culture, and Vermont Studio Center. She has been awarded grants from NYSCA and The New York Community Trust.