Arts Research Institute

On June 20, 2026, start with a selection of video interviews featuring LGBTQIA+ artists from E.A.R.T.H. Lab SF’s living archive. Then hear directly from five of the featured artists in a conversation about their work, process and creative lives. The program includes a discussion of the interview archives, reflections and audience Q&A. Hosted by Beth […]

Kyle Parry’s new book is called Ways of Seeing After Dark. It contends that darkness is not absence but presence, shaping how worlds are sensed, inhabited, and understood. Darkness brings peril, but it is also a fundamental, if increasingly threatened, condition of living together on this planet. Tracing links between John Berger’s influential Ways of […]

NIKI•TOMI•BETO (a short fiction film), which was funded by ARI in 2025, has gone on to do tremendously well. It won distribution funding support from the Berkeley Film Foundation and will be featured in a special public screening promoting the foundation and their impact later this year. The film is currently screening at festivals on […]

Urmila Janardan Urmila is a documentarian, organizer, and researcher, interested in understanding systems of oppression and documenting the people building alternatives. Before starting in the Social Documentation MFA program at UCSC, Urmila was a Senior Policy Analyst at the DC-based non-profit Upturn, where they studied the material harms of technology and automated decision-making on marginali…

Genesis Hello! My name is Genesis and I am an Afro-Indigenous prison abolitionist from Baltimore, Maryland dedicated to getting the reparations owed to me, my family, and all Black & Brown oppressed and dispossessed in my lifetime. I believe that genealogy work is deeply important and necessary work for reparations. I am interested in genealogy, […]

Kolawole Rasheed Kolawole Rasheed is a Nigerian music researcher and Ph.D. student in cross-cultural musicology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research focuses on African popular music, rhythm, and diaspora, with particular attention to how African rhythmic logics travel across borders and re-emerge in contemporary musical forms. He explores questions of musical meaning, [&#8230…

Vidula Songra Vidula Songra is a multidisciplinary researcher interested in the questions related to Art, Music, Labour, and Literature through the lens of caste, class and gender. Seamlessly moving between the domains of social theory and performing arts, she employs a critical lens towards the ideas of practices extant in both these domains. She has […]

Kim Kölle Valentine Kim Kölle Valentine is a visual and media artist. Her research interests include feminist, queer, and activist media, particularly networks of distribution and media collections. Her video work involves animation, installation, and single-channel performance that refigures categorizations and contradictions of femininity. Her work has been presented at Dazibao (Montréal, CA), …

Sage Tran Sage Tran (they/them) is a queer and trans Vietnamese filmmaker and somatic healing facilitator from the Bay Area. As a co-founder of SunKissed Productions, an independent multimedia collective led by queer and non-binary Asian-American artists. Their storytelling focuses on themes of ancestral remembrance, identity reclamation, and the concept of home, particularly within displaced [&#…

Diana Mulan Zhu Diana Mulan Zhu (FDM) is an American born Chinese artist, filmmaker, visual activist, creative technologist, and writer. Her interdisciplinary practice centers on technologically mediated experiences of diaspora, erotic labor, and shame. She is a hybrid maker-scholar that draws on documentary film, participatory social practice, installation, performance and painting. Diana holds …

Elissa Callen Elissa Callen (EASP) is an ecological artist using natural pigments sustainably made from invasive plant species to engage the public with their environments and educate them about the circular importance of biodiversity. Her research is rooted in California ecology, anthropogenic influences exacerbating biodiversity loss, and how humans of different socioeconomic and cultural backg…

Siamak Barghi Siamak Barghi (Music)  is an Iranian musician, composer, improviser, and educator, currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Music Composition at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He earned his MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Tehran in 2021. He began studying music at the age of five with his […]