#NOWSEETHIS w Kelela + Dinner + Juliana Huxtable

Carnegie Museum of Art and VIA, a platform for the intersection of emerging music, new media art, and technology, present #NOWSEETHIS. This party is a celebration of the Hillman Photography Initiative's explorations of visual culture.

The party unfolds through live music performances from three incredible national acts and interactive installations curated by VIA, the official launch of the Hillman Photography Initiative’s print photobook, A People’s History of Pittsburgh, and the close of the innovative exhibition Antoine Catala: Distant Feel, on view through May 18.

Live performances by:

Kelela is a Los Angeles-based vocalist and songwriter whose forward-thinking music fuses popular R&B and underground club sounds. Topping numerous year-end lists and festival bookings—with her debut EP Cut 4 Me listed as Complex's 50 Best Albums of 2013, and breakout performance at the 2014 Pitchfork Music Festival—she is a quickly rising star. Her next EP, Hallucinogen, drops May 5, featuring an exciting new collaboration with Arca—a breakout 24-year-old producer from Venezuela whose list of co-productions include FKA Twigs (EP2), Bjork (Vulnicura) and Kanye West (Yeezus).

Fresh off an April tour with Mac DeMarco, Dinner is the alias for Danish singer and producer Anders Rhedin. Full of echoes of sweaty depressions, spiritual longings, and early-morning trances, Dinner sounds a bit like a sun-bleached cassette tape you’d find stuck behind your car’s dashboard, or the male descendant of Nico singing Eno-esque pop songs on discarded Julian Cope tracks, with some Danish darkwave thrown in for good measure. Whomever you ask, his sound defies simple classification, with influences that range from rock ‘n’ roll and pop giants like Michael Jackson and Velvet Underground, to experimental tape-music pioneers like Steve Reich.

Juliana Huxtable is a DJ/producer, writer, model, and outspoken trans voice from NYC. Also a 2015 New Museum Triennial artist, her series of digital self-portraits currently hang in that museum, where Catala’s Distant Feel project shares a co-commission with CMOA. The Hillman Photography Initiative at CMOA is an incubator for innovative thinking about the photographic image. Its first year-long cycle of programming, initiated in April 2014, comes to a close this Spring.

Support for the Hillman Photography Initiative is provided by the William T. Hillman Foundation and the Henry L. Hillman Foundation.

And don’t forget... post your most interesting after-hours selfies to Instagram and Twitter with #NOWSEETHIS for ticket giveaways and more!

Live and interactive visuals by:

Pussykrew
Andrzej Wojtas and Ewelina Aleksandrowicz (aka Pussykrew), are Berlin-based artists, collaboratively working within the area of digital media. Their interdisciplinary practices range from short video, audio-visual performance, and multimedia installations to DIY electronics and 3D-printed objects. Wojtas and Aleksandrowicz are constantly trying to challenge the viewer through an exploration of post-human identity, bodily queerness, urban landscapes and their transformations, and synthetic-organic/digital-physical structures that are indistinguishable from one another. They both received an MA in digital media from the Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK, and presented their works at various digital arts festivals and galleries such as Saatchi Gallery London, Espace Pierre Cardin Paris, Transmediale Festival Berlin, and the 2015 3D Print Show in New York (as Artists of the Year).

Rollin and Tad Leonard
Rollin Leonard’s work is rooted in crude but systematic studio photography. The subjects are often bodies and body parts. Rollin was born in 1984 in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, and is currently based in Maine. His work has been shown at such venues as the Photographer’s Gallery, London; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; Moving Image Art Fair, New York; Moving Image Art Fair, London; Fach & Asendorf Gallery, online; NADA art fair, New York; and Transfer Gallery, Brooklyn. His work is included in international collections including 53 Art Museum in Guangzhou, China. He is represented by XPO Gallery, Paris, and has work available at Transfer Gallery, New York.

Tad Leonard is a programmer. CrashKiss is his debut art project and the first in a series of collaborations. He was born 1987 in Denver, Colorado, and is currently based in Minneapolis and New York.

Kevin Ramser
Kevin Ramser is a visual artist based in Pittsburgh, currently pursuing his MFA in video and media design at CMU. His video, interactive, and immersive projection design explores the visual tactics of posturing and intimidation through lush multimedia tableaus, at turns alluring and repulsive. Dark, stark, queered-out, weirded-out, sometimes pornographic, and often bright green, his work has accompanied performers such as Le1f, Mykki Blanco, Total Freedom, Zebra Katz, and many more. Since 2010 he has been an integral member of VIA as an artist, curator, and technician.

Video and Media Design Program at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama
This innovative, conceptually rigorous, hands-on MFA program is designed for dynamic artists working at the forefront of media technology and the arts. Learning advanced technical skills in a critical context, students explore the rich potential of technologically savvy performance by designing video and interactive systems for theater, concerts, experimental productions, and beyond. Participating students: Eleanor Bishop, Kevin Brophy, Edwin Cho, Ben Gansky, Claire Hentschker, Kevan Loney, Kevin Ramser, Dan Sakamoto, and Danni Zhang.