VOL. 15 PERCEPTION

Meet Our Presenters

PechaKucha presenter Jeffrey Fullerton

Jeffrey Fullerton  |  Confronting Biases, The Convenience of Truth, and What AI Says About Us

Polymath Jeffrey Fullerton’s Confronting Biases, The Convenience of Truth, and What AI Says About Us explores human biases in AI technology and what the AI evolution may reveal about our collective unconsciousness. 

Bio

Jeffrey Fullerton is a polymath strategist who utilizes perspectives from multiple industries to solve tough problems, reduce risks when developing new products, and negotiate complex deals. Jeffrey founded Liquid Zoo, a technology entertainment company pioneering interactive media designed to bring people together, fostering connectivity and based on the premise that community building is an essential and increasingly lost part of our social fabric. Prior to founding his own company, Jeffrey was the Head of Strategic Development for Meow Wolf and Senior Vice President of Strategy for the Disney backed Japanese entertainment company, Tyffon.  In his free time he enjoys tacos, motorcycles, making ice cream, and watching Kubrick films.

Jeffrey Fullerton presents Confronting Biases, the Convenience of Truth, and What AI Says About Us at PechaKucha Night Santa Fe

Summary

Truth is always shaped by the victor, however, how do we determine the victor and how do we even understand what is true? What lies do we tell ourselves to justify a worldview or rationalize information? Do we want truth or does confronting the inconvenience of truth make the world indigestible? We will explore a crash course across history before exploring how our own intrinsic biases affect the meaning of truth, ultimately finishing with how biases within AI become a reflection of our own struggles and how next generation natural language processing will break down barriers for moving past Jungian subconscious.

Briseida-Bencomo

Briseida Bencomo  |  In a Word

In their presentation, In a Word, Artist Briseida Bencomo juxtaposes selected words from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows with a retrospective on their work and life.

Bio

Multimedia Artist Briseida Bencomo’s works integrate found items, words, and thoughts. They find inspiration in the close communities and diverse unique stories of the people around them. Their work has been showcased in Envision, the 2021 Junior Exhibition at New Mexico School For The Arts, and in the 2022 juried exhibition Perspective. They often write letters and poems to describe the environment around them.

Artwork by Briseida Bencomo

Summary

Ever feel emotions so complex and intense that you cannot describe them? Artist Briseida Bencomo often experiences them. In their presentation, In a Word, Briseida shares their recent discovery of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, written by John Koenig, who has set out to fill the gaps in our language of emotion through newly coined words drawn from languages around the world. Briseida reflects on their own work and moments of their life in juxtaposition to John Koenig’s poetic words.

Artist Vanezia Aguayo

Vanezia Aguayo  |  Exploring Life as a Chula, Feminist, Neo-Traditional Tattoo Artist

In Exploring Life as a Chula, Feminist, Neo-Traditional Tattoo Artist, artist Vanezia Aguayo shares her body of work inspired by her culture and challenging events in her life.

Bio

French-Polynesian and Latina visual artist Vanezia Aguayo was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her art is created using a variety of methodologies, such as graphics, calligraphy, tattoos, heavy value, concept art, and leather/woodwork to explore themes of isolation, femininity, culture, and martial arts. Venezia is constantly doing art, no matter where she is — physically or mentally — asking herself, “how can I survive and understand the world?”

Artwork by Vanexia Aguayo

Summary

This presentation presents a body of work that began as a coping mechanism from the feeling of isolation. In defiance of social expectation of compliance, Vanezia Aguayo began to explore rage and anger through art. Taking inspiration from tattoo art and her cultural heritage, she honed her skills to produce a vibrant and fierce body of work.

PechaKucha presenter June Julian

June Julian  |  Fixing Ecologies on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

In Fixing Ecologies on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, artist June Julian presents her body of work—her visual wish for equilibrium in the world.

Bio

Santa Fe artist June Julian received her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate degrees in Art, studying at Pennsylvania State Universities and New York University. She has been on the graduate art faculties of The School of Visual Arts in New York City, Ohio University, and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and was the Education Manager of the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York City. She has an active studio practice in various media. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad, and is in several museum collections. June is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, and has published widely on Art, Technology, and Ecology.

June Julian presents Fixing Ecologies on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at PechaKucha Night Santa Fe

Summary

June Julian presents landscapes degraded by climate change and pollution as metaphors for the human narrative of trauma and renewal. In Arroyo as Metaphor, an erosion project in New Mexico, she observes how an arroyo results from a gradual eating away of a substance over time, an act of insistence enforced upon it by a determined entity and how its abatement can signify healing. The Hard Realities, Softly Voiced watercolor series, painted on site in the Scottish Hebrides, bears witness to ancient archaeology sites and population demographics that are being threatened by the impacts of climate change there. Since lichen only grow in places where the air is clean, in the I Lichen NY series, she layers them over urban architecture as visual remedies for fossil fuel pollution. These examples are visual wish fulfillments for equilibrium in a world of landscape ecologies on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

PechaKucha presenter Anthony Colombo

Anthony Colombo  |  Realizing the Dream of a Vibrant Planet

In Realizing the Dream of a Vibrant Planet, Dream-In facilitator Anthony Colombo explores how crisis can be used to awaken a whole new level of planetary collaboration.

Bio

Anthony Colombo guides groups of people as they transform their lives by engaging the inherent creative brilliance of their nighttime dreams and imaginations. During his Dream-In events, participants craft a collective intention or “incubation” for their dream-time. The next day, their dreams and creative ideations are woven together into a shared vision for the group. Since 2008, he and his team of Dream-In facilitators have conducted Dream-Ins for numerous communities and organizations. Anthony has mentored with lucid dreaming research pioneer Fariba Bogzaran, PhD, and with dream studies professor Daniel Deslauriers—a fellow Dream-In facilitator.

In 2015, Anthony’s organization DreamSpace piloted the Vibrant Planet Dream-In—an online event with over 800 participants from 40 countries who incubated their dream-time with the intention of creating a vibrant life for themselves and the planet. To support future participants in an ongoing way, Anthony is currently developing VibrantPlanet.com—an online dream community in which people will be guided in creating big dreams, both while sleeping and while awake. These big dreams will be brought to life through Dream Cinema, which employs 3D animation and immersive sound to compellingly recreate the felt experience of being inside a dream or vision. These projects build upon Anthony’s decades of experience in developing software systems, producing digital multimedia, and teaching interactive multimedia design, production, and ethics courses at the University of Arizona.

Anthony Colombo presents Realizing the Dream of a Vibrant Planet at PechaKucha Night Santa Fe

Summary

How do we realize the dream of a vibrant planet? Perhaps it all begins by shifting how we perceive our planetary crisis. Rather than viewing the crisis as the unwanted problem, it becomes the necessary means by which we usher in a new era of planetary collaboration.

During Anthony Colombo’s presentation, he will share his visionary nighttime dreams, in which he faced a planetary extinction and other intractable problems. These crises awakened extraordinary abilities within him. In much the same way, the most evolved aspects of our human nature often awaken amidst the transformational necessity of crisis. We start engaging our creative minds and collaborating with others to realize a mutually-beneficial way forward.

Amidst intensifying crises, people need help channeling their feelings into positive change for themselves and others. Anthony’s solution is to develop Vibrant Planet, an online community dream space where people free their creative minds from limited thinking that caused our crisis in the first place.

PechaKucha presenter J P

J P 제피  |  My Jender is Tree

In My Jender is Tree, artist J P 제피 (formerly Jen Pack) unfolds the complex Being and Becoming of a bigender and bicultural identity through J P’s body of work.

Bio

J P 제피* is a bicultural and bigender artist, color explorer, tree climber, and truthseeker who has created home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. S(he) is a survivor, queer, and the child of an immigrant survivor of the Korean war. J P challenges dominant narratives and creates inceptive spaces in a practice of spiritual activism and exploration of the porous relationship between truth, beauty, and identity. This examination is the outgrowth of continual struggle for safety in body and soul in an interdisciplinary practice that synthesizes tensions and collapses genres, spaces, identities, and norms. (He)r work exists in an ontological space and presents stories of ritual integration and spiritual journeys. J P was named one of the 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in 2022 by Southwest Contemporary magazine and is a participating artist in the Artists at Work initiative in the Borderlands Region. *formerly Jen Pack / 백희숙

J P presents My Gender is Tree at PechaKucha Night Santa Fe

Summary

J P’s perception of self has evolved since young adulthood. This presentation will explore a 28-year span of cultural and gender identity evolution through self portraiture and trace the inception of J P’s work with abstraction and symbol. S(he) is flattened into an aesthetic abstraction as an Asian faced, female bodied, queer person and this erasure prompts bodily responses of hiding, even as J P’s gender is exteriorizing. At times, s(he) is not perceived as a woman, and this is a deft read on (he)r person. J P is trans-bigender and exploring collective perceptions of what it means to be trans, asking, “Is there ‘objective’ truth in gender identity? What if I am something else entirely?” This is where the vibrations between truth, beauty, and identity are leading (he)r. J P longs to Be seen as simultaneous and poly-tonal, and this will only occur if s(he) is perceived. Explore Being as integration of cultural and gendered traits, the intersection of this world and beyond, and experience the indistinct territory where J P’s story dances. It will change your perception. This story is one in which the main character that materializes is an alchemical body with a masculine spirit and structure in tandem with feminine spirit and form.

PechaKucha presenter Amanda Banker

Amanda Banker  |  Redefining the Female Nude

Artist Amanda Banker’s work bursts through the constraints of taboo topics to explore the evolving perception of women in her presentation Redefining the Female Nude.

Bio

Amanda Banker was raised in Corrales, New Mexico, where she spent her childhood making short animated films and designing cartoon characters. At thirteen she discovered oil paints, and spent the next several years developing a portfolio in fine art, until her graduation set into motion a separate path. In 1998, she was accepted into CalArts, but choose to pursue animation at Cal State Fullerton, a decision which allowed her to become fully immersed in both traditional and computer animation — with the added bonus of pitching storyboards to Disney, Nickelodeon, and Pixar. After college she began freelance storyboarding, character design, and animation — while continuing to work on her own images. After nearly a decade in the animation industry, Amanda returned home to pursue her true passion as an oil painter. This move back to New Mexico was met with great success: her work is collected across the country, with patrons from California to New York. Amanda’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Albuquerque Museum.

Amanda Banker presents Redefining the Female Nude at PechaKucha Night Santa Fe

Summary

Since antiquity the female classical nude has been represented in two common ways: she is either a symbol of fertility, or the physical ideal of societal desires. Themes of nude, demure, and often weak women are scattered throughout the immense volume of art history. However, the role of women as a gender has changed, and continues to evolve. Amanda Banker’s work these explores these concepts and limitations about the female gender that are difficult to discuss, creating independent portraits of feminist femininity. The freedom to express taboo topics without the constraint of classical female nude stereotypes is achieved through her animated nudes, which renounce traditional body norms, repressed sexuality, and utilize counter culture accents such as tattoos and vice, to redefine the classical nude.

PechaKucha presenter Michael Barrio

Michael Barrio  |  Good Talk: Masculinity & Authenticity

Advocate Michael Barrio presents Good Talk: Masculinity & Authenticity, centered on perceptions of these two topics and their effects on our communities and politics.

Bio

An established and influential government and community affairs executive with expertise in leading public policy negotiation and development, as well as strategic innovation for growth.

Michael Barrio has a proven track record of bolstering strategic initiatives and successfully pushing policy reform through relationship curation of business leaders across sectors, publicly elected officials, and nonprofit organizations. Michael has an extensive background in corporate human resources, mergers and acquisitions, public affairs, government relations, and advocacy. His work in New Mexico has been focused on ensuring equity, diversity, and inclusion in New Mexico by working to craft, advance, and advocate for policy that reflects that. Additionally, during his Master’s and PhD work at New Mexico State University, Michael’s academic studies were focused on rhetoric and identity theory with an emphasis in feminist theory. During his time at NMSU, Michael and his now-wife toured and led various studies and roundtables that focused on and discussed contemporary feminisms and the critical need for open dialectic around this and issues of sex, gender, politics, and equity.

Michael Barrio presents Good Talk— Masculinity and Authenticity at PechaKucha Night Santa Fe

Summary

This presentation explores the perceptions of masculinity and authenticity, and their roles in community and politics.

PechaKucha presenter Michelle Holdt

Michelle Holdt  |  Cultivating a Creative Heart-Centered Practice

Educator Michelle Holdt’s Cultivating a Creative Heart-Centered Practice invites us to lean in to our differences, examine our own biases, and observe the world with an awake heart.

Bio

Michelle Holdt is a bold, creative, and love-drenched voice in the world of educational change. Michelle is an artist, a mom, a passionate advocate leading for Love with a capital L and Creativity with a capital C. She brings her years of arts education leadership experience combined with a devoted commitment to self-awareness and creativity to this vision. Some of her highly acclaimed workshops include The Art of Self Care & Lead with Your Humanity. She is also the author of Radiance: The Art of Self Love, and the co-producer of Arts is the Root.

Michelle was the Founding Executive Director of Arts Ed Matters and the Arts & Restorative Learning Coordinator for the San Mateo County Office of Education. She truly embodies living an arts-driven life & makes the arts accessible for all she reaches. Michelle holds multiple degrees and credentials in education including a BA in Drama and Human Development from Harvard.

Michelle Holdt presents Cultivating a Creative Heart-Centered Practice at PechaKucha Night Santa Fe

Summary

Mindfulness researchers estimate that we have 60–80,000 thoughts a day and many of those thoughts are re-runs. We often think thoughts about ourselves and others. But are they kind thoughts? How many of them are harming thoughts? What if we applied a creative and heart-centered practice to the stories we tell about ourselves and others? In their book, The 5th Agreement, Don Miguel and Don Jose Ruiz invite you to imagine that you have stepped into a multiplex movie theatre and you enter the first room and there is one person watching the movie. It is you and you are watching the movie of your life. It looks just like how you perceive your life. But when you leave that theatre and enter the next one there is your mother, or spouse, or sibling, or friend and they are alone in a theatre watching the movie of their life, and you are a character in their movie and yet you both look and act really different than in your movie. And as you enter other theaters you see others connected to your life and each movie looks different. It is all about perception. How are we looking through our metaphorical camera lens? Rapper, poet, activist, Mona Haydar says “My relationship with my own heart is my most central relationship.” In this presentation, educator Michelle Holtd shares her creative and mindful practice that helped her cultivate a tender relationship with her own heart. This practice has shifted the camera lens of her own perceptions—telling a new story about herself and others, one that is compassionate, less judgmental, and allowing of differences. She invites us to lean in to our differences, examine our own biases, and observed the world with an awake heart to encourage bridge crossing and community building.

PechaKucha presenters Maternal Mitochondria

Maternal Mitochondria  |  Seeing With Each Other’s Eyes

Mother-daughter duo Miriam Sagan and Isabel Winson-Sagan share their collaborative project Maternal Mitochondria in Seeing With Each Other’s Eyes.

Bio

Maternal Mitochondria is an unusual collaboration between mother (Miriam Sagan) and daughter (Isabel Winson-Sagan). Miriam was born in NYC in 1954 and has lived in New Mexico since 1984. Isabel was born in Santa Fe in 1989 and educated at UNM and SFCC. Miriam is a writer and Isabel is an interdisciplinary artist. Their work is intergenerational, feminist, and multi-media, and it reflects experiences of the body and of disability. Using ephemeral materials, Maternal Mitochondria creates works that delightfully engages viewers who come across them.

Maternal Mitochondria presents Seeing with Each Other's Eyes at PechaKucha Night Santa Fe

Summary

How do two women from different generations, life experiences, and aesthetics work together? It’s not always easy. The ancient bond of mother and daughter is fraught with issues of identity and control. Plus, visual artists and writers work quite differently—and much of that work is solitary, not done with someone else. It is precisely these potential problems that give Maternal Mitochondria a sense of risk and adventure. The two artists will share their process and examine it in the context of ongoing collaboration in the contemporary world. Special focus will be given to a tiny slice of Santa Fe, between the intersection of St. Francis and Paseo de Peralta and SITE Santa Fe itself. This place holds informative childhood memories for Isabel, and remains fresh to Miriam even after 35 years on the west side. Perceptions differ, but a shared vision is possible.