Creative Inquiries 

A speaker series organized by The Workshop at VCU Libraries, in partnership with VCU School of the Arts Department of Kinetic Imaging, Humanities Research Center, and the Media, Art and Text Program. 

Date: Friday, March 29, 2024

Time: 1:00 p.m.- 2:15 p.m.

Location: Hybrid – Cabell 303 and Zoom 

Registration: https://vcu.libcal.com/event/11990342 

About this speaker series

Often discussions of technology are framed through a loose notion of a future-orientated “innovation,” with little disregard about the nature of those imagined futures. This series aims to add a little friction to these sleek ideas about innovative technologies, by providing a platform to discuss the complexities of living in an increasingly technological world. The series features experts whose work intersects research methodologies and the creative process and technology. Each featured speaker will give a lecture and provide a brief demonstration of their process. Whether they are a research-based maker or a researcher who makes, these speakers do not approach technology as an answer but rather as a question: How does technology reflect the issues, inequities and injustices in our society and what is there to be done about it? 

About the speaker: Suzanne Kite, Ph.D.

The following information is adapted from the artist's website: 

Kite aka Suzanne Kite, Ph.D. is an award-winning Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, composer and academic raised in Southern California, known for her sound and video performance with her Machine Learning hair-braid interface. Kite holds a BFA from CalArts in music composition, an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and is a PhD candidate at Concordia University for the forthcoming dissertation, sound and video work, and interactive installation Hél čhaŋkú kiŋ ȟpáye (There lies the road). 

Kite’s groundbreaking scholarship and practice explore contemporary Lakota ontology through research-creation, computational media, and performance. Kite often works in collaboration, especially with family and community members. Her art practice includes developing Machine Learning and compositional systems for body interface movement performances, interactive and static sculpture, immersive video and sound installations, poetry and experimental lectures, experimental video, as well as co-running the experimental electronic imprint, Unheard Records. Working with machine learning techniques since 2017 and developing body interfaces for performance since 2013, Kite is a first American Indian artist to utilize Machine Learning in art practice. 

Kite has been included in numerous publications such as Atlas of Anomalous AI, Indigenous Futurisms, YWY: Searching for a Character Between Future Worlds, SOUTH as a State of Mind, Creative AI Database from Serpentine Gallery, the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, the Journal of Design and Science (MIT Press), with the award winning article, “Making Kin with Machines”, and the sculpture Ínyan Iyé (Telling Rock) (2019) was featured on the cover of Canadian Art. Kite was the Global Coordinator for the Indigenous Protocols and Artificial Intelligence Workshops supported by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, resulting in the publication of the Indigenous Protocols and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper. Kite’s artwork and performance has been included in numerous exhibitions, recently Hammer Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Plug In Contemporary, PS122 and the Vera List Center, Anthology Film Archives, Walter Phillips Gallery, Chronus Art Center, Toronto Biennial, and Experimenta Triennial. Kite was a 2019 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, a 2020 Tulsa Artist Fellow, a 2020 Sundance New Frontiers Story Lab Fellow, a 2020 “100 Women in AI Ethics”, a 2021 Common Fields Fellow, and the 2022 Creative Time Open Call artist for the Black and Indigenous Dreaming Workshops with Alisha B. Wormsley. 

Previous recorded sessions: 

Creative Inquiries: Mimi Onuoha (2022)

Creative Inquiries: Bridget Todd (2023)  

Image Information

Everything I Say is True, performance, Kite, 2017, 30 minutes. 

Carbon fiber, dress, video, sound, commissioned by Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre.

Credit: Rita Hayworth