María-Elena Pombo is a Venezuelan artist and researcher based in NYC. Her work is  open-ended and investigates real and speculative pasts and presents to visualise alternative  futures. In her talk, Pombo will discuss how she centres Earth matter in her practice, gathering historical and contemporary materials through participatory actions. These material re-imaginations explore the possibilities and realities beyond existing, often hegemonic narratives. They show that an alternative...

Compiler is a collective for digital art, curation, and critical technical practice, implemented in institutional and alternative spaces. Their artistic and curatorial practice investigates socio-political challenges in digital culture, where the possibilities of digital art, curation, learning, and research are explored as part of a process of discovery through technological experiences. Creating accessible works and events through which audiences with different levels of technical awareness...

A Vibe Called Tech is a creative agency established in 2018 by Charlene Prempeh to encourage the application of a culturally diverse lens in design, technology, arts, and culture by spearheading partnerships, events, research, and workshops across London.   For the talk at Blessed Foundation, Charlene Prempeh will be joined by AVCT’s Creative Director Lewis Dalton Gilbert, to focus on the imperative of telling lesser-known stories in an accurate and credible way. Please contact...

New Art City is an artist-run virtual space founded in 2020 and led by Don Hanson and Sammie Veeler. Their browser-based tool for building 3D multiplayer websites supports a vibrant global community of artists, educators, and institutions. As an artist-run company, New Art City is redistributive by design, transferring knowledge, space, money and visibility from those who have it to those who don't. This year, they formed a non-profit research unit called Virtual Access Lab in partnership...

Maja Smrekar is an award-winning artist and researcher. In her talk for Blessed Foundation, Smrekar, will focus on interspecies communication as a platform that allowed her to explore the imprint of ideology, media and technologies on human and non-human entities. Smrekar will also address her fear of natural sciences that she has managed to overcome thanks to her intuitive connection with nature. Please contact [email protected] for more information about Blessed Foundation and...

Hunaid Nagaria, first FUTURE-PROOF speaker, is an interaction designer, engineer and illustrator. Nagaria uses design as a medium to explore how technology interacts with human life and needs and is currently building adaptive technologies for gamers who experience muscle weakness as a result of muscular dystrophy. He has previously built interfaces for the future of human-food interaction, recreational products for people with cognitive disabilities, and interventions to tackle urban...