Opening Reception: 2.21.26
Closing Reception: 3.27.26
Boston Cyberarts Gallery
141 Green Street
Boston, MA 02130
Program Info
Artists include:
Dianna Barrie, Bill Brown, Azin Feizabadi, Yue Hua, Laura Kraning, Tomonari Nishikawa, Ahmed T Ragheb, Lily Ekimian Ragheb, Kelly Sears, J.P. Sniadecki, Kalpana Subramanian, Richard Tuohy
2.21.26
Audiovisual Performance:
Ehrdz, Jiangzhou Feng
Boston Cyberarts Gallery
141 Green Street
Boston, MA 02130
RSVP
Closing Reception:
3.27.26
Audiovisual Performance:
Debora Bernagozzi & Jason Bernagozzi,
Abdul Hamid Sherzai
Boston Cyberarts Gallery
141 Green Street
Boston, MA 02130
RSVP
Curated by
Ariel Hou
Cinema and the railway were born as twins of modernity. In 1897, two years after the Lumière brothers’ public screening, the first underground streetcar station in the United States opened beneath Tremont Street. Both transformed human perception: the window of the moving train was a proto-cinema, framing landscape in continuous motion.
Early cinema confronted the problem of how to synchronize image and sound. The solution was deceptively simple. A beam of light passes through the optical soundtrack, a photocell translates light into electrical signals, and an amplifier releases sound back into the world. Image and sound, once separate, learned to meet in time. Green Street Station on the Orange Line, a result of 1970s community resistance to highway construction, becomes our screening room.
The gallery is a transit node where past and future temporarily align. Here, image, sound, and vibration travel together. Separately recorded tracks of absence converge in the presence. Experimental cinema loops alongside perpetual rhythm, and the city itself becomes a moving image.
Opening Reception
2.21.26
Opening Reception:
2.21.26
Audiovisual Performance:
Jiangzhou Feng, ehrdz
Boston Cyberarts Gallery
141 Green Street
Boston, MA 02130
RSVP
About the artist
Feng Jiangzhou 丰江舟 is the lead singer of the Fly Band and a pioneer of electronic music in China. In 1998, Feng Jiangzhou collaborated with the Taiwanese electronic group 3rdNova to release “Love in the Time of Flies,” hailed as China's first true electronic music album. Feng Jiangzhou is widely involved in new media art, sound art, installation art, film and television scores, stage design, and more.
In 2006, he co-founded the “Deaf Mute Blind School Club” label with Wu Ershan, releasing three albums before pausing his music career. It wasn't until 2019 that he made a comeback, performing at the Tomorrow Music Festival in Shenzhen. In 2023, he started a series of tours with the Fly Band, including appearances at the West Lake Music Festival, Strawberry Music Festival, and Hong Kong Clockenflap Music Festival.
ehrdz (Jessica Hernandez) is a DJ, sound artist, and curator broadly interested in repetition and continuity, the sounds of industrial objects and materials, and visceral percussive arrangements. Using approaches including hardware synthesis and sample manipulation, Jessica often creates erratic sequences and experimental drum patterns. In doing so, she pulls together the various elements that draw her to electronic music while constructing her own particular vision of brooding experimental techno.
In 2024, she and Aaron Michael Smith founded Transporter, an experimental music series located at the Boston Cyberarts Gallery. She also hosts a mix series/radio show Project One on 102.9FM and serves as the Managing Director of Unbound Visual Arts, a non-profit art gallery.
Artists include:
Dianna Barrie, Bill Brown, Azin Feizabadi, Yue Hua, Laura Kraning, Tomonari Nishikawa, Ahmed T Ragheb, Lily Ekimian Ragheb, Kelly Sears, J.P. Sniadecki, Kalpana Subramanian, Richard Tuohy
L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat - Auguste and Louis Lumière
50 sec loop, 16mm to digital, B&W, 1896
Tokyo-Ebisu - Tomonari Nishikawa
5 min loop, 16mm to digital, Color, 2010
Last Train - Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy
12 min loop, 16mm to Digital, Color, silent, 2016
Shibuya-Tokyo - Tomonari Nishikawa
10 min loop, 16mm to digital, color, 2010
Incantation - Kalpana Subramanian
8 min 40 sec loop, Digital, Color, 2022
Capitol Limited - Ahmed Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb
2 min loop, Digital, Color, 2024
In Transit - Azin Feizabadi
24 min loop, Digital, Color, 2022
The Iron Ministry - J.P. Sniadecki
84 min loop, Digital, Color, 2014
The Call - Kelly Sears
7 min 6 sec loop, Digital, Color, 2024
XCTRY - Bill Brown
6 min 18 sec loop, Digital, Color, 2019
Meridian Plain - Laura Kraning
18 min loop, Digital, B& W, 2019
Untitled- Yue Hua
Interactive, 8 min loop, Digital, B& W, 2025
Closing Reception
3.27.26
Closing Reception:
3.27.26
Audiovisual Performance:
Debora Bernagozzi & Jason Bernagozzi,
Abdul Hamid Sherzai
Boston Cyberarts Gallery
141 Green Street
Boston, MA 02130
RSVP
About the artist
Artist Debora Bernagozzi works primarily with the mediums of video, photography, and fiber. She received her BFA in Video from the Atlanta College of Art in 1999 and her MFA in Electronic Integrated Art from Alfred University in 2002. Her work has been exhibited in the US and internationally, including at the Denver Art Museum, Burchfield Penney Museum, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival. She was awarded artist residencies at the Experimental Television Center, Squeaky Wheel Media Arts Center, and in Kuala Lumpur.
Inspired by residency experiences that were transformational for them both personally and artistically, Debora and Jason Bernagozzi, along with Hank Rudolph co-founded Signal Culture, a nonprofit organization that provides residencies, resources, and exhibition opportunities for artists, researchers, and innovators working in experimental media art. She serves as Executive Director while continuing to make and exhibit her own work.
Jason Bernagozzi is an artist and technologist living and working in New York. Their work seeks to deconstruct and remix the cultural codes embedded within the psyche of an increasingly mediated world. To achieve this, a central feature of their practice is the creation of video software and hardware used as a real time instrument for improvisational exploration. In particular, they are interested in the emergent properties of image processing as a vehicle for a critical examination of the power structures embedded within information technologies.
Bernagozzi’s work has been supported through numerous grants and awards from organizations such as the New York State Council for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts and has been exhibited nationally and internationally at exhibitions such as the European Media Art Festival in Osnabruk, Germany; the Festival Les Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques in Marsaille, France; the Ilman Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea and the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Jason is an Assistant Professor of Cinema Production at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Abdul Hamid Sherzai creates sound and art in Worcester, Massachusetts. He's made bedroom noise under various monikers since 2006. "Not for the faint of heart, but for the hard of hearing."
L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat -
Auguste and Louis Lumière
50 sec loop, 16mm to digital, B&W, 1896
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular myth has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the “approaching” train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières’ cinématographe.
Tokyo-Ebisu -
Tomonari Nishikawa
5 min loop, 16mm to digital, Color, 2010
JR (Japan Railway Company) Yamanote Line is one of the Japan's busiest
lines, consisting of 29 stations and running as a loop. The film shows
the views from the platforms of 10 stations in Yamanote Line, from
Tokyo Station to Ebisu Station clockwise. The in-camera visual effects
and the layered soundtrack may exaggerate the sense of the actual
happenings at the locations. The film also exhibits the shooting and
recording methods.
Tomonari Nishikawa (1969-2025) was a filmmaker/artist. At the time of his passing, Tomonari lived in Vestal, New York, and taught in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University, where he studied cinema and philosophy and started making films.
Nishikawa’s films explore the idea of documenting situations/phenomena through a chosen medium and technique, often focusing on process itself. His films have been screened at numerous film festivals and art venues, including Berlinale, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. In 2010, he presented a series of 8mm and 16mm films at MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and his film installation, Building 945, received the 2008 Grant Award from the Museum of Contemporary Cinema in Spain. He served as a juror for the 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival, the 2012 Big Muddy Film Festival, and the 2013 dresdner schmalfilmtage. He was one of the co-founders of KLEX: Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival and Transient Visions: Festival of the Moving Image.
Last Train -
Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy
12 min loop, 16mm to Digital, Color, silent, 2016
Found in the (now possibly lost) film archive at Lab Laba Laba, footage from a trailer for the 1981 Indonesian propaganda film "Kereta Api Terakhir" (The Last Train) melts into a soup of chemigrammed (produced by chemistry, not by light) perforations. A film about the silence that follows the unspeakable; about blurred visions, untold histories and inaccessible archives.
Richard Tuohy (b. 1969) and Dianna Barrie (b. 1972), both born in Melbourne, are artists working primarily with analogue moving image media. Through individual and collaborative practice, workshops, and the establishment of nanolab and Artist Film Workshop, they advocate for experimental, celluloid-based cinema internationally.
Shibuya-Tokyo -
Tomonari Nishikawa
10 min loop, 16mm to digital, color, 2010
As a following sequence of Tokyo - Ebisu, this film shows the views around the exits of 20 stations in JR Yamanote Line, from Shibuya Station to Tokyo Station clockwise. The images captured by the masking and multiple exposure techniques show the movements of people and
vehicles on the street, and signs of train stations as backgrounds.
Incantation -
Kalpana Subramanian
8 min 40 sec loop, Digital, Color, 2022
A serendipitous ritual of memory.
Colliding archives of body and place.
A cine-incantation to freedom and (be)longing.
Kalpana Subramanian is an artist-filmmaker, scholar and curator whose work focuses on experimental film and media through a transcultural and interdisciplinary perspective. She is an Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Capitol Limited -
Ahmed Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb
2 min loop, Digital, Color, 2024
A wedding day, a tragedy, and an Amtrak train route are intertwined in this personal exploration of marriage and contemporary America.
Lily Ekimian Ragheb & Ahmed T. Ragheb are a married experimental filmmaking duo based in Pittsburgh, PA. Their films emphasize identity, feminism, cultural dislocation and domestic relationships and are noted for their use of voiceover and mixed media. Together they founded the independent production company Studio Ragheb.
In Transit -
Azin Feizabadi
24 min loop, Digital, Color, 2022
A hybrid fiction-documentary film about a traveller whose shadow wants to make itself independent upon arrival in Germany. Facing it and gazing at the shadow with the help of his video camera, memories and flashbacks cut rhythmically into the travellers records of the present untill a remix of his past and future occurs. All this in an in-between space, in a non-place, ‘In Transit’.
Azin Feizabadi is as an Iranian-born Berlin based filmmaker, visual artist & film curator.
The Iron Ministry -
J.P. Sniadecki
84 min loop, Digital, Color, 2014
This film traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, language and gesture. Fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines come together on what will soon be the world’s largest railway network.
JP Sniadecki works between the US and China as a filmmaker and anthropologist. From Chengdu demolition sites to New York City junkyards to the Sonoran Desert borderlands, he collaborates with people and places to explore film's capacity for transfiguration of the discarded and transgression of the status quo.
The Call -
Kelly Sears
7 min 6 sec loop, Digital, Color, 2024
A rebellion has been building for decades. The Call is an eco-revenge film featuring unlikely instigators who were observed and filmed over three years at airports across the United States. This is a call to action.
Kelly Sears uses experimental animation techniques to reframe and reconfigure source imagery. Her films draw on documentary and speculative fiction storytelling as she reimagines our social and political legacies and futures. She is an Associate Professor in the Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts Department at the University of Colorado Boulder.
XCTRY - Bill Brown
6 min 18 sec loop, Digital, Color, 2019
Brown re-works 16mm footage that he shot years ago during a cross-country road trip from Chicago to Las Vegas. The spatial discontinuities of the road trip are rendered as visual continuities across three frames as Brown goes in search of the next town to fall in and out of love with.
Bill Brown is a filmmaker interested in the geographical extensions of memory, history, and tragedy. He is the co-founder of the Cosmic Rays Film Festival and currently lives in Marseille.
Meridian Plain - Laura Kraning
18 min loop, Digital, B& W, 2019
MERIDIAN PLAIN maps an enigmatic distant landscape excavated from hundreds of thousands of archival still images, forecasting visions of a possible future, transmitted from a mechanical eye.
Laura Kraning creates atmospheric visual and sonic portraits of landscapes at the intersection of nature and machine. Her work has screened at international film festivals, museums, and galleries including NYFF, Rotterdam, Edinburgh, London, MoMA and National Gallery of Art, among others.
Untitled- Yue Hua
Interactive, 8 min loop, Digital, B& W, 2025
Single-screen generative video with public transportation footage to explore memory as accumulation and erasure. Each button press generates a new clip: black-and-white single-line images are layered, then gradually erased, forming a shifting visual field where multiple moments briefly coexist before dissolving.
Yue Hua/华越 (she/her) is a Chinese American filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist working with analog film, expanded cinema, and digital media. Her work explores cross-cultural identity, language, and female experience. Screened internationally, she holds an MFA from Emerson College.
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Partners & Sponsors
Revolutions Per Minute Festival is co-hosted by Art and Art History Department and Cinema Studies at UMass-Boston,
MFA Boston, Goethe-institut Boston, Brattle Theatre in Cambridge & Harvard FAS CAMLab.
RPM Series at Boston City hall presented with the support of a grant from Mayor's Office of Arts & Culture.
The RPM Awards are co-presented with the Cinelab, Boston.
