“Moving and Being Moved: A conversation with Sabine Gruffat”

Sabine Gruffat is a French-American artist born in Bangkok, Thailand. She works with experimental video and animation, media-enhanced performance, participatory public art, and immersive installation. In this work, machines, interfaces, and systems constitute the language by which she codes the world. The creation of new ideas means inventing new ways of using existing tools, crossing signals, or repurposing old hardware. By actively disrupting both current and outmoded technology, Gruffat questions the standardized and mediatized world around us. She has produced digital media works for public spaces as well as interactive installations that have been shown at the Zolla Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, Art In General, Devotion Gallery, PS1 Contemporary Art Museum, and Hudson Franklin in New York.
She is also a filmmaker with a special interest in the social and political implications of media and technology. Her experimental and essay films explore how technology, globalization, urbanism, and capitalism affect human beings and the environment. These films seek to empower people, encourage social participation, and inspire political engagement. Sabine's films and videos have screened at festivals worldwide including the Image Forum Festival in Japan, The Ann Arbor Film Festival in Michigan, and Migrating Forms in New York, the Viennale, MoMA Documentary Fortnight, Cinéma du Réel at the Centre Pompidou, 25FPS in Croatia, Transmediale in Berlin, and The Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. Her recent video works are distributed by the Video Data Bank in Chicago, IL.

Sponsored by the Visiting Artist Series of the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies