Roya Rastegar

Roya Rastegar

Los Angeles, CA

Roya Rastegar is a writer, curator and scholar living between Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Most recently, she collaborated with Wu Tsang as the screenwriter of Wildness (2012), a magical realist documentary that premiered at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight Festival and has gained critical acclaim at festivals across the Americas. Rastegar has curated within both film and art contexts, as a Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (2008-09) and part of the programming teams of various film festivals. Rastegar received a PhD in the History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz, under the guidance of Angela Davis and B. Ruby Rich. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor and Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art Department at Bryn Mawr College, and is currently developing a critical study of American film festivals and the radical possibilities of film and new media curatorial practices.

Biopolitics of the Digital Camera


Roya Rastegar

Artist Bio

This installation project explores the biopolitical possibilities of digital videos, with a focus on two genres of videos that (in different ways) create a world of watchers: witness videos of unjust murders, often at the hands of police; and videos by social influencers, often structured around fashion or beauty. The part 1 of the project will focus on videos by social influencers. These videos enable a new way of inhabiting ones life, propagating a new subjectivity and way of being in the world that is self-determined. Those who want to watch populate this world; this watching quickly evolves into becoming a fan, being in love. This is more than taste making. This is the dialogic making of a system of values, morals, and ethics between the creator and the fan, the watcher and the seen, in a endless, relational process of creating their world.


Award Year
2013
Status

In Progress