Mani Mehrvarz, PhD Media Study ‘20

Media Artist, Filmmaker

Founder of Buffalo Documentary Project, Curator of Media-as-things Collective, Co-founding editor of MAST (The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory)

Mani Mehrvarz is a media artist and filmmaker. He holds a Ph.D. in Media Study (practice+theory) from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His doctoral research was focused on the materiality of media in artistic practice in the contexts of both radical media archaeology and object-oriented philosophy. Mehrvarz has taught basic, intermediate and advanced courses in documentary, video art, and media theory at UB’s Department of Media Study (2015 – 2020).

In 2016, Mehrvarz founded Buffalo Documentary Project which combines oral history and documentary filmmaking to explore the communities, art, culture and lived experiences of the city of Buffalo and WNY beyond mainstream narratives. He is also the curator of Media-as-things Collective, an ongoing collaborative multimedia project devoted to practice and research in media archaeology, noise, glitch and non-communication aesthetics in media art. He is the co-founding editor of MAST (The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory), an open-access blind peer-reviewed journal dedicated to interdisciplinary research in media art and practice-based studies.

Mehrvarz’s art practice with the moving-image goes beyond the conventional linear storytelling and explores various forms of databased cinema, interactive documentary, and video mapping. His videos/films have been exhibited and screened worldwide since 2006, and have received awards and honors in juried festivals including the 17th Japan Media Art Festival, Norway’s PERL Media Festival, Poland’s Short Waves Festival, Cologne International Videoart Festival, FIVA Video Art Festival in Buenos Aires, Chile’s 12th Bienal de Artes Mediales, India’s Kochi Muziris Biennial, and Buffalo International Film Festival, among others.
https://manimehrvarz.com/