PLASMA Presents: Crystal Campbell, multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer

Monday, March 28th, the Department of Media Study's PLASMA (Performances, Lectures, And Screenings in Media Art)​ will feature an online screening and presentation by CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL.

The Zoom Meeting ID for the lecture series is 939 5189 1859. Email paigesar@buffalo with PLASMA2022 in the subject line for the password.​ 

Currently a Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Art at the University of Buffalo, Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of African American, Filipino, and Chinese descents. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but untold or unspoken. Using archival material, recent works consider historical gaps in the narrative of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, revisit questions of immortality and medical ethics with Henrietta Lacks' “immortal” cell line, ponder the role of a political monument and displacement in a Swedish coastal landscape, and salvage a 35mm film from a demolished Black activist theater in Brooklyn as a relic of gentrification. Sonic, material, and archival traces of the witness inform their work in film/video, performance, installation, sound, painting, and writing.

Honors and awards include a 2022 Creative Capital Award; Harvard Radcliffe Film Study Center & David and Roberta Logie Fellowship; Pollock-Krasner Award; MAP Fund; MacDowell; MAAA; Skowhegan; Rijksakademie; Whitney ISP; Franklin Furnace; UNDO Fellowship; Tulsa Artist Fellowship; Black Spatial Relics; and Flaherty Film Seminar, amongst others. Select exhibitions and screenings include the Drawing Center (US), Nest (NL), ICA-Philadelphia (US), MOMA (US), BLOCK Museum (US), REDCAT (US), Artissima (IT), Studio Museum of Harlem (US), Bemis (US), Project Row Houses (US), SculptureCenter (US), and SFMOMA (US). Campbell’s writing is featured in two artist books (VSW Press), World Literature Today, Monday Journal, GARAGE, and Hyperallergic. Founder of the virtual programming platform archiveacts.com, Campbell was named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts.

Brief remarks addressed to the students who are enrolled in PLASMA as a course will begin at 6:00 PM sharp. CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL's presentation and screening will begin at 6:10 pm EST.

As always, PLASMA lectures are free and open to the UB community and the public.​ 

PLASMA is sponsored by the University at Buffalo's Department of Media Study and funding is provided by the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The series is curated by Dr. Paige Sarlin, Assistant Professor of Media Study, in collaboration with Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center.