07 Sep Announcing New 2023-2024 Fellows

Posted at 11:11h in News by

The MIT Open Documentary Lab is thrilled to introduce our new 2023-2024 fellows.  As always, they come with a range of backgrounds and expertise and use emerging technologies and many types of media to tell stories that critique and question norms and provide space to imagine and create a better future.

A headshot of fellow Pierre-Christophe Gam. The photo is cropped close to his face, and the right side of the face is lit, but the left side of his face is entirely in shadow and not visible.Pierre-Christophe Gam is a polymath artist and future thinker. He draws from Africa’s rich pre-colonial heritage to create physical and virtual spaces that foster learning, connection, and imagination. While at OpenDocLab, he’ll be working on The Global Mapping of Dreams, an investigation that will use the framework of TOGUNA World, a Future-dreaming ritual hosted within a metaverse dream world, to drive an ambitious transcontinental conversation on the African future.

 

A headshot of Marjolaine Grappe in front of a multi-colored, swirling background.

Marjolaine Grappe is an independent documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist and a 2020 & 2021 SFFILM FilmHouse resident. She has directed several award-winning feature-length journalism investigations including Guantanamo Limbo and a series of investigative reports about China’s One-Child Policy. While at OpenDocLab, she’ll be working on a new project exploring the intersection of film, investigative journalism and games.

 

Diana Maria Rico Muñoz is an artist, filmmaker and singer, born and raised in the savanna of Bogotá, Colombia. While at OpenDocLab she is working on A Hybrid Altar to Coca, the latest in a series of works that intend to address the misunderstandings, clash of values, and (potentially) disastrous consequences that have so far been inherent to the Western (mis)understanding of the coca plant, due to its association with cocaine.

 

Meghna Singh is an artist and researcher with a Ph.D. in visual anthropology from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. While at the OpenDocLab, she’ll work with Simon Wood on Enacting Futures: Occupying the Digital, an immersive interactive exhibition presenting forms of futuristic expression via protest occupations in existing and imagined worlds.

 

A headshot of Simon Wood against a gray, vingetted background.

Simon Wood is a multi-award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer based in Cape Town, South Africa. While at OpenDocLab, he will collaborate with Meghna Singh on Enacting Futures: Occupying the Digital, an immersive interactive exhibition, presenting forms of futuristic expression via occupations in existing and imagined worlds.

 

 

A headshot of Ryat Yezbick. They are seated in front of large brown rock formation.

Ryat Yezbick‘s practice is highly interdisciplinary and research-based. A former cultural anthropologist, they use qualitative research methods to investigate U.S. cultural relationships to witnessing, group identity and contemporary morals in the era of digital surveillance and decentralized global conflict. At OpenDocLab, Yezbick will work on The Innocence of Unknowing, a multi-platform project that investigates the history of news media coverage of mass shootings in the U.S. since 1957.

For a full list of 2023-2024 fellows which includes returning fellows, visit our people page and click on fellows.