Storytellers' Institute Kick Off - Get Ready for Forum!

The Storytellers' Institute begins this week with our talented Student, Faculty and Visiting Fellows! For the first year ever, we are also thrilled to welcome a non-Skidmore student into the mix, Sophia Burns, who joins us from Vassar College. We look forward to a month of deep collaboration, study, making, and discussion.

 In just two weeks, we invite the Skidmore and Capital region community to join us for the 2018 MDOCS FORUM: Surveil/Surveilled June 7th-10th. This annual event series brings together makers, scholars, activists and students to present artistic works, panel discussions, workshops and conversations that engage with the yearly theme and documentary practice. Please see a full schedule here.

This year we have two keynote speakers Hasan Elahi and Assia Boundaoui. Hasan Elahi is a Guggenheim Fellowship and Creative Capital recipient whose work examines issues of surveillance, citizenship, migration, transport, and the challenges of borders and frontiers. Assia Boundaoui works as a journalist and filmmaker. She has reported for the BBC, NPR, AlJazeera, VICE, and CNN. She will be joined by the editor Rabab Haj Yahya and director of photography Shuling Yong of her debut feature documentary film, The Feeling of Being Watched, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival this Spring and addresses the surveillance of Muslim Americans in the Chicago area through a personal lens. In addition to our keynotes, MDOCS Forum will feature: workshops with Our Data Bodies and Ines Hofmann Kanna; performance by Dayna McLeod; scholarly presentations by Alexandra Juhasz, Dan Miller, and Jason Fox; film by Javier Barboza and Jacqueline Olive, a student exhibition curated by Skidmore students, and much more.

All events are free and open to the public and we hope that you will join us for what is bound to be a generative and inspiring weekend!