Co-President Spotlight: Chanee Choi and René Garcia Cepeda

Elsa Lamere
Who are you and where are you currently located? Whoever wants to start.

Chanee Choi
My name is Chanee, I'm South Korean, and I've been living in the United States for almost 15 years now. I'm currently in Albany, New York. I am an assistant professor at SUNY University at Albany.

René Garcia Cepeda
Hi, I'm Rene Garcia-Cepeda. I'm A Mexican curator and researcher specializing in new media. I'm located right now in Karlsruhe, which most people know because of the ZKM, the Museum of New Media Art. Right now, I am working with the New Media Caucus and searching for the next thing.

Elsa Lamere
What brought you to New Media Caucus?

Chanee Choi
Okay, I will go again. So, Rene was on the jury that chose me to receive a microgrant in the New Media Caucus, and at the time, I was having a hard time with my PhD. It made me realize how great New Media Caucus is, and I feel like it kind of saved my life. So, I decided to join, and that was in 2025. What about you, Rene?

René Garcia Cepeda
In my case, I had graduated with my PhD 2 years prior, and I was teaching at a college in Mexico. I was looking to become more international, and I wanted to grow more, so I started looking at different opportunities. I found this one, which was a curatorial position for the Header Footer Gallery, which at the time really wasn't the established thing like it is now. Jesse, the president at the time, wanted to move it forward, so I applied, and then I forgot about it. One day in February, I got an e-mail that said something like, “Congratulations, you're the new curator”. And that's how I started here at NMC, and now I’m one of the co-presidents of it. That was in 2022.

Elsa Lamere
That's awesome. It must have been a surprise to receive that e-mail. And what does new media art mean for both of you?

René Garcia Cepeda
I hold a unique perspective on what new media is: that it's very different from what Christiane Paul says, or what Steve Dietz says, or Lev Manovich. In my interpretation, new media art is any art that uses new technologies, specifically from the Industrial Revolution onward. So, in this interpretation, things like the development of oil paint tubes are part of new media. It was one of the first revolutions that happened in technology that enabled completely new ways of creating art. So, to me, that still falls within the purview of new media art. Obviously, as these things become accepted, they stop being new media art, and they just become art. We've seen this, for example, with video and sound art, which not many people consider as new media anymore. Photography exists in a weird space where it is still considered a new media art in some spaces and in others it's not. So, it's all of that, but it also includes biology, science, using your body in different ways, etc. All these things are what I consider to be new media art.

Chanee Choi
I’ve thought a lot about this question as well, as my background is in craft. Craft is not always considered to be art in some conservative places. I wanted it to transition to new forms to talk more about narrative ideas. At the time, I felt like the institution I belonged to didn't welcome me, and I felt I needed to study in a place a bit more open-minded. So, I chose to move to this country. I think I was biased because what I wanted to learn, I could have in my country too. But at that time, I felt it was very limited, even though it’s not. So, I chose a place farther away to study more and explore myself.
There is a gap between people’s ideas of what art is and what it isn't. For example, Roger Ebert, an art critic who said game art is not art. I think that was even before post-internet art was becoming popular, and some people still don't think internet art is art. New media art is always pushing boundaries, and I chose to be in new media art to embrace everything together, as a craftsman too. That is why I'm in New Media Caucus, and I'm happy to be here.

Elsa Lamere
Since you two are the new co-presidents, do you have any plans for the upcoming year? Whatever you'd like to share.

René Garcia Cepeda
We do have a few plans and things, but we are currently in a restructuring situation here at New Media Caucus. New people are coming in and others are leaving; a plan that just happened to line up at the same time with us beginning our new positions as co-presidents. Their 3 years were planned to be over now, so nothing catastrophic, just adjustments. So that's taken priority for a little bit. We hit the ground running, and we’ve hardly had a chance to stop and look around. But alongside that, we're starting a stronger curatorial program, I'm hoping, with the suggestions of some curators by Chanee and others that I know. Also, just two days ago, we released our first permanent exhibition in collaboration with the ZKM and Abertay University, which was the hosting of Joseph DeLappe’s Howl, which is considered foundational to performance on the internet.
You might be more familiar with Joseph from his piece, dead_on_iraq, in which he played a shooter video game hosted by the US Army, where he simply stood and listed the names of soldiers who had died during the conflict. He would update it constantly.
Another piece of his, GTA Elegy, ran for one year as a modification of GTA, where every day the NPCs would kill each other until it reached the number of contacts on the day. So, every day the count would increase, and it would be more hectic.
So he's done that, and now we have his new piece up with the Header/Footer Gallery.
We had a meeting with a Mexican artist in Berlin that's doing this Democratization of Art project for Document, edition 16, I believe. We're looking to sponsor that and provide support in exchange for visibility. This is one of the efforts that we've been taking to make the association even more international, which is something that's been the goal for a while.
The goal of the association is to diversify the voices that are available. We are committed to expanding that, to making it even more accessible, more distributed, and welcoming to others, and maybe find ways that the association can give back to the community as well.
So that's on my part, what I've been working on and helping with, well, obviously with the help of Chanee.

Chanee Choi
Yes, so two more curators are coming to the Header Footer Gallery. One of the artist curators is in Denver, and she has a lot of experience with media art. Her name is Sharifa Lafon. Her goal may be to bring out some Midwest influence in an online NMC exhibition, working with Rene. And then there is another one, and her name is Lindsey Whittle. She’s a co-owner of Pique Gallery. She is a popular performance curator in online exhibitions too. We are excited to collaborate and connect with them both.
So, for me, my personal research is about understanding the gap between AI believers and AI haters in art creation, understanding what it is about moral superiority and bias, and how we can try to reduce the gap. I want to see how New Media Caucus can handle this because AI is quite a new topic to talk about in our genre. So that is my goal. I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but right now I am still figuring out the process. I'm hoping to start up some new things, perhaps next year, to impact our community.

Elsa Lamere
Is there anything you like to talk about more regarding your personal practices? And where can people find your work physically and digitally?

René Garcia Cepeda
Oh, okay. Well, the best two ways to find out what I'm doing is basically my Instagram, which is @renegcepeda. That's where you will find out about the podcast that we're running, and about exhibitions that we're doing as well. And yeah. There is also my webpage: Renegcepeda.art. The website is where you can find a bit more of my professional work, like books and publications.
Right now, I am also looking at AI. There's a possibility for me to work on a project on the history of AI. It's not working with AI; it's working about AI. It’s about saving its history for posterity; whether it's good or bad is irrelevant to the project. It's more about saving this history and recording what's been said and what's being done.

Elsa Lamere
That's awesome. I feel like AI is so controversial right now. It's important for people to understand it better.

René Garcia Cepeda
Yeah, complicated subject.

Chanee Choi
True, true. And then for me, I currently don't have an exhibition upcoming. I'm working on two different things. I have proposed a performance at a local venue called “The Egg”, and I am currently waiting on a university grant decision in December to make it happen.
I also created a card game about AI. It plays with the ideas of AI haters and believers to confuse them about what the difference between them is. I'm planning to film the game with real players. I can't wait to do it. I haven't made art for about a year to adjust to my new position in school, so I'm so happy to start working on it.