The Fall Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist Lecture Series will conclude with talks featuring Holly Willis, chair of the Media Arts + Practice Division in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and Steve Anderson, a scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of media, history, technology and culture.
Willis’ lecture will be 5:30 p.m. Nov. 12 at the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Anderson’s lecture is at 5 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center and will be followed by a sneak preview of Anderson’s new film, “Reality Friction.” The lecture and film are free and open to the public.
Willis studies reconfigurations of cinema and experimental media. She also co-directs the AI for Media and Storytelling (AIMS) initiative of the USC Center for Generative AI and Society and is a hybrid scholar/practitioner integrating critical theory and media production primarily using video, still images and sound as forms of critical making.
She is the author of “Fast Forward: The Future(s) of the Cinematic Arts,” “New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image” and “Bjork Digital.” She is the co-founder of Filmmaker Magazine, which is dedicated to independent film, and a former editor of RES Magazine and co-curator of RESFEST. She writes frequently for diverse publications about experimental film, video and new media, and her work has appeared in Film Comment, Afterimage, Variety and The Normal School.
Anderson is a professor of digital media at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, and associate dean for academic affairs in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. He received a doctorate in film, literature and culture from USC and a Master of Fine Arts in film and video from CalArts.
He is the author of “Technologies of Vision: The War Between Data and Images” (MIT 2017) and “Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past” (Dartmouth 2011). He is also co-editor of the anthology “Reclaiming Popular Documentary” (Indiana 2021).
Anderson is the founder of the appropriation-friendly public media archive Critical Commons and co-principal investigator on the electronic authoring platform Scalar.
His recent creative work includes the mixed reality installation Live-VR Corridor (2021), which won the award for Best Mixed Reality at the New Media Film Festival and premiered internationally at the Beijing International Film Festival in 2021.
His feature-length video essay, “Reality Frictions” premiered at the Madrid International Film Festival in 2024.
The School of Art, Art History and Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students.
Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations.
For more information on the series, contact the School of Art, Art History and Design at 402-472-5522 or schoolaahd@unl.edu.
