Dates:
Sat, 12 Sept 2026, 12:00–12:45
Join Ryat Yezbick for a live performance of The Innocence of Unknowing, recipient of an Honorary Mention in the Prix Ars Electronica 2026, New Animation Art category.
The project investigates how mass shootings are mediated, staged and normalized through broadcast news. At its center is a custom-built AI Humanities Scholar developed by Ryat Yezbick and Milo Talwan—an original machine learning system capable of editing, indexing and analyzing every second of footage within an archive of more than 800 television news broadcasts spanning seven decades. Trained on critical theory and humanities texts, the AI identifies recurring gestures of flight, compliance, containment and police presence across time. These movements are reframed as “choreographies of retreat,” revealing how broadcast media has contributed to the normalization of surveillance and the expanding police state.
Ryat Yezbick is a visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans live performance, experimental documentary, installation, new media and drawing. Their work explores the body, memory and the politics of witnessing in an era of digital surveillance and global conflict, addressing questions of security, gender, family, violence and responsibility. Yezbick is a faculty member in the Narrative and Emerging Media Program at Arizona State University, a MIT Open Documentary Lab Fellow, and an ONX Studio Fellow.
Categories: Performance
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