Introducing our Creative Associates programme

We are excited to announce our Creative Associates programme bringing together artists, technologists, researchers & activists to explore new perspectives and ideas with Abandon Normal Devices.

Across key research areas of New Cinema, Emergent Technologies, Sustainability and Equity, the Creative Associates and AND aim to collaboratively develop creative projects and ideas that steer AND’s curatorial and organisational direction.

As an ongoing creative inquiry, the programme will collaborate with exciting voices currently under-represented in the emerging technology and arts sector, to help support our networks with training, valuable research time, and early-stage development opportunities.

In this new venture, our ambition is to integrate a richness of perspective to the organisation that advocates for diversity of thought, and introduce new ways of collaborative working with the radical creative communities we seek to connect with.

Our Creative Associates

Savena Surana
Savena, who was one of our first Associate Board Members, has been working closely with the Executive team to develop the ambition and framework for a 3 year Associate Board Members programme to diversify our Board.

Savena Surana, an award-winning creative communicator and producer, utilises the power of storytelling to shed light on social issues and amplify voices of social good. Through her work with prestigious organisations like the United Nations Foundation, Museum of London and Lego she crafts narratives that inspire change and challenge the status quo.

Read about Savena’s experience as an Associate Board Member and our reflections on the process as an organisation.

Jazmin Morris + Keiken
During their time as Creative Associates, we’ll be supporting artist Jazmin Morris and collective Keiken in undertaking research and early-stage development for site-specific projects as artists. We’ll provide resources within the AND team and network to support artists in conceiving and developing ambitious new work that engage with local contexts and audiences. Our ambition is to support practitioners with the valuable research time and early-stage development required to weave plans and concepts for proposals together.

Founded in 2015 by Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori and Isabel Ramos, the artist collective Keiken are collaboratively building and imagining speculative futures to test-drive new ways of existing. They do this through filmmaking, gaming, installation, XR, blockchain, and performance.

Jazmin Morris is a Creative Computing Artist and Educator based in Leeds. Her practice and pedagogy consider the historical trajectories of modern technology and critically speculate on the landscape of human-computer interaction.
Using free and open-source tools, Jazmin crafts participatory digital works that challenge power dynamics and hierarchies within cyberspace, with a particular emphasis on the processes of simulating culture and identity. Despite her critical approach, Jazmin appreciates the early days of the internet and is a huge fan of the classic gaming icon, Super Mario 64.

Jazmin and Keiken are due to showcasing a body of work as part of our new programme, Commons, at Modal in the School of Digital Arts. Find out more about Commons.

Image: FREEPORT Critical part of FREEPORT: Terminal MCR at University of Salford, 2019. Photo by Chris Foster