Alicia Chester

Photographic media artist

Arts and culture writer

PhD candidate

in visual and cultural studies

at the University of Rochester

Dissertation:

"Study Nature, Not Books:

A Genealogy of Photography

from Psychiatric Portraiture to Brain Imaging"

Current Exhibition:

At, For, By, Of, About

group exhibition of work by ACRE alumni in

Artists Run Chicago 2.0 at the Hyde Park Art Center

Sept. 1 – Nov. 1, 2020

Experience

Summer 2020

COLLECTION MANAGEMENT ASSISTANT

Assisted grant-funded audit of the film collection. Self-checked over 6,000 cans of nitrate film: inspected film and can conditions, identified and noted levels of decomposition, removed foreign objects from cans and identified which of these items to archive, cross-referenced and corrected accession and location number discrepancies, updated nitrate film master list, identified film preservation priorities.

Fall 2018-Spring 2020

GEORGE EASTMAN MUSEUM

GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP

MOVING IMAGE DEPARTMENT

Nitrate Picture Show film festival archival researcher and volunteer coordinator, conduct long-term project research, write texts for the Dryden Theatre, inspect archived nitrate motion picture film

Fall 2020

SUSAN B. ANTHONY INSTITUTE

for GENDER, SEXUALITY & WOMEN'S STUDIES

TEACHING FELLOWSHIP

Create and teach an introductory topics course (GSWS 100):

“Robot Love: Decoding Gender in Technology” questions assumptions underlying how technology is built and operates regarding gender, race, and sexual orientation. It examines the relationship of technology to society and our everyday, embodied lives while also considering cultural imagination about technology and its oppressive or emancipatory possibilities.

2016-2018

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION

DIGITAL HUMANITIES FELLOWSHIP

Trains humanities PhD students to integrate digital technologies into innovative research programs

Research assistantships

Architectural Biometrics, principal investigator Dr. Peter Christensen

The Lazarus Project, principal investigator Dr. Gregory Heyworth

2013-PRESENT

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER

PHD CANDIDATE, VISUAL & CULTURAL STUDIES

Dissertation in progress

Study Nature, Not Books: A Genealogy of Photography from Psychiatric Portraiture to Brain Imaging

Research interests: Photography history and theory, media archaeology, science and technology studies, medical humanities, modern and contemporary art

2012-2014

DEPARTMENT OF ART & DESIGN

Taught five sections per year of digital photography and supervised independent study students

2007-2010

PORTFOLIO

A Nuclear Happening at Site A On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.	A Nuclear Happening at Site A On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.	A Nuclear Happening at Site A On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.
A Nuclear Happening at Site A (2013) On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.	A Nuclear Happening at Site A On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.	A Nuclear Happening at Site A (2013) On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.
A Nuclear Happening at Site A On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.	A Nuclear Happening at Site A video stil On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.	A Nuclear Happening at Site A video stil On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.
A Nuclear Happening at Site A On July 14, 2013, Alicia Chester and Amber Ginsburg held an experimental happening at Site A in the Red Gate Woods just south of Chicago. Site A is the burial ground of the first nuclear reactor, CP-1 (Chicago Pile 1). The site where its radioactive waste was buried is nearby in Plot M, which is simply marked by a white stone cube. We deployed a 14’ x 14’ inflatable room at Site A in the form of the cubed memorial marker at Plot M and held a picnic inside with invited guests.	Looking Back Installation view, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago (2013)	Looking Back Installation detail, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago (2013)
Looking Back Still from Super 8 footage shot at ACRE residency (2012)	Looking Back Still from Super 8 footage shot at ACRE residency (2012)	Looking Back "Boscobel," still from Civil War reenactment Super 8 footage shot in Boscobel, Wisconsin (2012)
Trou (True) Photo series shot at the ACRE residency (2012)	Sounding Board Video still from Sounding Board (2011) in the Acconci Redux series	Open Book Grid of video stills from Open Book (2012) in the Acconci Redux series
Pryings Video still from Pryings (2012) in the Acconci Redux series	Theme Song Video still from Theme Song (2012-2013) in the Acconci Redux series	The Swap (2014) Portrait swap with Regina Mamou
This is...Terry Gross Or, love letters to anonymous people. For a group exhibition, Edmund Chia, founder of PEREGRINEPROGRAM, gave me the prompt, "this is . . . Terry Gross." In response to the testimonial and confessional tone of Terry Gross's interview-based NPR radio show, I composed a letter sourced from personal reflections and letters written intermittently over the past decade, but mostly from 2011-2013. Edition of 250 letters mailed by request.	Forest for the Trees (2010-2011)	October 17, 2013, Buffalo, NY Beginning of the Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing). "Beehive," Moholy-Nagy study for Douglas Crimp
October 25, 2014, Detroit, MI Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)	March 20, 2016, Rochester, NY Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)	October 17, 2016, Indian Lake, NY Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)
November 7, 2017, Rochester, NY Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)	March 14, 2018, Santa Fe, NM Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)	March 23, 2018, Rochester, NY Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)
September 15, 2018, Rochester, NY Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)	March 24, 2019, London, UK Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)	March 23, 2019, London, UK Instagrammar series (2014-ongoing)
Experiments with Joy: "Fuzz" (2017) Experiments with Joyce Neimanas	Experiments with Joy: "Wonder Women" Experiments with Joyce Neimanas (2017)