Mel Racho & Angelicunt Goldsky
May 18 – 26, 2023
Factory Media Centre is thrilled to present Trancestor.AI, a resideny culminating exhibition from our 2023 &NOW Artists-in-Residence Mel Racho and Angelicunt Goldsky.
Trancestor.AI showcases the works of Mel Racho and Angelic Goldsky (Angelicunt) as they explore transgender AI processes and their intervention with artificial intelligences. Their aim is to illuminate the spirit of transgender life and poetics while revealing the shadows of binaries that resist the ethereal.
The exhibition features interdisciplinary media creations by Mel Racho and Angelicunt, who ask the question: “How can we create algorithms that center transness and the poetic, as opposed to oppression or neutrality?” In doing so, the artists contemplate the possibilities of queer loving, trans shadow work, and engaging with ancestral and spiritual powers through machine learning. However, they also confront coded designs that resist transgender realities and heavens.
About the Artists
Mel Racho (he/him) is a queer trans Fillipinx media artist-scholar interested in creating revolutionary systems. He holds a Master of Information in Information Systems, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and Digital Media, and is currently a PhD candidate in Toronto Metropolitan University and York Universities’ jointly administered Communication and Culture program with a focus on studying the data de/colonial infrastructures within the evolution and futurity of the web. He creatively contributes to York U’s Digital Justice Lab, the University of Ottawa and Carleton Universities’ Transgender Media Portal and Digital Democracies Institute’s Data Fluencies project.
Angelic Goldsky (t[he]y) is a transgender Russian-Ukranian-Jewish poet, media artist and queer arts producer. With an interest in the creative potential of spiritual justice, Angelic has contributed community programs and research-creation processes at the Canadian Jewish Archives & the Concordia Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies and the Museum of Anthropology. In 2020, they were awarded Creative BC’s Interactive Fund Award and co-founded The Transgender Expressions Haven, a virtual performance and visual art venue honoring transgender creative power. Angelic holds a Bachelor of Media Studies from the UBC and a Master of Arts in Arts Politics from NYU. Currently, they are the TD Public Programmes and Learning Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto.
The two have collaborated together in producing transgender-cyber-utopic programs, including Augmented Reality at the historic Buddies and Bad Times Theatre. Together they collaborate on music, transgender art space, and interactive/experimental and machine learning art
About the &NOW Production Residency & Scholarship
Factory Media Centre annually hosts our &NOW Production Residency & Scholarship (PR&S) program each winter. This is a valuable opportunity for artists and creators to utilize the space and resources at FMC to produce a new work, or continue a developing body of work. Selections are based on project originality, its potential for artistic growth, and the use and integration of FMC as a production location. Click here to learn more about our &NOW Residency Program.
About Factory Media Centre
Factory Media Centre is Hamilton’s not-for-profit artist-driven resource centre for film, video, new media, installation, sound art, and other multimedia art forms. Our mission is to develop and support a vibrant, sustainable, creative, and diverse community of Members and non-Members within Hamilton and its surrounding region.