Lydia Matthews, in collaboration with San Francisco-based filmmaker Jeanne C. Finley, received a 2015 CEC Artslink Project Award for Entering the Cosmos. This video and socially-engaged art project explores how Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome fuels the local production of scientific research, sci-fi cinema, and children’s collective imaginary. Through a space program-inspired art/ science/folklore workshop for teenagers in Almaty, participants will debate, narrate, construct, perform, photograph and videotape visions of alternative universes, considering how Kazakh folk tales can inform “other worlds” of the future. The residency will culminate in a video installation hosted by Almaty’s Eurasian Cultural Alliance (including workshop artifacts/performances), followed by a project presentation at Silk Road House in Berkeley, CA, designed to engage the Kazakh diaspora.

Here is the link to CEC Artslink’s website announcement:

http://www.cecartslink.org/grants/participants/FB_IP_AP_awardees_2015.html