Revisiting Studies into Darkness: Aberrating the Image, Archives as Surveillance

Maya Jeffereis (b. Los Angeles; Based in New York) is an artist working in video, performance, and installation. Her work seeks to expand upon overlooked histories and archival gaps through counter and personal narratives, offering both critical perspectives and speculative possibilities.

Ayanna Dozier (PhD) is a Brooklyn-based artist-writer. Her art practice centers performance, experimental film, printmaking and photography, using auto-fiction, surrealist, conceptual, and feminist methods. Her research on film navigates the history of distribution, archaeology, and radical work of Black feminist experimental filmmakers. While her current research and artwork is dedicated to examining how transactional intimacy (like sex work) redistributes care from the private sector into the public, social politics of relations. She is currently an assistant professor in communication, emphasis in film, at University Massachusetts, Amherst and is the author of Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope (2020).

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is an artist-focused research center and public forum for art, culture, and politics. It was established at The New School in 1992—a time of rousing debates about freedom of speech, identity politics, and society’s investment in the arts. A leader in the field, the center is a nonprofit that catalyzes and supports politically engaged art, public scholarship, and research throughout the world. It fosters vibrant and diverse communities of artists, scholars, and policymakers who take creative, intellectual, and political risks to bring about positive change.