Background
Professor Ariana Gerstein’s film and video work employs layered, essayistic, self-reflexive forms and finds understanding through a hands-on media-making process, including single-image, time-based constructions made with film, paper, video and desktop scans. She is currently working on a long-form exploration of her family archive, funded through grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Her teaching interests range from experimental animation (both analog and digital) to hybrid filmmaking and video, stereoscopy and projection with found and handmade screens, both indoors and on buildings.
Professor Gerstein holds a BA from Binghamton University, where she studied with department founders Ken Jacobs and Larry Gottheim, and received her MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Barbara Hammer, Dennis Couzin and Chris Sullivan.
She is the graduate director of the MFA program in Cinema.
Screenings of her work include the New York Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Cinematheque, European Media Arts Festival, Media City and 25FPS. She has also received the Gus Van Sant Award for Best Experimental Film and recognition for the most Technically Innovative Film from the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Golden Gate Award from San Francisco International Film Festival, and a Truer Than Fiction/Independent Spirit Award in collaboration with Monteith McCollum, as well as grants through the Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship, New York Council on the Arts, New York Foundation of the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and Illinois Arts Council.
Education
- MFA, Art Institute of Chicago
- BA, Binghamton University
Research Interests
- Alternative Processes
- Experimental Animation
- Documentary Approaches
- Projection Mapping