About The Dreamshare Seer

Adam Chodzko is a contemporary visual artist, (based in Whitstable, Kent), exploring the interactions and possibilities of our beliefs and behaviours.  Investigating the space between how we think we are and what we could become his heterogeneous body of work ranges from video, performance, drawing and sculpture to socially-engaged processes.  His art invents possibilities for collective imagination, wondering how, through our play with the visual, we might perceive more deeply, and empathically,  in order to transform our connections with others?

Through The Dreamshare Seer Adam consolidates over three decades of his previous artwork. It continues his exploration of the potential for the growth of new notions of community and connectivity based around perception.  It deepens his interest in the social role of sleep, unconscious states of vision, dream states, and the fluid movement between everyday reality and the fantastic.

For the last 20 years, as well as exhibiting internationally, Adam has created a body of work particularly focused on the local environment to where he lives in East Kent. The Dreamshare Seer is being pioneered by the inhabitants of the nearby island – Sheppey – that Adam can see, across the Thames Estuary, from the beach near his home in Whitstable.  He’s previously made several works with the community and landscape of that island.

The Dreamshare Seer, and its wider contexts of dreamwork, surrealism, indigenous knowledge, community and AI, are the subject of a PhD that Adam is now studying at Leeds School of Arts (Leeds Beckett University).

[portrait photograph by Richard Boll]

See:

– Adam Chodzko’s website 

– Adam’s lecture about The Dreamshare Seer in relation to his wider practice, presented to the School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University, April 2024

Catherine Herbert, (based in Whitstable, Kent), has a background in the visual arts across various roles including Deputy Director of Whitstable Biennale; Head of Development & Research, Cement Fields; Development Manager, Deptford X; Former Chair of Ideas Test Swale (ACE Creative People and Places project); Bid writer, The Showroom Gallery, and spent 5 years in local authorities including the Arts & Culture team at Kent County Council. Catherine studied Fine Art at University for the Creative Arts (KIAD) and MA Arts Management at City University and since 2003 has worked with artist Adam Chodzko.

Isaac Clarke is an artist, coder and currently a PhD student within the Computational Media & Arts Dept, The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (GZ), (2022-current).   Isaac is responsible for creating the coding for the digital tool that will turn the participants’ audio and textual descriptions of dreams into animations.

His work focuses on art creation and visual communication with new technologies, with emphasis on development, adaptation, and reactivation of digital tools and instruments for artists. It also promotes the interplay of art and technology and exploits the most advanced technology for art creation and visual communication with a social impact. This project – The Dreamshare Seer – forms part of his research.

Isaac is also a member of Black Shuck: https://blackshuck.co/, a co-operative that produces moving image, audio & digital projects. It is owned equally by all of its members who support each other to produce work, learn new skills, earn a fair wage, and provide affordable services. He was also founding member of the project space The Institute of Jamais Vu, and helped establish the art studios at Serf.

He holds an MA Computational Arts, & BA Hons Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

https://github.com/isaac-art

Projects include:

– Palimpsest, Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment (2022) – Website (vuejs, threejs, umap, python, PyTorch)

– Techno-Mythopoeia: Spectral Plain, Guillemette Legrand and Vincent Thornhill, V2 Lab For the Unstable Media NL (2021), Video Game Installation (Unreal Engine, blueprints), Text generation (GPT-3, python), sensor data (Geiger counter, linux, python)

– ribbon.py, Studio Legrand-Jager, V&A London (2021), Performance (opencv, realsense, Keras/Tensorflow VAE, led screens)

– IMagma, Jenna Sutela, Serpentine Galleries London (2019) – iPhone App (swift, unity, firebase), text generation and image recognition (Keras/Tensorflow, linux), Lava Lamp cameras (linux, opencv)

– An Artist’s Guide to Stop Being An Artist, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, SMK Copenhagen (2019) – Android App (Kotlin), Customised Intercom System (Linux, custom PCB, gstreamer).

James Montgomery, (based in Whitstable, Kent) is an accomplished web designer and developer, with a background and passion in AI-for-good and innovation. Founder of digital agency Realising Designs and Co-Founder of The Forge Partnership, and has worked with Adam Chodzko since 2015.

See:

https://techbythesea.ai/

For over 17 years Emma Leach has been helping artists describe and realise their ideas. She studied Fine Art in Canterbury and continues to deliver projects with artists and organisations living or working in Kent, as well as further afield. The thing she finds most exciting about this work is getting to see the world differently, through another person’s eyes, and bringing that vision to life. Recent projects have included working with visual arts organisation Cement Fields, artist collective and interdisciplinary studio SPACER, filmmaker Frances Scott, writer and curator Adrian Heathfield, sculptor and installation artist Mike Nelson and live artist Richard Layzell.

https://www.emmaleach.co.uk/

Dr Josie Malinowski is an oneirologist (dream researcher) based in London, UK. She has published over 20 academic articles on her dream research and has published a book, The Psychology of Dreaming, a brief introduction to the science and psychology of dreaming. She has spoken widely at events such as at the Tate Modern, the Wellcome Museum, and the Freud Museum, and at festivals such as Secret Garden Party and Shambala, about the science of lucid dreaming, and acted as the lucid dreaming adviser on the Netflix show Behind Her Eyes. Josie is currently working as a Teaching Fellow at King’s College London and as a Research Associate at the University of Surrey.

Based in Malaysia, Wendi is a writer and researcher with an interest in indigenous arts and culture, particularly in topics such as indigenous knowledge, cosmologies, and eco-critical thoughts. In 2018, she started Geremis Art Project, a collaborative artistic and archiving collective that co-produces artworks and cultural content with indigenous Malaysian (Orang Asli) artists and artisans. Geremis Art Project advocates for the Orang Asli’s customary territories and the return of these lands to their custodianship.

[photo: Julida Uju (left) and Wendi Sia from Gerimis during a storytelling recording session for ‘Mah Meri Animal Folklore’. — Gerimis Art Project]

Wendy Teo is a UK ARB/RIBA Chartered Architect, Curator, Researcher and Tutor that seeing embedding social-culture dialogue in forming architecture as her ultimate pursuit. Her works has been translated into varied medium and scale throughout her commitment with Foster and Partners, Divooe Zein Atelier, Borneo Art Collective, Taiwan Architect Magazine, CanopyU and a number of workshop tutorship, one of the notable one is 2013/14 Archilab exhibition.

Wendy Teo studied at the Feng Chia University in Taiwan, with the full scholarship commissioned from Taiwanese Outstanding Oversea Chinese Awards in 2003-2008.It was also where she graduated with Cum Laude and gained international recognition such as Holcim Sustainable Next Generation Award (First Prize) and 2009 Archiprix. After one year of research and working experience around Asia, she moved to London, it was also where she gained a Diploma and Master of architecture with distinction at the Bartlett school of architecture, UCL in 2011. Her continual investigation about the combination of Contextual Awareness in the urban landscape reciprocating to the cultural aesthetics were being carried out in her last project, Taipei Main Station project, won her Dean’s List for Distinction in 2011, Commendation in KPF Travel Award and featured in Stories of Change Exhibition at ARUP Phase II Center, Royal Academy, Threadneedle Art prize Award exhibition in London. In 2013, her individual collection of works were featured in Archilab Biennale, Frac of New Orleans. The most cutting edge experimental architecture design biennale hosted by Pompidou Center director Frédéric Migayrou and Frac Director Marie-Ange Brayer.

From 2005-2009, Wendy Teo explored her leisure and resort design experience intensively from Bali island resort design, China Xiamen resort design while she was with Divooe Zein Studio. Moving on from Divooe Zein, she inherited insights and down to earth attitude from developing these vernacular project with creative and sophisticated solution. Her practice is centered with an approach that allow caring for earth, sensibility for material and bonding with local craftsmanship. In 2013, Wendy Teo also tracing her route toward her personal endeavor – Crafting a boundary crossing design process in the building, which initiated her involvement in Ambokka wellness retreat design project and triggered series of conversation with wellness, hotel and leisure sectors.

Upon her graduation from UCL on 2011, she was offered to work at Foster and Partners, this is also where she was exposed to projects in varied scale and types. From there she gained her experience in city masterplan design, building design which covered office, residential, leisure, museum and exhibition hall. Her project involvements included F+P National Marine Museum in Taiwan, Water Pavilion in ShenZhen, Battersea Power Station in London. Her specialization in building parametric technique exposed her to most cutting edge technique in building fabrication, smart building treatment and sustainable design process. With these advance knowledge in building design progress and techniques, she shared and experimented with the younger generation through her involvement in seminar, workshop and short term teaching in UK, France, Slovenia, Turkey and Taiwan. Her workshop output has been carried out at New Orleans AIA in USA, MEDS workshop in Turkey, University College of London, Tong Ji University in China and Feng Chia University in Taiwan.

In 2016, Wendy Teo founded Borneo Art Collective to document tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Borneo. The same year, she founded her own practice based in Borneo and operating in cross disciplinary scale.

https://www.wendyteo.com/

Ronnie Bahari is a self-trained freelance photographer based in Ipoh. From the Semai tribe, Ronnie uses his lens to depict the stories of his compatriots. His works have been exhibited locally and internationally, such as at George Town Festival, Penang and in Singapore. One of his ambitions is to publish a photobook featuring all the 18 indigenous tribes in Peninsular Malaysia. He is also the president of Persatuan Kebudayaan dan Kesenian Orang Asal Perak (PKKOAP), which main activities are to promote Orang Asli arts and culture to the younger generation for continuty, as well as to bring it to an international level.

Persatuan Kebudayaan dan Kesenian Orang Asal Perak

https://www.instagram.com/orang_asal_perak/?hl=en

Welyne Jeffrey Jehom is a senior lecturer at the Anthropology & Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University Malaya since 2009. She is a Bidayuh from Kuching, Sarawak. She obtained her Master degree in Anthropology from Australian National University (1998) and a PhD in Southeast Asian Studies from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Bonn, Germany (2008). She held the headship of Center for Malaysian Indigenous Studies from 2018 to 2021 at Universiti Malaya. Since 2022, she is the coordinator for the International Master of Human Development Universiti Malaya with Asean University Network, also a board member for Asian Human Development Organisation (AHDO) and heading the People Cluster at Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Trained in the anthropology of development, her main research and teaching interests are in the fields of Indigenous knowledge and community development, women and empowerment, and material culture, with a focus on Sarawak. She has published scholarly articles in AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, Indonesia and the Malay World, American Anthropologist and Asian Journal of Women’s Studies. As part of her educational campaign on importance of Indigenous knowledge especially on the pua kumbu intangible knowledge, she has curated major exhibitions of pua kumbu textiles titled Textile Tales of Pua Kumbu, the Sacred Journey at Universiti Malaya Art Gallery (2015 & 2016), the George Town Festival and the Rainforest Fringe Festival (2017) and international gallery in Paris (2018). She was awarded Merdeka Award Thumbs-Up Challenge in Indigenous Knowledge Conservation – Pua Kumbu under Merdeka Award Trust Malaysia, 2016 (Community Engagement and Research). She established a community enterprise for the Iban pua kumbu textile for the weavers in Kapit, Sarawak, derived from High Impact Research (2013-2016) and continues under various grants. Currently, she is managing research on the Developing Indigenous Entrepreneurship Model based on sharing local indigenous life experiences and economies to create a sustainable livelihood in rural Sarawak. Her book recently in press titled Enriching Iban Pua Kumbu: Tradition and Innovation in an Indigenous Society.

https://rhgareh.com/

Khimjoe Lim is a nature and culture-based educator, facilitator, and devoted practitioner of earth-based traditions and wisdom. With a profound connection and appreciation for the natural world, she has dedicated over a decade of her life to the realms of regenerative farming and landscape design. Khimjoe’s journey is driven by an ardent desire to foster a reconnection between people and the earth, rekindling the sacred bond with Mother Nature.

In pursuit of this vision, Khimjoe took a transformative step by founding Children of Soil in 2017, an organisation that stands as a beacon for guiding individuals in rediscovering their innate connection with the natural world. Through a myriad of initiatives, educational programs, and projects, Children of Soil seeks to instill a deep sense of stewardship for the environment. Khimjoe’s holistic approach encourages individuals to live in harmony with the earth, recognizing the interdependence between humanity and the planet Earth.

https://childrenofsoil.my/

Eddie Wong (born 1982) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher forging new pathways at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and filmmaking. Earning his Master’s degree in Computational Arts from Goldsmiths University of London, Wong has cultivated a unique approach to ‘’machine fictioning’ (mythotechnesis). He utilises machine learning and computational art to scrutinise postcolonial narratives, drawing on his cultural heritage, colonial archives, and ancestral memory. Wong positions himself as an agent of historical events and overlooked communities within a Southeast Asian context, negotiating with AI technologies to probe and explore these themes.

Wong’s diverse body of work, encompassing writing, video art, filmmaking, and interactive installations, has been shown internationally at venues such as SIGGRAPH (Washington D.C), CPH:DOX (Copenhagen), Watermans Gallery (London), Spectacle For Later (London),  +Rainfilm AI Film Festival (Barcelona), MOMA (Shanghai), Arthouse Jersey (Jersey) Doc Edge NZ (Auckland), Melbourne International Animation Festival (Melbourne), Freedom Film Fest (Kuala Lumpur) and ILHAM Art Show (Kuala Lumpur). His arts writing and scholarly research have been featured in notable publications and academic journals like Leonardo MIT Press, Arts Equator, and Art Asia Pacific, and he has given talks at various universities and conferences, including Goldsmiths University, City University Hong Kong and HKUST (China). In recognition of his work, Wong was awarded the Lumen Prize for Moving Image in 2022.

Recently, Wong was selected for the REFLEKT residency (2023-2024) with the Leipzig International Arts Program and Goethe Institute. His current exhibitions include ‘Swallow and Spit’ at A+Works of Art in Kuala Lumpur (2023).

In addition to his artist portfolio, Wong has an extensive academic career. He has lectured, designed curriculums and led graduate-level programs at various arts & design institutions in New Zealand and Malaysia. Based in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Wong continues to deepen his research on Malaysia, forging new myths and constructing speculative worlds. As a trailblazer in the realm of AI-driven artistry, he conducts workshops aimed at nurturing creativity and fostering ethical innovation at the intersection of art and technology.

https://www.instagram.com/ed_wrong/

https://linktr.ee/eddwong

Ivan Lam (B. 1975) has earned a reputation as one of Malaysia’s leading contemporary artists for his continuous ability to push the boundaries of his art practice. Over the last 23 years his innovative incorporation of printmaking, resin and objects into his paintings add hyper-reality to the natural, distance to the familiar, and pragmatism to pathos. Other dualities and dichotomies abound within his paintings and conceptual works, both harmoniously and in tension, underpinning his enquiries on popular culture, current affairs, art history and autobiography. His practice has recently taken on a more conceptual bias, raising questions around authorship, the role of the artist and the very nature of art itself.

Lam has exhibited widely in the local and international arena and has also garnered multiple awards in a career laden with solo and group exhibitions and collected by reputed institutions in Malaysia, Europe and the USA. He was the first and only Malaysian artist selected to present a one-man project at the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong in 2013, and was the first Malaysian artist commissioned by Louis Vuitton for their collection in 2014. In 2017, he presented a performance work entitled ‘Curating Human Experiences: Human Experience 66:06:06’ in Kuala Lumpur, and was the only artist from Malaysia invited to create a project for the Karachi Biennale in the same year. Lam was one of four Malaysian artists to represent Malaysia at the country’s first ever National Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2019. The work presented, One Inch (2019) explores dualities and dichotomies which sit both harmoniously and in tension in Lam’s work, beguiling the viewer to discover the multiple meanings within. In 2020, he launched ‘The Ivan Lam Giveaway’ an online platform where art is used as a tool to promote action. In 2022, he presents ‘catharsis’ – his most personal and important series to date. Consisting of five large-panelled paintings, ‘catharsis‘ encapsulates Lam’s years of experiencing, understanding and accepting the depths of excruciating physical pain.

Ivan Lam – Biography

Download: Ivan Lam Biography and CV

I am nnull (he/him).  I am a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in London, UK. I work across several disciplines, operating across the cultural, design, academic and human rights sectors.

My work is first and foremost therapeutic, serving as a space to unpack intergenerational trauma and intersectional struggles that I am currently facing, while attempting to help others out along the way. As a transgender migrant, much of my work is autobiographical, journaling my experiences and the broader politics at play. I investigate several issues that I encounter in my life including, migration, gender, identity, disability and civil rights. The aim of my work is to interrogate how inequality is systematically constructed, to affirm the experiences of those who face injustice and to promote a more equitable world by any means possible.

https://nnull.xyz/