Blair Simmons

I am an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and Interactive Media Arts departments, teaching critical technology theory and community driven courses, like Useless Machines and Technology and Communication. 

I am a queer and anxious artist, curator, researcher, storyteller, and technician working in as many mediums as will have me. I enjoy exploring themes of technology, labor, bodies, and pain. In my making and iterative process, I often need to move both quickly and carefully, in a race against time as my own chronically pain-ridden body shuts down. My physical process of making mimics the daily pain of working and labor: warping, distorting, grinding and wearing down. My pieces are both critical of and dependent on technology, mirroring the ways technology can be a solution to my chronic pain, and the source of the pain itself.

My research often materializes as objects and performances which have been performed at the likes of Pioneer Works, La Mama’s CultureHub, Wordhack at Babycastles, theBlanc, Honor Fraser Gallery and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I have been mentioned in publications like the NYTimes, PARtake, The Scotsman, USA Today, The Guardian, etc.