Image: Mandee Johnson
Camila Galaz is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, writer, and researcher based in New York. Through experimental documentary practices and autofiction her projects look to understand the process of building identity and knowledge through mediated sources and cultural texts, with a particular focus on histories of cultural media and technology. She is a contributing editor of the Millennium Film Journal, member of the Blockbusters Video and New Media Art Collective, and co-hosts the technology history podcast ‘Our Friend the Computer’ with Ana Meisel supported by the Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado.
Recent artistic projects include: a reenactment of Crocodile Dundee III through Instagram stories for Outback Arthouse, Los Angeles (Dead End. Brilliant.); a pandemic vlog within the video game Animal Crossing for West Space, Melbourne (STUDIO VLOG); a meta-analysis of Camus’ The Plague, curated by Sabrina Baker (Unwelcome Visitant); and an interactive web-based essay on Chilean socialist computer histories for External Pages, London (REDES: bread and justice, peaches and bananas). Her recent short experimental documentary ‘Vecino Vecino’ explores intergenerational legacies of the Chilean Pinochet dictatorship through the unpacking of an archival news broadcast. She was included in the 2022 publication ‘Collective Roadmap/Hoja de ruta colectiva’ from Calipso Press with an eight-page project titled ‘Without Shores, Without Boundaries’.
She is the recipient of the 2018 MECCA M-Power Scholarship from the National Gallery of Victoria, the 2019-2021 Australia Council EMPAC New York Residency, and a 2021 LA County Vibrant Cities Arts Grant. In 2019 she presented a Writing & Concepts lecture at the National Gallery of Victoria (‘Questioning Existence with the Subjunctive [Spanish Demystified])’, and a four-part workshop for Channels Video Art Biennale and Free Association (‘Time, After Time: A Reenactment Workshop’). In 2022 her project ‘REDES: bread and justice, peaches and bananas’ appeared in the journal ‘Thresholds no. 50’ from the MIT Department of Architecture.
She has undertaken residencies and mentorships with artist Laure Prouvost (France, 2019), Venezuelan dancer and choreographer Vanessa Vargas (New York, 2019), and comedy production company CleftClips (Los Angeles, 2017). She was a selected participant of the 2018 Summer School as School program, administered by Stacion Center for Contemporary Art, Prishtina (Kosovo), and the 2020 Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts.
She is a founding member of the performance art collective ‘The Band Presents’ (TBP), and co-ran the TBPHQ Art Space in Docklands, Melbourne from 2017-19.