Carlos Rodrigo Guzman Serrano

Member Spotlight: Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano

JLS Gangwisch
I’m JLS Gangwish from the New Media Caucus here with Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano.
Thank you for being here today.

Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano
Thank you so much. I’m very happy to be here.

JLS Gangwisch
Would you start off telling us a little bit about yourself, who are you, where are you currently located?

Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano
Yes, my name is Rodrigo Guzman Serrano, I am an art historian and curator. I am currently in my third year of my PhD in art history at Cornell University, so I’m based in Ithaca, NY.

JLS Gangwisch
Excellent, and what brought you to that place, what would you like to tell us about your life so far?

Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano
Well, like many people who work in new media, there are very few scattered places around the world that specialize in this. I did my Master’s degree in Austria with Professor Oliver Grau in new media. I actually also went to Hong Kong to study with people like Maurice Benayoun and Jeffrey Shaw, but I really wanted to have a more art-historical approach. I also have a master’s in art history from the United States, so I wanted to go back to that kind of approach, and I figured one of the only people who works on that is Professor Maria Fernandez, who is based here in Cornell. So, I really wanted to work with her and that’s what brought me to Cornell, to Ithica, and to the United States.

JLS Gangwisch
What does new media mean to you?

Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano
Well, new media, it’s a funny word and I always say yeah, it’s kind of a weird thing,
it’s kind of a misnomer, but I always say that it’s a gateway word. It’s something that approaches people to practices that are so different and so variable but that I think engage very critically with science and technology. In some of my previous work in some publications and in my master thesis, I use the term Technoscientific Art, as opposed to new media. But what I think these terms mean is artistic practices that are looking very, very critically at what’s happening with science and with technology, our current state with technological media, with digital media, with AI, but also with scientific inquiry and scientific expertise. So that’s what I think of when I when I think of New Media.

JLS Gangwisch
You recently won a Vagner Mendonça-Whitehead Microgrant from the New Media Caucus, what can you tell us about that award or what it’s meant for you?

Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano
Yes, so I have been trying to be more involved with the with the New Media Caucus. It’s a very interesting thing in the United States, very much connected also with the CAA for people who are familiar with that with their work. I saw the grant application for contributions to the field, this microgrant and I thought oh maybe this is something that speaks to me and I applied and thankfully it was very positive.

It’s been very significant to me. Even though I have been working and researching new media for almost 10 years now, it’s difficult for me to navigate between canonical art history or canonical museum work and the world of new media. I wanted to also be closer to people who really are doing new media. It’s been very meaningful to me and I really want to connect more with the with the network and with the artists and with other researchers who are doing similar work.

JLS Gangwisch
How did you find the new media caucus?

Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano
I think at ICA, 2012 in Albuquerque, NM, I participated in ICA I wouldn’t have known anything. It was my first ICA, I didn’t know anything and I remember that there was a publication in the new media caucus journal, the Media N Journal, that was edited by by Andres Burbano and I knew Andres and I didn’t know that there was a journal and they didn’t know that there was a new media caucus.
So that was my first knowledge of the new media caucus.

JLS Gangwisch
Wonderful, what current projects would you like to tell us about?

Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano
I have two main big projects. The first one is related to my thesis here at Cornell and what I’m doing is I’m in the art history department, but I work very closely with the Science and Technology studies department, the SDS department, and what I’m trying to do is trying to reframe the concept of invention, to think about how artists who work with technology engage in processes that are similar to what we think of as technocratic or technological invention; how are they different? Also what are the mechanisms or the climates that facilitate a specific type of inventiveness in, you know, I’m talking about policies, patent law, governmental grants, and all this kind of stuff that facilitates this kind of this kind of work in the sciences and how that is mirrored in the art world as well as through the work of art technology.

The other project that I’m working on is an art and science encounter or an encounter between scientists and artists that I’m collaborating with people at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, WA and we call it that encounter because we didn’t want to make it a residency or anything like that, but it’s just basically bringing together artists and scientists at the Hutch in Seattle to learn about the tools of science, the methodologies, the equipment and for artists who have not had that experience before or do not have access to sign to scientists or scientific labs to know more about that kind of world, and hopefully it sparks some kind of future project. That’s going to take place in 2025, we’re still figuring out funding structures and other things like that, so we’ll probably have an open call later in the fall of 2024, but we are planning that for spring of 2025.

JLS Gangwisch
How can people follow your work, either in the material world or the digital world?

Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano
So people can follow me on Instagram, it’s @rguzmanserrano and I’m also about to launch my website which is going to be https://guzmanserrano.art/ its not there yet, but hopefully by the time it’s interview comes out it will be there. The art and science project is called SxAffold, with an X instead of a C because science ‘x’ art, so https://www.sxaffold.org/ is the website for that project and I really wanted also this this macro grant and this interview to be kind of like the launching pad for this project as well because I think it’s going to be very interesting.