Argyro Nicolaou is a literary scholar, writer, and filmmaker from the island of Cyprus based in New York City. Her academic research focuses on the representation of Mediterranean displacements in literature, film, and visual art. Her artistic practice draws from the content and methods of her research—including an engagement with the official archive’s strategic omissions—to craft a cinematic language that interrogates the conditions of politics and art-making in ‘small’ and ‘unimportant’ parts of Europe’s Mediterranean periphery. With a strong emphasis on narrative, Argyro uses historical research and video to conduct a contemporary media archaeology that excavates liminal and underrepresented modes of being and knowing. Argyro’s film and media works have been screened at festivals and exhibitions in the US, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, and Estonia, including the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival and the Academy-Award Qualifying POFF Shorts Film Festival in Tallinn. Her writing has been published in the American Historical Review, MoMA post, EUobserver, and the Journal of Mediterranean Studies, among others. Argyro holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with a Secondary Field in Critical Media Practice from Harvard University and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. http://www.anicolaou.com/about
Placeholder straddles two worlds, academic research and artistic expression, as does the creative team. Lead researcher/artist Monica Anna Day regularly uses creativity to inspire personal transformation, peacebuilding and social justice. Her expertise is in literary arts and creating sensory experiences, and she is also a master’s degree candidate in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at Arcadia University. Her advisor and program director Dr. Warren Hafar will oversee the academic aspect of the project. Rounding out the team are two visual artists who will assist in translating the raw sensory data into visual art. Oju Ayọ is a Brooklyn-based artist, intuitive face painter, and creator of Dragon Coloring Meditation Journal Series. She holds a bachelor’s in art with a concentration in psychology. Stefanie Menack is a NJ-based multimedia intuitive artist with a B.Sc. Hons. in Psychology with a minor in Fine Art and Design from Middlesex University in the UK.