This Be the Media! workshop, invites artists and audiences into the world of artist Suneil Sanzgiri’s new film An Impossible Address alongside the work of Albany arts organization YouthFX. The program opens with a workshop session on film practice. With a focus on the challenges facing emerging filmmakers, Suchak and Sanzgiri reflect on the practical work of filmmaking and consider its impact on the histories and communities it engages.

The program comprises the workshop session, a dinner for workshop participants, and is followed by a screening of works from Sanzgiri’s series Golden Jubilee.

Artist and filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri’s EMPAC-commissioned film An Impossible Address is styled as a letter that cannot be delivered. Wrestling with a revolutionary’s disappearance from Angola and from historical records, the film pursues a story that remains just out of reach, seizing on sounds and images that erupt from collective memory.

An Impossible Address is exhibited as an expanded installation in EMPAC's Studio 1—Goodman, where Sanzgiri shot key sections of the film. The exhibition includes the newly commissioned film and stages a series of archival prints and related artistic interventions by the artist. Viewers can engage with the project through tours and a Saturday film screening in the theater featuring additional contemporary artists. Guest-programmed by Sanzgiri’s collaborator Yasmina Price, the Saturday screening explores the larger aesthetic and political context to which Sanzgiri’s work responds.

The series runs from October 29 through November 1 and includes a film practice workshop at the Sanctuary for Independent Media, three open days of the film running in Studio 1, tours with the curator, and a contextualizing afternoon of film to round out the events.

Jewyo Rhii is in residence to develop her forthcoming commission with EMPAC. Designed as a “storytelling machine,” Rhii’s work is a large architecture circulating a series of set pieces, paintings, and ephemeral objects. While in residence, Rhii works with EMPAC’s Stage Technology engineers to prototype the project’s mobile structure.

The [Switch~ Ensemble], specialists in multimedia performance and electro-acoustic music, develop and rehearse commissioned works by composers Christopher Chandler, Julie Herndon, Igor Santos, and Jason Thorpe Buchanan. The world premiere performances at the conclusion of the residency utilize the advanced spatial audio and video capabilities of EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman.

We Will Not Be Composed is a multimedia performance created in collaboration with saxophonist and composer Stevie Manning, author and activist Soraya Chemaly, and new media artist Xuan to challenge gendered perceptions of anger in America. 

During the residency, Xuan will bring original visual art, including moving image media, projections and on-site installations tailored to the premiere's score and themes and the unique presentation capabilities of Studio 1, while Manning will be rehearsing along with the other members of the six-musician ensemble. Additionally, they will work with EMPAC's Wave Field Synthesis and ambisonic audio systems to situate the recorded voices throughout the venue and will record the score to allow the work to travel as an installation in the future.

We Will Not Be Composed is a multimedia performance created in collaboration with saxophonist and composer Stevie Manning, author and activist Soraya Chemaly, and projection artist Xuan to challenge gendered perceptions of anger in America. Audience members simultaneously experience a live performance of a musical score by Manning featuring ondes Martenot, projections of light and texture from Xuan, and recorded voices of women expressing their experiences with and ideas about anger in immersive spatial audio. Whether these expressions of anger are startling, familiar, or provoking, audience members discover how collective recognition and expression of anger in the face of abusive power and domination can become a catalyst for justice and change.  

Drawing from jazz, experimental improvised music, and chamber music, the instrumentation of We Will Not Be Composed features the recorded voices and a six-piece ensemble with Manning on alto saxophone, Jessica Ackerley on electric guitar, Ha-Yang Kim and rocío sánchez on cello, Devon Gates on double bass, and Suzanne Farrin on the ondes Martenot.

The experimental music group [Switch~ Ensemble] brings to life three new multimedia works, combining EMPAC’s capabilities for spatial audio and multi-channel video with the virtuosic bravura of the ensemble’s seven members. Renowned composers Igor Santos, Julie Herndon, Jason Thorpe Buchanan, and Christopher Chandler incorporate elements of live audio and video signal processing to create stunning and impactful worlds of sights and sounds, full of vibrant musical detail and dynamic visual tableaus.

Sound artist and composer Micah Silver is in residence in EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman to produce and create a new version of Greek composer Iannis Xenakis’s 1971 landmark electronic music work Persépolis. Working with EMPAC’s stage technologies and audio teams, Silver introduces new dramaturgical elements to the piece specifically designed for the venue and for TOPOS Music Festival 2025 audiences.

Composer Sarah Davachi takes advantage of the acoustical properties of the EMPAC Concert Hall and Studio 2 to record her work, The Rose Dialogues and Interludes, scored for two violas, cello, organ, and electronics. The composition is a featured world premiere at the TOPOS Music Festival 2025.

For Liberation Meditations: A Call, electronic musicians and composers King Britt, Suzi Analogue, and Myles Ortiz-Green collaborate for an evening of music that is at turns ambient and driving. They draw from deep archives–historic speeches, interviews, fragments of collective memory–reframing and recomposing in performance as mantras grounded in the ethos of freedom. The result is an improvised, immersive, and spatial offering created especially for EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman and the TOPOS Music Festival 2025.