Preview⎜“In Search of Us”, a 2025 Tribeca Immersive line-up, with Onassis ONX and Agog

After its big-digital artwork edition at Mercer Labs last year, Tribeca Film Festival’s immersive programme now shifts to an iteration that embraces works spanning multi-formats and multiple voices. The programme, which opens with the festival on 6 June and extends to the end of the month, is presented in partnership with Onassis ONX and Agog.

Its theme “In Search of Us” explores the urgent and complicated realities of our contemporary moment. We spoke to curators Casey Baltes (Tribeca) and Jazia Hammoudi (Onassis ONX) about the current direction, theme and desire to open the immersive landscape.

Cover: A FATHER’S LULLABY, by Rashin Fahandej

Casey Baltes – The immersive space has shifted rapidly and wildly over the past 10 years. Tribeca has never been shy about saying ‘let’s just try something new’. We really want to push the edges around what immersive is, and sometimes that means changing the formats and finding partners who can help us realize it.

C. B. – What I have been seeing over the past few years is this very concentrated push outside of the normal “industry space” into cultural institutions, into spaces that either haven’t yet shown this work or are starting to, as well as artists that may not have lived within the ecosphere of what immersive would have been – visual artists, digital artists. We have a great and long-standing relationship with Onassis ONX, and they were the right partner for this.

C. B. – We’re almost always informed by the space that we’re in, the nature of immersive being a very physical exercise. Mercer [Labs] is a space that really has to be designed for. I feel like WSA [Water Street Projects] is a blank canvas that we are able to work within. It’s very flexible – it’s a gorgeous, giant space that is really built for this, so we were able to lean into multi-formats. Last year was certainly one of those moments where we wanted to try something new and something bold. It doesn’t necessarily mean that every year is a finite direction. It is an example of us saying we should all be experimenting.

How did you approach the programme this year?

Jazia Hammoudi – Our goal was to select projects that we could present as full-scale installations, provide budget for the artist, and present museum- and institution-worthy artworks that have a lot to say and a lot of appeal for the public. A big part of that was also looking at the full dimensionality of these project worlds. At ONX, we really think of our membership and our artists as world builders, and we wanted to think about the Tribeca projects as worlds as well. So each one has multiple points of engagement. There are projects that include headsets, but also have projection or another element. There are installations that have AR or interactive components.

J. H. – We’re trying to meet audiences in a really open and accessible way, so they could come and engage in these worlds in different ways. There are multiple angles and modes of approach: immersive doesn’t just exist in certain pieces of proprietary technology but is very much multimedia and between the physical and digital.

Were you brainstorming about the concept and then selecting pieces or was it seeing different work and asking ‘how are they coming together in a way that makes sense for us’?’

C. B. – We don’t want to constrict the review process to a specific theme, we really want to survey the landscape and see what rises to the top of our list. From that, we pull out themes – but sometimes it naturally happens, you can see where artists’ heads are. We should take their lead, versus us prescribing a theme to curate into. We look at the landscape, we look at what we’re thinking about programming. When all things align, usually the theme starts to come to us.

C. B. – We received over 200 submissions, a lot of really fabulous work. These curatorial ideas started generating from this group. It was really an indication of the health in the field. There’s this huge diversity of formats and ideas that artists are working in, really trying to get at what it means to be human in this moment. Who are our communities? What are the ideas that are preoccupying us on the planet right now? And it felt like a moment that artists are looking urgently at the world in a very tangible, material and also philosophical fashion. It was not a world of submissions that were in this other conceptual or highly aestheticized space. It was really interesting to see how grounded artistic thinking is right now.

C. B. – Curatorially, we were really trying to look at this current moment. That’s where the title “In search of us” comes in. It’s a very intense moment on Earth. We’re all in turmoil, all asking a lot of questions, and all really searching for community. We’re trying to look at works that open up untold stories or hidden communities, that look at history, and look at art as a way to approach history and present it in a multi-dimensional way.

C. B. – We have pieces that are about contemporary conflict, pieces that look at lost archives, pieces that look at climate futures… The goal was to come to these heady projects, and provide thought and insight, but also relief. Every work has a call to action in it. And I hope every work leads you into a dark place with stories that are difficult to manage, and then pulls you out and thinking. We have pieces that have an aftercare position as part of their installation. That was important, because sometimes we’re so focused on immersing the audience in this mind-blowing world, but we don’t think about our responsibility to them in that physical and emotional intensity.

C. B. – IN THE CURRENT OF BEING is a very impactful piece on conversion therapy that tells the story of a woman whose gender and sexuality were treated as an illness. There are haptics – you have this simulation of electroshock. When I first heard about it, I wondered do you need this in order to be immersed and feel this story? But what’s interesting is that you have this electroshock simulation, and then there’s this aftercare area where you’re provided with a lot of reading information about conversion therapy and things we can do to combat these kinds of policies.

C. B. – A FATHER’S LULLABY is about incarcerated fathers and the loss of family and community that results from the state. There’s an opportunity outside of the main projection space to record your own story, whether it be an experience of incarceration or just your thoughts.

C. B. – In INNOCENCE OF UNKNOWING, the artists used an AI to look at news media footage of shootings in America since the 60s. What emerges is this choreography of behavior around these incidents…of what happens to bodies in this moment. There is a two-channel video of this archive and they’ll also be doing a depth kit lecture performance every day with the AI scholar about what to glean from this footage.

C. B. – THE FOUNDERS PILLARS, coming out of the MIT AR collective, will be on the New York Stock Exchange, as a memorial to all the enslaved peoples who really built this country. And they’ve created an AI-driven film about African textile traditions that will be projected onto a traditional West African loom. I really like bringing in this sculptural element to an XR show. We’re really trying to not just be screen based, but also have these powerful physical emblems of human creativity.

C. B. – There’s also a music and remixing piece called NEW MAQAM CITY by a Muslim futurist collective where you get to remix music and sounds from across North Africa, Southwest Asia, the Middle East. It has 808 drum beats, and it’s inspired by Sufi practices for music and rhythm as part of transcendence. We’ll see how people engage – do people really want to be individual or will you find spontaneous, small crowds of people dancing under one DJ?

C. B. – Perhaps one of the more confrontational pieces that we have is one that has toured a lot in Europe called AI AND ME. It’ll be the first time it is presented in the United States, which will be very different. We’re much more identitarian, and more ethnically and racially diverse, so being confronted with the AI’s judgment will be interesting to see.

C. B. – BOREAL DREAMS is about the disappearing boreal forest, which is a very poetic visual experience on a two-sided LED wall with spatialized audio, taking you through this ecosystem. An accompanying web experience is on iPads, where you can explore the Bordeaux forests at different climates and see the very real impact of few degrees of climate change on this ecosystem. The work is really about how the environment and climate impacts our dreams and our inner lives – an under-explored area of climate change, these catalyzed internal realities and impacts on the subconscious.

C. B. – THERE GOES NIKI is really special because they were able to volumetrically capture Nikki Giovanni who passed recently, reciting her iconic poem. We have this powerful civil rights poet presenting a different techno future through this metaphor of Mars, through ourselves as explorers and gardeners, and thinking about this spaceship into the future not being about colonization, but about gardening and community and growing together and possibility, which feels really important right now.

The theme, “In search of us” – it is coming at a time where all of these topics in the program are things that have become hot to touch.

J. H. – We did think and talk very seriously before submissions about what our responsibility is here, and we thought a lot about the community and the publics that we want to bring to this exhibition, and what our role is as stewards of art and culture. We wanted to respond very much to the needs that we saw emerging from the submissions and from our creative communities.

C. B. – From a timing perspective, this is a bold move but it wasn’t meant to be more than what we always do at Tribeca – to give platforms for artists to be able to share their stories and not be afraid to have their points of view.

J. H. – If the show has any political perspective overall, it’s about inclusivity and the importance of a multiplicity of voices, rather than trying to present a singular perspective. It did not feel like the time for purely playful, esthetically-driven experiences. It really felt like we had an opportunity to do something more impactful, to be a little bit courageous and try to platform artists who are asking the hard questions. They’re not afraid. So we need to be arts, right? That’s great, and make that space for them.

The current state that we’re in for immersive is so wide and it’s moving outside of festival spaces, inside of arts institutions, and beyond. How is that reflected in the programme?

C. B. – I think all the time about what makes a festival relevant to artists, and try as hard as I can to speak to that. We talked a lot about premiere status and what its function is, what it means, the importance of it. Premiere status tends to be a metric, but the way we evaluated was – what audiences haven’t seen this, and is this an opportunity for that to happen?

J. H. – We’re really seeing the ways that the industry is becoming much more collaborative and a lot more inter-institutional work around the production and exhibition of XR work. Part of our work with the artists this year was to be very collaborative, working with them on how to build out full scale installations, and think about how they’re in conversation with other pieces and the exhibition as a whole. No artist or installation is an island in itself – there’s a cohesion and various strands of story that we’re trying to tell throughout the whole thing.

J. H. – One of the strengths about WSA as a mixed-use cultural institution is that they have these gorgeous, wide open spaces that they’re willing and able to design and make new with every program.

J. H. – And the exhibition extends beyond its physical footprint– you can go out into the world and happen upon an AR activation. We’re trying to expand what the festival is, move it away from premieres, move it away from being insider or industry. This is an exhibition that’s really for greater New York and we want to invite everyone. Part of that was also making ticket prices more accessible – the ticket price will be $20. There isn’t a $500 pass you need to buy. The public hours are 1-6 pm, and it goes one for a month. We’re really trying to make this for everyone. We’re also thinking in those additional weekends, how are other ways that we can activate other networks and communities?

J. H. – The idea is this kind of expanded exhibition…we really want people across the whole city, and to look at this moment as a moment for art and advanced technologies.

C. B. – There’s also the state of funding in the US related to immersive works. Agog is really leading the charge in that and doing excellent work. There was an interest to provide artists’ support and to make sure that we were financially able to both produce a really robust exhibition, but also try to be as collaborative with the artists as possible. Agog’s focus is on social impact; and the history of XR and immersive work leads naturally into social messaging and impact. So it was a really good fit.

J. H. – Their input, which was a very important one, was about impact. They asked that we think very carefully about impact and social good, which has shaped the program really positively. I think that each project has a strong message and a kind of open invitation to engage with new information, to interact and contribute from the audience.