Re-imagining media and the arts as a public service:
Michael Masucci, co-director of the pioneering media arts collective EZTV, offers an extraordinary chance to explore the evolution of independent video art, the birth of digital culture, and how media can be a vehicle for radical transformation, equity, and experimental collaboration.
Our conversation is designed to bring forward his decades of innovation at the intersection of art, technology, activism, and community.
Experience the uplifting story of EZTV and the importance of decentralized community media.
The arts has served as a method of traversing cultural barriers and geo-political ideologies and has been the bleeding-edge of innovation in both thought as well as practice.
How can we leverage the enormous potential of the current media tools and the distribution and communication possibilities of those who have access to online experiences?
How can media benefit from the forward-thinking experimental model that art cultivates and preserves?
It is time to re-imagine both how mass pop culture and the more esoteric niche practices in the arts build bridges between seemingly different communities and belief systems.
Michael Masucci, EZTV Media and EZTV Museum, DNA Festival, Santa Monica
Michael J. Masucci is an award-winning artist who has also been curating digital art since 1984, and producing digital and multimedia since 1980. According to the Victoria & Albert Museum, an early digital art gallery he co-created “literally put digital art on the map.” As a founding member of EZTV (eztvmuseum.com) he has collaborated on projects which have been presented at institutions including the Getty Museum, Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Institute of Contemporary Art (London) the Centre Pompidou, Lincoln Center, PBS, UCLA, the School of Visual Arts (NY) New School/Parsons, the University of Helsinki, SIGGRAPH, Disneyland Paris, CalTec, Anthology Film Archives, LA Filmforum, DEFCON, Humanity+, Burning Man, as well as at numerous festivals, and professional conferences. A retrospective of his early video has been staged at REDCAT/Walt Disney Concert Hall Complex,
He has authored articles and spoken on topics ranging from information security, transhumanism, and the role of art in the digital world. His work is included in the permanent collection of USC and UCLA. He has been included in the Getty’s PST in 2011 and 2024 and co-founded DNA Festival Santa Monica and has been profiled in various publications and appeared on a number of podcasts and in several documentaries and is being included in a PHD dissertation on media art. A cisgender man, he helped save an archive of seminal early Queer media art. He has served as Chair of the Santa Monica Arts Commission and is the recipient of four City commendations for his contributions to the arts. He has been an artist-in-residence since 2000 at 18th Street Arts Center. He holds a degree in law and certifications in music production, graphic design, computer coding, entrepreneurship and mediation/conflict resolution.
