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LA’s sun drenched, palm-dappled Hollywood aesthetic is reimagined as a diffuse and dis-related chaparral cityscape via video gifs, XR, and sculpture: In Medias Res reflects today’s digital uprootedness from time-based narratives of the silver screen to invoke liminal spaces of belonging. These artworks challenge conventional definitions of cities in relation to mainstream media, geography and land ownership to explore new perspectives on urban environments existing in the imagination as much as in real life.

This exhibition is curated by digital artists Kate Parsons and Janna Avner.

In Medias Res: Expanded celebrates the contributions of feminist and post-cyberfeminist artists who live in the vibrant city of Los Angeles. The artworks in this exhibition reflect today’s digital uprootedness from time-based narratives of the silver screen to invoke liminal spaces of belonging. They challenge conventional definitions of cities and urban identities in relation to mainstream media, geography and land ownership.

The exhibition takes its name from the narrative device “in medias res,” a Latin term defined as “into the midst of things.” Suggested by this phrase, the artists in the exhibition invite us to engage with the heart of their stories, wherein they explore their personal relationships to Los Angeles as they negotiate daily life in relation to Hollywood and society at large.

As the City of Angels, LA comprises thriving artistic scenes fed by the TV and film industry, video game industry, art world and cult of celebrity. The wide range of mediums, tools and narrative expressions in this exhibition — including analog video, film, animation, AI, game engines and XR – reflect the artists’ navigation of LA’s various creative industries. Despite its competitive nature, LA is home to an extraordinary collaborative spirit.

The artists selected for this exhibition are LA-based and LA-adjacent, with rigorous art practices in film, digital art and internet culture. These artists reinterpret the visual mainstays of Los Angeles from personal, multicultural, dreamlike, queer, decentralized, and other alternative histories to explain Los Angeles far better than Hollywood’s palm-dappled, hegemonic and heteronormative “Barbie”-esque ideations.

In Medias Res: Expanded is a collaboration between FEMMEBIT, SUPERCOLLIDER and Torrance Art Museum.

FEMMEBIT is a grassroots platform and triennial festival of Los Angeles-based artists working in video and new media. As a celebration that includes curated programs, symposiums, screenings and exhibitions, FEMMEBIT examines today’s society at large as an ever-changing medium in how artists working with and between technologies enable progressive ideas to be born through active creation, and how we, as proponents of these fields, must work together to shape, share and grow a future receptive to progress.