The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is pleased to announce staging grounds, a nine-day festival of installations, performances, and public programs exploring how culture is shaped by acts of return and re-animation. Taking place February 20–28, 2026, the festival brings together five international artists—Korakrit Arunanondchai, Jewyo Rhii, Na Mira, Samson Young, and Li Yi-Fan—whose practices illuminate how art restages experience across time. 

Curated by Katherine C. M. Adams (Associate Curator, Time-Based Visual Arts), staging grounds unfolds across EMPAC’s architecturally distinct spaces. The artists’ works are embedded within the building’s theaters, studios, and theater lobby, drawing attention to how memory and experience are mediated through the infrastructures that hold them. 

“Staging grounds is built around practices that return to the past—as ghosts, archive, transmissions—not to freeze history, but to move through it,” says curator Katherine C. M. Adams. “Each artist activates EMPAC as a site where memory is staged in the present. These works ask us to inhabit time differently—to see how histories are held and performed in bodies, environments, and infrastructures.” 

Across installations, films, and performances, staging grounds asks: By staging our shared experiences, how might we open up new forms of collective possibility? 

Anchored by two major new commissions—by Korakrit Arunanondchai and Jewyo Rhii— the festival also features installations and screenings by Na Mira, Samson Young, and Li Yi-Fan, each offering a different vantage on reenactment, return, and the architectures of memory.

PROJECTS

Korakrit Arunanondchai — The Ghost Will Take Us by the Hand
Major Commission | EMPAC Theater
Arunanondchai inverts traditional theater by placing the audience onstage as performance,
video, fog, light, and sound overtake the empty auditorium, culminating in a lone dancer
emerging from a haunted field of seats. Created in collaboration with Tosh Basco
(choreography/dance), Aaron David Ross (music direction), and DUCKUNIT (lighting
design), the work reimagines theatrical mythmaking as a way to contour collective
memory. This project is followed by an installation of Arunanondchai’s Unity for Nostalgia
that extends the work’s questions through thermal imaging and spectral environments.

Jewyo Rhii — Wing Theater
Major Commission | EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman
Wing Theater transforms EMPAC’s Studio 1 into a living site of process, reflection, and
storytelling. Drawing from the artist’s evolving work on mobility, displacement, and the
infrastructures that shape artistic labor, this will be Rhii’s first solo exhibition in the
United States in more than ten years. The installation is accompanied by public programs
that invite audiences into a dynamic space of shared experience.

Na Mira — Autoasphyxiation
Installation | EMPAC Theater Lobby
Na Mira tracks the shifting borders of Seoul’s Dragon Hill military garrison—an area
controlled by successive state powers since its construction by the Japanese Imperial
Army in 1906—fixating on the thresholds that define its visibility. Staged as a live
transmission, the work renders this contested landscape as a flickering boundary
between presence and disappearance, signal and silence.

Samson Young — Liquid Borders
Installation | EMPAC Theater Lobby
Young gives sonic form to the once-forbidden frontier between Mainland China and
Hong Kong, transforming field recordings of fences, waterways, and shifting terrain into
a four-part immersive composition. Installed in the theater lobby alongside video by
Na Mira, the work reanimates sites of restricted access as resonant, materially
textured landscapes.

Li Yi-Fan — What is Your Favorite Primitive
Screening | EMPAC Studio 2
What is Your Favorite Primitive explores the awkward, playful spirit of virtual production,
where characters become tools of the software and the software itself steps forward as
a character scripting its own dramas. Told through a semi-autobiographical lens and
built in a video-game engine, the film oscillates between parody and reflection as it
meditates on constructing a persona within screenspace.

SCHEDULE
Installations will be open daily, with timed performances, a free reception and lunch,
workshops, screenings, and artist talks punctuating the nine-day program:

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20
6-10:15PM Na Mira, Samson Young Installations Open
6:30PM, Jewyo Rhii Performance
7:30–10PM, Opening Reception
8PM, Korakrit Arunanondchai Performance
9:15PM, Jewyo Rhii Performance

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21
11AM–5PM, Jewyo Rhii, Na Mira, Samson Young Installations Open
NOON, free Community Lunch
1:30PM, Jewyo Rhii Performance
2:45PM, Korakrit Arunanondchai Performance
4PM, Jewyo Rhii Performance

TUESDAY–FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24–27
11AM–5PM, All Installations Open
1PM, Jewyo Rhii Performance
3PM, Jewyo Rhii Performance

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28
11AM–5PM, All Installations Open
1PM, Jewyo Rhii Performance
2:15PM, Li Yi-Fan Screening
3:15PM, Jewyo Rhii Workshop
4:30PM, Na Mira Artist Talk

ADMISSION & TICKET INFO
All staging grounds installations are free and open to the public, with no timed entry
required. Tickets for performances of The Ghost Will Take Us by the Hand are $20-$5.
Talks, screenings, and Wing Theater programs are free, with RSVP.
Tickets and reservations available at empac.rpi.edu.

LOCATION
staging grounds takes place at EMPAC located on the campus of RPI. Navigate to
50 8th Street in Troy, NY 12180.
For more information, including transportation and venue accessibility details,
visit online at empac.rpi.edu/visit.

SPECIAL THANKS
staging grounds Arts Festival 2026 is made possible by EMPAC at RPI. EMPAC programs
are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the
Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

ABOUT EMPAC
EMPAC’s world-class production environment enables artists to work across media and
scale, supporting ambitious projects that are often impossible to realize elsewhere in
the United States. staging grounds continues EMPAC’s commitment to commissioning
new artworks, fostering deep research, and connecting experimental practices with
New York’s Capital Region and beyond.

PRESS & MEDIA INQUIRIES
Members of the press are warmly invited to attend the festival. To request a press pass,
high-resolution images, or a full media kit, please contact empac.comms@rpi.edu.
More information may be found at empac.rpi.edu/staging-grounds.