Troy, N.Y. — Kathleen Forde has been appointed as the curator of time-based arts for the Experimental Media Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. EMPAC programs are now under way, and the EMPAC building under construction is scheduled to open in 2007.

As EMPAC curator of time-based arts, Forde will be responsible for developing, implementing, and managing EMPAC programs for artists residencies, events, performances, installations, and symposia in collaboration with EMPAC Director Johannes Goebel. She will also curate, produce, supervise, and manage performances and projects in cooperation with Goebel.

Forde comes to EMPAC from New York City where she worked in 2004-05 as an independent curator for both electronic audiovisual performance and installation. She concurrently worked as the exhibitions and program coordinator at the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology.

As an independent curator, Forde has recently worked with organizations including the Rotterdam Film Festival, VideoZone in Tel Aviv, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 7 Festival Internacional de Video/Arte/Electrónica in Lima, Peru, the Düsseldorf Kunstverein, the Cologne Kunstverein, and the Transmediale Festival in Berlin, Germany.

Prior to her work in New York, Forde was an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation German Chancellor Scholar (2002-2003) and curatorial director for live arts and new media for the Goethe Forum in Berlin, Germany.

Previous to her post in Germany, Forde was assistant curator for media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Forde obtained her master’s degree in post-1945 art and theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and undergraduate degree in communications and art history at Loyola College of Maryland.

In addition to Forde’s role as curator focusing on the visual time-based arts, Rensselaer will also appoint a curator for time-based arts with emphasis on music, according to Goebel. An associate curator for dance — Hélène Lesterlin — joined the EMPAC curatorial team in January 2005.

About EMPAC
EMPAC — the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center - is a place and a program, where the arts challenge and alter our technology and technology challenges and alters the arts. Founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, EMPAC is an arts institution that draws strength from being part of a great research university. It operates nationally and internationally: attracting innovative artists, both renowned and emerging, from around the world; offering artists, researchers, and audiences opportunities that are available nowhere else under a single roof; providing unsurpassed facilities for creative exploration, and for research in fields such as visualization and movement capture; sending new artworks onto the global stage. For more information, go to www.empac.rpi.edu.

Contact: Theresa Bourgeois
Phone: (518) 276-2840
E-mail: bourgt@rpi.edu