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I was born in Bogotá in 1974, under the sign of Scorpio and with two certainties: that I was good for nothing, and that, perhaps because of that, I would end up in prison. Now I configure perceptual systems that seek to take the place away from the one who only looks.
I studied martial arts, electronic engineering, sculpture, and interdisciplinary theatre, and out of all that a set of practices remained, the ones I devote myself to: writing code and scores; amateur photography, dance; drawings of the flow between people and systems.
Teaching came early, after Sin Título [HOME] (2001, honorary degree). In 2003 I won the Beca de Investigación-Creación, the research-creation grant of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, for curating fuenteAbierta v.β (2004), an exhibition of net-based work that did not necessarily use technology (in open opposition to the rush, at the time, to create more electronic art festivals). The short essay I wrote as the final report of that process, an account of its many fractures, is part of the collection of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
In 2007, with a group of students, I co-founded no2Somos+ to work in non-formal pedagogical spaces (marginal neighbourhoods, rural communities) and so put pressure on the relationship with traditional, mainstream scenarios (academic and artistic). That perspective was my contribution as co-creator of Colombia’s first Master’s in Art Education.
As a student of the Maestría Interdisciplinar en Teatro y Artes Vivas (Interdisciplinary Master’s in Theatre and Live Arts), I proposed a small-format drawing as my degree project; the thesis was rejected in 2008, before it could be presented. In 2011 I made Bajo la Luz de una Estrella Negra — Under the Black Star Light — a long-duration theatrical piece that received an honorary degree and also served as my resignation letter to academic life.
The following year I migrated to the United States, where I started a non-formal career in the construction industry and moved through the American South while raising a family. Along the way I have had the chance to keep proposing ideas through intermittent trips to Latin America.
Libros Remotos (Remote Books) won CreaDigital 2015 – Transmedia category in Colombia, a grant awarded jointly by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies.
I have been a visiting professor and artist in residence at art faculties such as UBA-FADU in Buenos Aires (cheLA resident, 2016) and SMU in Dallas (2018). I have gone on teaching courses and giving lectures around the disciplinary Babel, its effect on the spectrum of the sensible, and the specific ways it limits our interactions. A subject left unfinished in my conversation with Bruno Tackels (Walter Benjamin’s biographer), but one I have been able to shore up (after leaving the country, and the scene) through sporadic encounters with Amerindian perspectivism.
I have made commissioned projects for anthropology symposia and for documentary and experimental film festivals. I presented Espacio Vacío (Empty Space), a theatrical monologue, at Casa Yugen, Mexico City. Donna Haraway’s seminar Entangling Ecologies, Knowledges, Kinships (2019, Goethe-Institut; UIS, Bucaramanga) opened with TesserAct, a sculpture accompanied by a mute piano and a trumpet concert. N8, a telematic performance assisted by a purpose-built AI, was part of the Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá (MIDBO), 2020 edition.
I have collaborated with collectives such as Proyector Iluminacja, in Mexico, and the Pandemic Dreams Archive, in Brazil, and I am still active in no2Somos+, today Nodos Cacharreo Lab, in Colombia, from where we promote rural cultural festivals, arguing that technology has to be redefined from unusual places. Since 2021 we have been offering pedagogical support to self-managed groups working in agromatics and rural robotics.
Since 2023 I have been writing timeBlur ~ /temˈbloɾ/, a feature film and the improbable horizon for the pieces I make alone or with Monstra, the collective I created with my wife and daughter. The most recent is In-Person Now, a transmedia narrative we are developing with the support of a Silicon Valley community channel, CreaTv San José.
With Nathan Looker, a researcher in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Stanford, I explore non-human regenerative theatre: Evans boxes augmented with computer vision applied to vermiculture.
And I work full time as Principal Engineer for Daisy, a chain of home-automation technology integrators led by a feminist vision. I coordinate the standardization of operating procedures (SOPs) nationwide (USA), also using transmedia educational strategies.