NORA N. KHAN (US, 1983)
Residency period: August – December 2021
During her residency, Nora Nahid Khan worked on two books whose reflections fed on each other. The first one No Context: AI Art, Machine Learning, and the Stakes for Art Criticism (Lund Humphries) looks at the challenges posed by artificial intelligence to art criticism and defines the foundations of a critique adapted to the interdisciplinarity of emerging artistic practices. The second one, Kingdom (Primary Information), takes the form of a novel and looks at issues of film and digital simulation. Finally, she also worked on Tracing Symbols, a hybrid format, part critical memoir and part theoretical work, fueled by interactions with La Becque’s other residents and shared in bits and pieces with them, through a series of workshops and mini lectures.
Living and working in Los Angeles, Nora N. Khan is a curator, editor, and author of critical texts on digital visual culture, software politics, and the philosophy of emerging technologies. She is the former Executive Director of the Project X Foundation for Art and Criticism in Los Angeles, which publishes the X-tra Contemporary Art Journal, a hub for artists’ writing and art criticism in Los Angeles for nearly 25 years. Khan has served as editor at Rhizome, Tropical Cream, and HOLO, and as professor in Digital + Media at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she was nominated for the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching. En 2024, she is the co-curator of the 9th edition of the Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement, with Andrea Bellini, hosted by Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève.
Nora N. Khan joined the jury of La Becque’s Principal Residency Program in 2024 – the first former resident to do so.
Nora N. Khan, photo Tracy Nguyen
Nora N. Khan, La Becque, 2021, photo Nora N. Khan