FELLOWS
Satellite Fellows 2025
John Bambery
INTERMEDIA ARTIST & ATTENTION ACTIVIST
John Bambery has developed and performed in works at The Metropolitan Opera, Public Theater, Roundabout Theater Company, Manhattan Theater Club, La Jolla Playhouse, ACT, ART, Arena Stage, Mosaic Theater Company, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, among others. Highlights include world premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner James Ijames’s TJ LOVES SALLY 4 EVER (NYTimes Critics Pick) at the Jack in Brooklyn, multiple seasons as a fellow and company member at Williamstown Theater Festival developing various works, including collaborations with MASS MoCA, the Clark Museum, photographer Gregory Crewdson, and numerous luminaries of stage and film. Company member of Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC performing in many plays, including US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s world premiere adaptation of WALLENSTEIN as well as a mock trial of Shakespeare’s villains presided over by Justices of the US Supreme Court. Company member at Chautauqua Theater Company. Trained at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music and the Moscow Art Theater School through the National Theater Institute, recipient of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Fellowship at the Juilliard School where he earned an MFA as well as the John Houseman Prize. During the Pandemic while working as a ranch hand at 3 Spear Ranch he took up an Artist Residency at Tickling the Beast in Jackson, WY through a grant from the Center of Wonder where he began developing a performance piece blending art and technology to create immersive, interactive, and interconnected works in partnership with the National Parks Service and the MIT Media Lab. Most recently he completed an artist residency at Studio@620 in St. Petersburg, Fl where he spent two years solely focused on exploring and inhabiting the subconscious dream state of Shakespeare’s Hamlet culminating in a distinctive and lauded production. He is an affiliate artist with Artist with Evidence (AWE).
ÉTUDES OF EMERGENCE
AN IMMERSIVE DURATIONAL PERFORMANCE PIECE: ART AS ECOLOGICAL DIALOGUE or A DREAM PLAY WITH PLANTS
Études of Emergence is a durational performance piece in collaboration with living plants. Commissioned by the Juilliard Center for Creative Technology with additional support from Artists with Evidence (AWE). It uses technology to translate plant communication into sensory and poetic experiences for the audience, as well as attention protocols to train and direct the collective imagination, cultivating a conversation with the surrounding ecology.
Drawing on scientific research and custom-built sensors, the work captures plant signals, including root exchanges, mycorrhizal networks, and volatile organic compounds, and translates them into sound, scent, touch, and visual elements. The performance explores what happens when human language fails as a primary mode of communication, and other forms of intelligence rooted in nature take over.
The narrative, such as there is one, follows a man obsessed with knowing, a woman, hatched from an egg, rooted in somatic language. As text deteriorates, the audience’s environmental and behavioral attention is heightened, inviting them to experience the world through the senses of plants. By the end of the piece language, judgement, and logic has fallen away completely and we are left with sensorial experiencing and each individual’s subjective imaginings. The piece critiques anthropocentrism and humanity’s quest for absolutes, fostering humility, curiosity, and connection; prompting reflection on our place in the web of life and the nature of our relationship to the consciousness of all matter.
COLLECTIVE DREAM INCUBATION
“I believe in a resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality...” André Breton, Surrealist Manifesto, 1924
Collective Dream Incubation is a weekly workshop led by John Bambery that invites participants to collaboratively explore the intersection of dream imagery with cutting-edge research into plant communication, intelligence, and consciousness. Drawing inspiration from his own explorations into Surrealist dream techniques and his relationship with dream researcher Adam Haar PhD, the workshop uses guided dream incubation as a creative and ecological practice.
Each Sunday, participants engage in exercises designed to incubate specific dream content, share dream experiences, and relate these insights to broader ecological and cultural narratives, embedding personal dreamwork within the living systems of the more-than-human world. This workshop is a central element of the ongoing project, “Études of Emergence,” and cultivates a space where dreams become a site for creative inquiry into the intelligence of both plants and human imagination, fostering new connections between inner experience and the animate world.
Each session is limited to 10 participants to ensure an intimate and focused group experience. While there is no cost to attend, participants are suggested and encouraged to consider making a tax-deductible donation to support the ongoing work of Études of Emergence.
ATTENTION ACTIVISM
PUSHING BACK AGAINST THE FRACKING OF HUMAN ATTENTION BY COERCIVE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
Attention activism refers to the deliberate practice of recognizing, reclaiming, and directing human attention as a form of social or political action.
The concept builds on the idea that in the “attention economy,” human attention is treated as a scarce and valuable commodity, often exploited by advertisers, tech platforms, media companies, and governments both foreign and domestic to drive profit and influence behavior. Attention activism seeks to raise awareness about this exploitation and encourages individuals and communities to consciously choose where and how they direct their attention.
John is an engaged and passionate member of the attention activist movement and community which has come to be an integral aspect of his artistic practice.
To learn more and find out about actions and how to get involved at click below:
