Talking Art: Technoshamanism, Art, Rave, and Technology @ ICA San José
Join the ICA San José for the closing weekend of INFRAMUNDO and a conversation with artist Miguel Novelo; Asian Art Museum Curator Naz Cuguoğlu, who recently curated and wrote on her nationally-recognized exhibition at the Asian Art Museum that centered around rave culture in the museum space; and UC Santa Cruz art history professor Dr. Edward A. Shanken, a leading scholar on the intersection of art, science, and technology with a focus on experimental new media art.
Bringing together perspectives from artistic practice, curatorial research, and art history, Novelo, Cuguoğlu, and Shanken will explore how contemporary artists are rethinking relationships between technology, ritual, and perception. With a focus on “technoshamanism”, a practice that brings together ancestral ritual, sound, and emerging technologies to explore expanded forms of perception and relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. The conversation will also consider broader questions around immersive, embodied experiences in contemporary art spaces and museums.
This conversation will be moderated by ICA Curator Zoë Latzer and is free and open to all. The panel will be followed by a performance by Miguel Novelo and (the spirit formerly known as Champoy), and a reception to celebrate the closing of INFRAMUNDO. Light refreshments will be provided. Space is limited. RSVP using the button below.
About Miguel Novelo:
Miguel Novelo is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work utilizes algorithmic cinema, game engine environments, and human computer interaction design. His research-based practice investigates non-human perspectives and speculative world-building, creating systems where audiences engage with geological change, animal cognition, and the liminal spaces between landscape and data. His exhibition, INFRAMUNDO, is on view at the ICA San José through August 23, 2026.
He is a recent recipient of the 2026 The Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, as well as a 2026 San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Awardee. He received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as a MFA from Stanford University. His work has been presented at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, the Recology AIR Program, and international film festivals. Novelo teaches at CADRE program at San José State University and a Stanford University, he is a Lecturer in Experimental Media Arts within the Department of Art & Art History and a Symbolic Systems program affiliate; Visit Miguel’s website for more information about his work and practice: https://miguelnovelo.com/
About Naz Cuguoğlu:
Naz Cuguoğlu is a curator and writer based in San Francisco whose work explores intersectional identities, diasporic experiences, collective practices, and the politics of joy. She is a curator at the Asian Art Museum, where she develops exhibitions, commissions, and public programs. In 2024, she co-curated the inaugural American Pavilion at the 15th Gwangju Biennale and received the Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship and the AAMC Propel Award. Her recent exhibition, Rave into the Future: Art in Motion (2025–26), examined rave culture as a site of collective joy, resistance, and speculative worldbuilding. Her curatorial experience includes exhibitions and programs at documenta fifteen, the 15th Istanbul Biennial, the Taiwan Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. She has previously held positions at KADIST, the Wattis Institute, the de Young Museum, and SFMOMA. Her writing, including her article on Rave into the Future, has appeared in Art Asia Pacific, Hyperallergic, and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. As co-founder of Collective Çukurcuma, she explores collaborative curatorial practice through reading groups, research, and international exhibitions. Visit Naz’s website for more information about her work and practice: https://nazcuguoglu.com/
About Dr. Edward A. Shanken:
Dr. Edward A. Shanken writes and teaches about the entwinement of art, science, and technology with a focus on interdisciplinary practices involving new media. He thinks of artists as “deviation amplifiers” and of art as a “psychic dress-rehearsal for the future.” His work explores how visionary artistic models allow us to experience alternative futures in the present. He appreciates art that “perverts technological correctness” by deploying technology in a metacritical way, offering profound insights into emerging technological modalities and social practices. His books include Art and Electronic Media (2009), Systems (2013), and Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness (U Cal P, 2004). Recent work explores Indigenous technologies, AI and visual culture, systems theory, surveillance culture, and environmental art. He is currently curating an exhibition on technoshamanism for Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut.
He is Professor of Arts at University of California, Santa Cruz and a member of the NANO research group at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he was a visiting scholar in 2024. Prior posts include Duke University, University of Amsterdam, and RISD. Fellowships include the National Endowment for the Arts, American Council of Learned Societies, and Andy Warhol Foundation. He is an alumnus of Duke, Yale, and Haverford. Visit Dr. Shanken’s website for more information about his work and practice: www.artexetra.com.