Adriene Jenik
Adriene Jenik is an artist, educator and end of life doula who resides in the desert. Her computer and media art spans several decades including pioneering work in interactive cinema and live telematic performance.
Jenik's artistic projects straddle and trouble the borders between art, science, engineering and popular culture and have been written about in The New York Times, published in The Drama Review, and recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation. She was an early member of the Paper Tiger Television collective (1985-91) and a founding member of the Deep Dish TV Alternative Satellite network. Her video productions include the video short, "What's the Difference Between a Yam & a Sweet Potato?" (with J. Evan Dunlap), and the award-winning live satellite TV broadcast, "EL NAFTAZTECA: Cyber-Aztec TV for 2000 A.D." (with Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes). "MAUVE DESERT: A CD-ROM Translation" is Jenik's internationally acclaimed interactive road movie based on the novel Le Désert mauve by French Canadian author Nicole Brossard. Her creative research project, DESKTOP THEATER was a series of live theatrical interventions and activities in public visual chat rooms developed with multi-media maven Lisa Brenneis.
In 2014, she shifted her creative practice to focus on issues related to the US desert: environmental resilience, military testing and training, and indigenous values. Her ongoing series of DATA HUMANIZATION performances recast endurance work for our time. DRYLAB2023 (with co-director Marco Janssen and 8 participants) imagined a near future of water scarcity that was enacted over 30 days in an experiment in extreme experiential learning. Most weekends she can be found in a public space offering her performance of CLIMATE FUTURE READINGS with her ECOtarot deck. She is also a singer/songwriter and published poet.
Related to her work as an end of life doula, Jenik is creative producer of The Artists' Grief Deck. She is a PI on the Global Youth Sustainability Initiative Turn It Around!: Flashcards for Education Futures which launched at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Education
MFA, Integrated Electronic Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1996
BA, English, Douglass College, Rutgers University, 1986
Expertise Areas
Area of study
ECOTAROT
2017-PRESENT | CUSTOM TAROT DECK AND PUBLIC PERFORMANCES, ONGOING
THE ARTISTS’ GRIEF DECK
2020 | CROWD-SOURCED GRIEF TOOLKIT + ONGOING IMAGE/PROMPT REPOSITORY | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2020
TURN IT AROUND! FLASHCARDS FOR EDUCATION FUTURES
2021 | CROWD-SOURCED CLIMATE POLICY AND EDUCATION RESOURCE | ORIGINALLY LAUNCHED AT COP26, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND, NOVEMBER 2021
Publications
Jenik, Adriene, "Speculative Performance Meets Immersive Learning: Lessons of Drylab2023" (MS #1043) in PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research
Janssen, M. A., A. Jenik, S. Z. Tekola, K. L. Davis, S. Flores, W. Gibbs, M. Koehn, V. Lyons, C. Mallory, S. Rood, S. Guelpa, and L.-A. Pfister. 2018. Drylab 2023: living a possible future with resource scarcity. Ecology and Society 23(4):8. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss4/art8/
Jenik, Adriene, “Border/Body/Technology” in The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisational Studies, Volume II, eds. Lewis, George and Piekut, Ben, Oxford University Press
Jenik, Adriene, “A book can change your life: reflections on the making of MAUVE DESERT: A CD-ROM Translation,” chapter in Nicole Brossard: L’inedit de sens, eds. Janine Ricouart and Roseanna Dufault, Les Editions du remue-menage, pps. 273-292
Jenik, Adriene and Sarah Lewison, “Moving In Place: The Question of Distributed Social Cinema,” Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin eds., The MIT Press, pp.179-191
Jenik, Adriene, “Santaman’s Harvest Yields Questions, or Does a Performance Happen If It Exists in a Virtual Forest?” Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, eds., The MIT Press, pp. 289-296
Jenik, Adriene, “Desktop Theater: Keyboard Catharsis and the Masking of Roundheads,” featured cover article, The Drama Review, pp.95-112, 45:3, published by NYU and MIT, Fall 2001
Research Activity
- Jenik,Adriene*. Arizona Art Tank Grant: Arizona State University Art Xchange. AZ COMM ON THE ARTS(1/1/2014 - 6/30/2014).
- Rikakis,Thanassis*, Burleson,Winslow S, Jenik,Adriene, Kelliher,Aisling G, Kelliher,Aisling G, Sundaram,Hari, Sundaram,Hari. Collaborative Research: EAGER: A virtual eXchange to support networks of creativity and innovation amongst Science Engineering Arts and Design XSEAD. NSF-CISE(8/1/2011 - 10/31/2013).