Eating Its Own Boundaries: Termite TV Collective’s Theories of Change

In this workshop, members of the Termite TV Collective will present the expressive and political possibilities opened up through different Termite methodologies. We will discuss Termite collaborative processes as applied in classrooms, community groups, cable access stations, and regeneratively across time, space, and media modalities. These brief presentations to present and contextualize Termite’s expansive body of work, will be followed by an opportunity for participants of the workshop to engage more actively with Termite methodology and concepts in exploring the theme of “Mending”. Given that the Termite ethos is for work (and communities) to proliferate, we will lead participants through short exercises relevant to Termite projects. Not only does this offer workshop participants a chance to apply Termite methods to their own (teaching and production) practices and ideas, but we also aim to expand the Termite creative community through these acts of active–even if momentary– collaboration in the collective.

Alan Powell

Alan Powell has been working as a visual artist for over fifty years. From 1971 until the mid 1990’s, he worked almost exclusively with video and electronic imaging, but has expanded to working with acrylic, gouache, iPad Procreate, collage work, and photographic work. Powell spends his time between Philadelphia, and Fleischmanns, NY, where his main studio is located. He continues to work with electronic media as well as physical art mediums including drawings made with iPad Procreate, paintings made with acrylic and gouache and constructions. In recent years, Powell has become invested in man’s relationship to the world around him; he has channelled this into his artwork via political installation pieces and a collection of nature paintings. In addition to being a professor and an artist he is also a board member of Signal Culture, and TermiteTV video collective.

D. Rudman

By day, Debbie Rudman is Programming Director for Philadelphia Community Access Media, Philadelphia's public access station, PhillyCAM. Her experience includes curating and collaboration in all phases of the video production process. Deborah Rudman is co-producer of numerous independent video projects presented in festivals and on national television. By night, Deb Rudman is a member of the Termite Tv Collective. She maintains a passionate and active engagement in social issues and community connection through media art, and as a result has also become an urban farmer & beekeeper.

Laura Deutch

Laura Deutch is a Philadelphia-based artist, educator and mom, committed to using media as a tool for social justice, creative expression and community organizing. Her practice ranges from designing interactive websites to curating events and pop up public interventions, all of which strive to spark alternatives for more just ways of living and being in community. She currently works as the Education Director at PhillyCAM and serves on the board of Termite TV. Her work can be viewed at www.crackingopen.org

gabe castro

gabe castro is a nonbinary, latine multimedia artist, cultural critic, and community builder with deep roots in Philadelphia's media scene. Passionate about using media as a tool for social change, gabe has built their reputation on amplifying diverse voices and fostering meaningful community engagement.

Anula Shetty

Anula Shetty is an award-winning filmmaker and new media artist. She is a recipient of a Pew Fellowship and a Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) Fellowship. She was an artist in residence at SEPTA transit and led the project Philly Daydreams as part of Public Works, a program of Forman Arts Initiative and Mural Arts. In 2024, she was awarded an NEA grant to create Echoes from the Conch Shell, an AR/VR project with the Reichhold Art Center in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She received a Project Involve Fellowship, two Independence Foundation Fellowships and a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award for her art and social change work. Anula received her MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University and serves on the board of the Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. She is a proud member of A-Doc, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Bitchitra Collective, and is a co-director of the artist run video collective Termite TV. Her work has been screened at festivals and museums including MoMA, The Flaherty Film Seminar, National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Pacific Film Archive. Current projects include Places of Power, an immersive VR documentary about people and places of belonging and power in North Philadelphia, and Cosmic Egg, a poetic documentary set against the surreal landscape of egg harvesting, transnational surrogacy and the desire for procreation.

Mike Kuetemeyer

Mike Kuetemeyer is an Associate Professor at Temple University. He is a recipient of a Pew Fellowship, and has presented his work at MoMA, Flaherty Film Seminar, SIGGRAPH, and ISEA conferences. Residencies include Fulbright to India, ZERO1 American Arts Incubator - Cambodia, Asian Arts Initiative Social Practice Lab, and SPACES Artists - Village of Arts & Humanities. He is a founding member and co-director of Termite TV Collective Termite TV has been awarded a multi-year artist residency and studio space at Cherry Street. Kuetemeyer works on socially engaged immersive media, creating participatory projects with artists and communities. He is a co-director of the on-going immersive community AR/VR media project "Places of Power - Villa Africana Colobó Garden.” Projects he developed include Time Lens – Pearl Street and Places of Power – Penny Candy Store. He recently worked on an AR/VR project, Echoes of the Conch Shell, NEA Art Works grant in collaboration with Reichhold Center for the Arts, University of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz

Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz is an award-winning Iranian-American media producer, writer, and film educator. Aggie’s films have been screened at international festivals including SXSW EDU, SFFILM Festival, CAAMFest, and Locarno, as well as broadcast on PBS via acclaimed documentary series POV and America ReFramed. Aggie has received support from major fellowships including the Wexner Center for the Arts, the BAVC National Mediamaker Fellowship, and the international Incubator for Media Education and Development. She earned her M.F.A. in film from Temple University where she began making experimental media with the Termite TV Collective.

Ingrid Raphaël

Ingrid Raphaël is an award-winning filmmaker, educator, and artist interested in how poetics of ecological, archival, and Black/Indigenous memory shape time, objects, culture, and the body. They are the co-founder of NO EVIL EYE CINEMA and its project FILM FUTURA: a virtual alternative film school. They are also the founder of NSISIM studio : a slow burn study of ecological embodiment where they teach, research, publish & design objects.

They have received support from, and recognition for their work at, The Center for Afrofuturist Studies, Trans Film Center x Netflix’ Film Career Lab, Wexner Center for the Arts, Field of Vision, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Black Quantum Futurism, cinéSPEAK, Mural Arts, Mono No Aware, documentary film festivals and more.

Nasha Taylor

Nasha is a propagationist, liminal surfer, gatherer, and creative adolescent. She is interested in curiosity as an organizing principle. Her identities as a Black biracial, Xennial, queer and nonbinary, intuitive synergist shape her support for Black and Indigenous liberation. Creatively, she experiments in mixed media with how intention guides perspective and invites form. Nasha's group work skills are shaped from training and practice in grassroots organizing, nonprofit leadership, emergent strategy, Black feminism, meditation, cooperative economics, gardening, and reflecting on lived experiences.

The Parallel Play Symposium, presented as part of the six-week Collective Futures festival, is a two-day gathering of artists, scholars, organizers, and cultural workers exploring the practices, histories, and conditions that sustain collective cultural production. Through free panels, workshops, and performative presentations, participants will examine the cultural significance of collective art-making and artist-run spaces while sharing strategies for building and maintaining collaborative cultural infrastructures.

Organized around thematic tracks—including How To: Collective Tools & Tactics, Relational Infrastructures, “Have You Seen the ___?”: Memory and Collective Spaces, and Playground: Place, Ecology & Entanglement—the symposium will feature workshops, panels, performances, and conversations presented by ATUOMAT Collective, Luster Gallery + Studio, Obvious Agency, Vox Populi, Termite TV Collective, All Mutable, FORTUNE, FJORD, Big Ramp, Da Vinci Art Alliance, cinéSPEAK, Practice Gallery, and many other collaborators.

Registration is required for each session.

Event venue & nearby stays

Asian Art Initiative, 1219 Vine St, Philadelphia, United States

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