Kite

performance artist, visual artist, and composer

performance

Recently, Kite has been developing body interfaces for machine learning driven performance, sculptures generated by dreams, and experimental sound and video work.

Her art practice includes developing machine learning and compositional systems for body interface movement performances, interactive and static sculpture, immersive video and sound installations, poetry and experimental lectures, experimental video, as well as co-running the experimental electronic imprint, Unheard Records.

Working with machine learning techniques since 2017 and developing body interfaces for performance since 2013, Kite is a first American Indian artist to utilize Machine Learning in art practice.

scores

Kite’s embroidery practice develops visual scores for musicians through Lakota designs and experimental dream practices, combined with digital embroidery, hand beadwork, and machine learning experiments.

research

and

writing

Kite has been included in numerous publications such as Atlas of Anomalous AI, Indigenous Futurisms, YWY: Searching for a Character Between Future Worlds, SOUTH as a State of Mind, Creative AI Database from Serpentine Gallery, the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, the Journal of Design and Science (MIT Press), with the award winning article, “Making Kin with Machines”, and the sculpture Ínyan Iyé (Telling Rock) (2019) was featured on the cover of Canadian Art.

Kite was the Global Coordinator for the Indigenous Protocols and Artificial Intelligence Workshops supported by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, resulting in the publication of the Indigenous Protocols and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper.

About.

Kite aka Dr. Suzanne Kite is an Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with a BFA from CalArts in music composition, and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School.

Known for her sound and video performance with her Machine Learning hair-braid interface, Kite’s groundbreaking scholarship and practice investigate contemporary Lakota ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance, often working in collaboration with family and community members.

Kite’s artwork and performance has been included in numerous exhibitions, recently Hammer Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Plug In Contemporary, PS122 and the Vera List Center, Anthology Film Archives, Walter Phillips Gallery, Chronus Art Center, Toronto Biennial, and Experimenta Triennial. Kite was a 2019 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, a 2020 Tulsa Artist Fellow, a 2020 Sundance New Frontiers Story Lab Fellow, a 2020 “100 Women in AI Ethics'', a 2021 Common Fields Fellow.

Kite is currently a United States Artist Fellow 2023, a 2022-2023 Creative Time Open Call artist for the Black and Indigenous Dreaming Workshops with Alisha B. Wormsley, and a 2023 Creative Capital Awardee.

Kite is currently Director of Wihanble S’a Lab, Distinguished Artist in Residence and Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies, Bard College. She is a Research Associate and Residency Coordinator for the Abundant Intelligences (Indigenous AI) project.