Profile
Amir Husak is a media maker and Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The New School. Combining film, video, sound, interactive media, essay and experimental techniques, Husak’s work explores documentary as social practice and investigates representations of history, migration and memory. He has shown works at such diverse places as Cinemateca Distrital (Bogota, Colombia), Sarajevo Film Festival (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Stadtmuseum Graz (Austria), South by Southwest (US), Sundance Film Festival (US), P.O.V./PBS (US), Crvena Association for Culture and Art (Sarajevo, Bosnia), TV Cultura (Brazil), and Full Frame Film Festival (US). In 2016 Husak co-edited a volume on socially engaged art and activist media in Bosnia-Herzegovina titled Crisis, Art, Action (in orig. Kriza, Umjetnost, Akcija). He has published articles and essays on emergent forms of documentary and activist media in scholarly journals, magazines and online publications. In 2012-2013 he was a Fulbright research fellow at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s department of Diversity and Social Conflict. Husak holds a PhD in Arts and Communication from University of Leeds (UK), and serves as Artistic Director of BHFF NYC Film Festival, a showcase of cinema from Southeast Europe and its diasporas.
Degrees Held
University of Leeds (UK) | PhD, Arts and Communication
The New School (NY) | MA, Media Studies
Professional Affiliation
Advisory Board, Interactive Film and Media Journal, ISSN 2564-4173
Artistic Director, BHFF NYC Film Festival
Recent Publications
“The Pain That Sits in One’s Stomach: Želimir Žilnik’s The Old School of Capitalism,” Artist Cinema series: From the East: Some Strange, Scary, and Funny Messages, e-Flux Journal (Film & Video): January 2022
"George Floyd is everywhere", Perspectives, Kosovo 2.0, June 10, 2020. Available online at https://kosovotwopointzero.com/en/george-floyd-is- everywhere/
“Exercising Radical Democracy: The Crisis of Representation and Interactive Documentary as an Agent of Change.” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 15, Summer 2018, pp. 16–32.
“In Search of a Thirdspace” (orig. in Bosnian: “U potrazi za trećeprostorom: umjetnost socijalne prakse u Bihacu”), Revizor (Broj 1.), Contributing author, Revizor Foundation, Bihać: March, 2018.
Crisis, Art, Action (Kriza, Umjetnost, Akcija), in Bos/Cro/Srb, Editor and contributor, Bihać/Sarajevo: Gradska Galerija, 2016. ISBN 978-9958-9416-5-8
Performances and Appearances
(SELECTED)
"Pokraj Une / By the River Una", documentary audio feature (in collab. with Azra Hromadźić), Co-author and sound designer, web link. Radio Elsewheres (RE), June 2023.
“Records in Limbo: On the Lore of Crossing Borders”, Displaced, Detained, Undeterred: A Creative Critical Symposium, lecture performance, The Minority, Indigenous, and Third World Studies Research Group (MITWS), Cornell University, Ithaca, April 2023
“Reimagining the Archive”, Encountering Reality as Crisis: Documentary, Ethnographic Media and Education,” panelist, Royal Anthropological Institute FF, London, UK, Mar 2021
"Institutions vs Institutionalization of Ideology in Contemporary Practice", with Coco Fusco, Steve Lyons (Not an Alternative), and Christian Nyampeta. Art and the Specter of Ideology, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics. February 22, 2020, New York
ReFest 2020, CultureHub, NYC. "Re/Lens: Old Glass for New Eyes", workshop with Amir Husak and Melissa Friedling, March 14, 2020
“History from below: New documentary practices as social agents”, screening and talk, School of Social Literacy, Freedom Front – Workers University, Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jun 2019
“Software Powerplays and (My) Documentary Dilemmas”, Dynamics of Transparency and Opacity: Challenging the Limits of Documentary panel, Visible Evidence XXV, Indiana University Bloomington, Aug 2018
i-Docs Symposium 2018, ‘Works in progress / iDocs’ panel, Project presentation: “From Proletariat to Precariat”, Bristol, UK, Mar 2018
Poetics and Politics of Documentary, ‘Activist Interactive: iDocs from the Global South’ panelist, with Anandana Kapur and Fabiola Hanna, Presentation title “Digital Dissent: Citizen-activist Video”, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, Jun 2017
“From Detroit to Kombiteks: Industrial ruins and the art of social practice”, Dizajn i Kriza (Design and Crisis) collegium, lecture and performance, Patterns Lectures program, University of Bihac, Bosnia-Herzegovina, March 2017
Codes and Modes: Reframing Reality, Virtuality & Non-fiction Media ‘Interactive Documentary and Social Change’ panel. Paper title “Between virtual and real dissents: methods for interactive documentary as social practice”, New York, NY, Mar 2017
Research Interests
Documentary; Digital Media; Social Activism; Film; Cultural Memory; Sound Studies; Migration Studies
Portfolio
Website