EMILY   NOLA



Emily Nola (she/they) is a curator, writer, and researcher based in the Hudson Valley, New York. Working in research-based and cross-disciplinary methodologies, her work is interested in technology, mediation, and contemporary culture. She is deeply invested in alternative pedagogical strategies and collective practices.


CV  bio 
instagram ↗  are.na ↗   substack ↗  emilylnola@gmail.com ↗


    SELECTED WORK

    PROJECT     TYPEYEAR
25
ASSUME FORM
EXHIBITION
2026
23
IN CONVERSATION WITH 0RPHAN DRIFT
WRITING, INTERVIEW
2026
22
SPEED POLITICS
PROGRAM
2026
21
ASSUME FORM READING GROUP
PROGRAM, RESEARCH
2026
20
THE LIVENESS OF THINGS
PROGRAM
2026
17
NOTES FROM OBLIVION
EXHIBITION
2025
19
ON BECOMING WATER AND WATER
EXHIBITION
2025
18
BIRDSONG BLUES
PROGRAM, PERFORMANCE
2025
15
WHILE YOU WERE OUT
EXHIBITION
2025
9
A HAUNTED HOUSE
EXHIBITION
2024

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TYPEYEAR
EXHIBITION
PERFORMANCE
RESEARCH
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2026
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2025
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THIS SITE WAS LAST UPDATED ON 06.14.26
25    ASSUME FORM
TYPE: EXHIBITION
2026
25.1
25.2
25.3
25.4
25.5
25.6
25.7
25.8
25.9
25.10
25.11
25.12
25.13
25.14
25.15
25.16
25.17

Assume Form
Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, Lendl Barcelos, Oneohtrix Point Never, 0rphan Drift
Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College
April 4 – May 24, 2026

In 1995, the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) was formed at the University of Warwick in England. Initiated within the Department of Philosophy by theorist and research fellow Sadie Plant, the unit produced a collectively authored body of work that straddled theory and fiction. The collective and its collaborators operated on the fringes of academia, drawing on a wide range of influences including continental philosophy, science fiction, and electronic music. Moving across forms both native and unique to the philosophical discipline including essays, zines, performances, and events, their work attempted to expand the limits of theoretical production. At the advent of the World Wide Web, amidst a present and future unsettled by emergent technologies, they turned to the speculative to interpret these new terrains.

A wide range of figures emerge from the CCRU’s annals. It is this mixed legacy of various influential, maligned, and underexplored practices that led to the uneven dissemination of the milieu’s output via the very platform they grappled with: the internet. There, their legacy is distorted, co-opted by obscure online political sects and Silicon Valley accelerationists.

Assume Form attempts to reconstruct what alchemized within the unit. Via the various influences and practices that entered their orbit, it reimagines this defining chapter of technological and cultural history. The exhibition frames the CCRU as the crystallization of its historical moment, tracking the landscape in which they operated from 1994 until the turn of the millennium. Taking cues from the same sources as the group——the landscapes, texts, sounds, and events that informed them and them——it creates the imagined space in which the ongoing resonances of this highly influential group begin assuming form.
24    ASSUME FORM PUBLICATION
TYPE: PUBLICATION
2026
24.1
24.2

Designed by Eric Timothy Carlson, includes an interview with the collective 0rphan Drift.
23    IN CONVERSATION WITH ORPHAN DRIFT
TYPE: WRITING, INTERVIEW
2026
Published in Do Not Research
June 2026
0rphan Drift is an artist collective and avatar, formed in London in 1994. It is currently channeled through the artists Maggie Roberts and Ranu Mukherjee and previously was transmitted through many others including Suzanne Karakashian and Erle Stenberg. Its work, via video, performance, collage, text, and installation, explores a rapidly changing technological landscape and the implications of that landscape on both the human and the machinic body. This conversation took place in February 2026, on the occasion of the exhibition Assume Form, which is on view until May 24th at the Hessel Museum at Bard College. It has been edited for length and clarity.

23. 0rphan Drift, Installation view of 0(rphan>)d>rift, 1994, Cabinet Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artists.

READ FULL TEXT
22    CCRU: SPEED POLITICS
TYPE: PROGRAMMING
2026
22.1
22.2

CCRU: Speed Politics
EARTH, New York City, NY
Friday May 22nd, 7PM
A conversation on the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, accelerationism, and its ripple effects on contemporary art and culture, with Aria Dean, Tomi Faison, and Emily Nola.

In collaboration with Rhizome and CCS Bard on the occasion of the exhibition Assume Form at Bard College.
21    ASSUME FORM READING GROUP
TYPE: PROGRAM, RESEARCH
2026
21.1
21.2
21.9
21.3
21.5
21.4
21.6
21.7
21.8

Assume Form reading groups
Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
April-May 2026
Across three sessions, the Assume Form reading group sessions were informal meetings in which participants discussed the texts of the CCRU and their collaborators. For each session, we were joined by a in expert in the relevant field of study we discussed. Related readings and resources from each session were gathered on are.na boards, linked below.
Session 1: Afrofuturism and music with Ed Halter
Session 2: The occult, conspiracy, and how to read the numogram with Lendl Barcelos
Session 3: Cyberfeminism(s) with Audrey Min
6    THE LIVENESS OF THINGS SYMPOSIUM
TYPE: PROGRAM
2026
6.1

On the liveness of things
co-organized with Lila Gould, Bruna Grinsztejn, and Gladys Lou
with Molly Soda, Coleman Collins, Harley Spiller, and Fang-Yu Liu
Wendy’s Subway, Brooklyn, NY
    May 2, 2026

How do archival platforms and practices shift in periods of technological transformation?

In collaboration with the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard), Wendy’s Subway presents a one-day symposium exploring interactions with platforms for the production, distribution, and archiving of time-based artworks.

The program brings together artistic and institutional practices that engage in dialogue with these shifts, attentive to how they call into question categories of liveness, ownership, and performance. From Franklin Furnace’s pioneering experiments in Internet-based performance, to Molly Soda’s decades-long collaboration with social media platforms, to Coleman Collins’s latest examinations of the relationship between digital and physical worlds, the program asks: How can artistic practice engage with both the uncertainty and possibility of emergent technology? Across a workshop, screening, and panel discussion, the symposium tracks the ways in which these paradigm shifts reflect back into the work itself.  

Find more on onthelivenessofthings.net
19    ON BECOMING WATER AND WATER
TYPE: EXHIBITION
2025
5.3

On becoming water and water
Odessa Straub
Collar Works, Troy, NY
October 11- December 1, 2025

Collar Works is pleased to announce On becoming water and water, a solo exhibition by Odessa Straub. The exhibition includes a range of Straub’s sculptures and paintings from the past several years altered and transformed for this presentation.On becoming water and water transforms Collar Works’ temporary home at the former Union Bank. Studded by draped fabric walls, the space interchangeably evokes grand, theatrical space and cozy, intimate dwelling. On view is a selection of Straub’s paintings and sculptural works, which make re-use of various textiles, found objects, and discarded items of clothing. For Straub, clothing can become a form of armour in public, a persona to guard oneself. Here,these personas are shed: not necessarily discarded, but reused and reanimated. Items that once served as protection now float and flutter in water-filled vessels, evoking ocean life and newly-emerging ecologies. On becoming water and water reimagines the exhibition– normally a space of stagnacy– as a moving body of water: facilitating growth and transformation.
18    BIRDSONG BLUES
TYPE: PERFORMANCE
2025

Birdsong Blues
Immanuel J.
Collar Works, Troy, NY

Collar Works is proud to present Birdsong Blues, a live original performance by artist and live arts practitioner Immanuel J. Taking as source material language from phishing scams and algorithmic “hacks,” Birdsong Blues is a dizzying and disorienting jukebox concert. Drawing on the distressing experience of watching a loved one spiral on social media, the artist asks the audience to consider what it might mean to intervene in these public/personal crises. How might we respond if these incidents occurred ITF— in the flesh?
17    NOTES FROM OBLIVION
TYPE: EXHIBITION
2025
17.1
17.2
17.3
17.4
17.5
17.6
17.7
17.8
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17.10
17.11
17.12
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17.14
17.15
17.16


notes from oblivion    
carrick bell
space n.n x WHITE NOISE, Service Interruption II, Munich, Germany
August 1-28, 2025

notes from oblivion dwells in the impasse: a state of permanent reverberation and oscillation. Taking as both conceptual inspiration and source material Gregg Araki’s The Living End, the exhibition proposes the loop as a structure of containment, but also of revelatory potential. Utilizing recursive processes to manipulate light, sound, and video, bell’s work explores how political and social structures of containment and oppression are individually lived and felt. How might we attune to these familiar cycles? What might we begin to notice, to anticipate?