Explore community and gathering at From Panoctagon to Festival Henge. Artist screaMachine's two site-specific installations set the stage–Panoctagon, a temporary public forum centered on a Video Soapbox, offers a stage for public voice and Festival Henge, a site for celebration.
Protest: Queer Liberation March 2021 NYC, street intervention performance funded by The New York City Artist Corps featuring performers with protest posters, accompanied by members of the public, marching in front of large video projections depicting the 2020 Queer Liberation March. The group are led by a person (people take turns) with a loudhailer, chanting protest chants which are repeated by the group.
Explore community and gathering at From Panoctagon to Festival Henge. Artist screaMachine's two site-specific installations set the stage–Panoctagon, a temporary public forum centered on a Video Soapbox, offers a stage for public voice and Festival Henge, a site for celebration.
Protest: Queer Liberation March 2021 NYC, street intervention performance funded by The New York City Artist Corps featuring performers with protest posters, accompanied by members of the public, marching in front of large video projections depicting the 2020 Queer Liberation March. The group are led by a person (people take turns) with a loudhailer, chanting protest chants which are repeated by the group.
Explore community and gathering at From Panoctagon to Festival Henge. Artist screaMachine's two site-specific installations set the stage–Panoctagon, a temporary public forum centered on a Video Soapbox, offers a stage for public voice and Festival Henge, a site for celebration.
Protest: Queer Liberation March 2021 NYC, street intervention performance funded by The New York City Artist Corps featuring performers with protest posters, accompanied by members of the public, marching in front of large video projections depicting the 2020 Queer Liberation March. The group are led by a person (people take turns) with a loudhailer, chanting protest chants which are repeated by the group.
Explore community and gathering at From Panoctagon to Festival Henge. Artist screaMachine's two site-specific installations set the stage–Panoctagon, a temporary public forum centered on a Video Soapbox, offers a stage for public voice and Festival Henge, a site for celebration.
Protest: Queer Liberation March 2021 NYC, street intervention performance funded by The New York City Artist Corps featuring performers with protest posters, accompanied by members of the public, marching in front of large video projections depicting the 2020 Queer Liberation March. The group are led by a person (people take turns) with a loudhailer, chanting protest chants which are repeated by the group.
Explore community and gathering at From Panoctagon to Festival Henge. Artist screaMachine's two site-specific installations set the stage–Panoctagon, a temporary public forum centered on a Video Soapbox, offers a stage for public voice and Festival Henge, a site for celebration.
Explore community and gathering at From Panoctagon to Festival Henge. Artist screaMachine's two site-specific installations set the stage–Panoctagon, a temporary public forum centered on a Video Soapbox, offers a stage for public voice and Festival Henge, a site for celebration.
For one night only, two installations explore community and gathering through contrast and collaboration, linked by performance and presence despite their separation in space and time.
The Panoctagon, a temporary public forum, is an octagonal structure centered on the individual yet surrounded by community voices. This Temporary Autonomous Zone displays eight films from Occupy Wall Street protests on its interior walls, each with distinct soundtracks of chants, speeches, and police interactions. The exterior surfaces screen eight additional protest films addressing national issues, including Immigration, Climate Strike, Trump's first term, March For Our Lives, and Black Lives Matter movements. The installation represents the artist's two-decade documentation of New York City protests from 2003 to 2023. At its heart, the Video Soapbox offers a forum for public voice, featuring four screens showing contrasting personas of the artist—DJ, Fashionista, Instructor, and Artist—each competing for attention. The artist inaugurates the space by mounting this platform with megaphone in hand, inviting participants to join them at the Festival Henge nearby, shifting focus from sociopolitical discourse to communal celebration.
The Festival Henge features eight freestanding, hand-made LED video panels functioning as translucent, low-resolution video screens. These panels form an octagon mirroring the Panoctagon's structure, with video content visible from both sides and eight-channel sound. The installation welcomes other artists to contribute audio and video performances on these screens, including VJs and spatial sound artists. Upon the arrival of the artist and group from the Panoctagon, the space transforms into a dance celebration, with dance music and the henge's interior becoming a dance floor—creating a space for community convergence beyond political discourse.
The event will take place in the ground floor atrium, ACT Gallery, and ACT Cube of the MIT Wiesner Building, E15.
5:00-8:30pm // Golden Cargo exhibition opening and live performances by Ian Condry (MIT Spatial Sound Lab) and VJ Supreetha K
8:30pm // artist screaMachine performs (limited capacity)
9:00pm // Dance & Celebration
Gearóid Dolan, known professionally as screaMachine, began performing at Dublin punk events in 1981. They developed a distinctive style incorporating audio, film, animation, and props, leading to exhibitions at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (1985) and Temple Bar Gallery (1987).
After relocating to New York in 1987, Dolan adopted the moniker "screaMachine" for their work, launching with a performance series at ABC No Rio. They became active in New York City's underground performance scene, creating street interventions and exploring new media. Their work gained recognition at Franklin Furnace with the "Survival... Against All Odds" series (1989) and at MoMA PS1 with a month-long installation and performance series (1990). In 1992, they returned to Dublin for an exhibition at Trinity College.
Throughout the 1990s, Dolan embraced digital media and video projection. From their Manhattan storefront studio, they created multi-screen animated video installations for nightclubs and underground spaces, pioneering early web-streaming video works. In 1996, they established their online presence at screaMachine.com.
Dolan debuted their "Drive-By" interactive video animation street intervention at the 1999 DUMBO Arts Festival, beginning a 13-year relationship with the festival. Their first solo gallery exhibition opened at the Moving Image Gallery in SoHo (2000). Since then, they have received five New York State Council on the Arts awards for Film, Video and New Technologies, supporting large-scale performances and technological innovation.
Beginning with the Iraq War protests in 2003, Dolan has documented social movements through "Protest," an ongoing series of semi-animated films for installations, performances, and interventions. Their work has been featured internationally at venues including The Kitchen (New York), Westbourne Studios (London), Western Front (Vancouver), Tulca Arts Festival (Galway), FILE (São Paulo), Darklight Festival (Dublin), Inport (Estonia), and TEDx NYC.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dolan created interactive films and applications for remote audience engagement. In 2021, they released the award-winning feature documentary The Biggest Obstacle, examining disability rights activism, and the short film Protest: Queer Liberation March.
Since 2000, Dolan has taught digital media at Cooper Union and Hunter College, and currently teaches at MIT.
Wiesner Building
E15-001
20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA
Building location on the MIT Campus MapMIT is committed to providing an environment that is accessible to individuals with disabilities. View the Accessibility Web App, designed for the MIT community to view accessible routes across the MIT campus. Please contact the event organizer directly for specific accessibility information or to discuss your needs.
A campus hub for the arts, the Wiesner Building (Building E15) was designed by I.M. Pei—who received a Bachelor of Architecture from MIT in 1940—in collaboration with artists Richard Fleischner, Scott Burton, and Kenneth Noland. Pei is renowned for his striking, monolithic geometries, a trait most readily observed in his glass and steel pyramid addition to the Louvre, completed in 1989.
