“ArtHouse Memes” is the second such exhibition in Venice curated by Erika Kiss, the founding director of the UCHV Research Film Studio (RFS). The previous exhibit, which was a Princeton faculty cooperation at the 2023 Architecture Biennale, won the ECC’s University Innovation Award. 

This year’s exhibition grew out of Kiss’s Research Film Studio course, “Hidden History of Hollywood,” which surveyed a hitherto underappreciated canon of Black auteur cinema. To prepare for each class, students collected the most memorable clips — or “memes” — from the films to anchor their interpretative arguments and create their own film-arguments in the form of video-montage or music video exercises. 

The student coursework was then shaped into a group of immersive video installations by Kiss, for which Olivier Tarpaga (Department of Music) wrote original music.

Students who participated in the RFS 2024 Filmmakers’ Winter Camp collectively made a mosaic iconostasis of five most important filmmakers of the canon, which became one of the most photographed artworks in the Palazzo Mora. 

“It is extraordinary that this exhibit is the product of student classroom work, under the direction of Erika Kiss,” said Alan Patten, the director of UCHV and the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Politics. “Erika’s teaching revolves around an engagement with visual and oral materials rather than written ones. Yet, as ‘ArtHouse Memes’ illustrates, visual memes and cinematic storytelling are often the most persuasive forms of rhetorical reasoning that invite critical thinking and scholarly attention as much as written texts.” 

“This exhibition reflects a vision of teaching that expects students to think rigorously and theoretically, and to reflect on moral issues in the materials they engage with,” Patten continued. “The Arthouse Memes pedagogy pushes the frontier of what is computable in filmmaking while arming the students, who are members of the TikTok generation, with a new literacy for non-verbal critical reasoning and creative expression.” 

“In the ArtHouse Memes exhibition, students worked across visual mediums to interrogate a long history of race, film, and representation,” said Autumn Womack, associate professor of African American Studies and English. “It was incredible to see how, through editing, sound, and curation, this group of students asked us to think anew about Black film history. In this version, experimental filmmakers like Zora Neale Hurston sit alongside Charles Burnett and Julie Dash and, most importantly, its version of Black film history that puts collaboration at the center.” 

For the students, all of whom contributed to the project as members of the Research Film Studio, seeing the exhibition in person added a whole new dimension to the projects they worked on in the classroom.

“I had not really considered what my assignments leaving the confines of my and Professor Kiss’s computers could mean. But being there in person, I felt so inspired artistically — immediately, I began thinking about the exhibit, its presentation, every physical detail — and academically, I really feel like I had something to say and was given the opportunity to say it,” said Christofer Robles, a junior majoring in comparative literature. “I felt immense pride being able to occupy such an important cultural space, a feeling that only intensified as I walked around the rest of the palazzo, contextualizing my work with that of the artists presenting there.”

Aishwarya Swamidurai, a junior majoring in the School of Public and International Affairs, agreed. “It was such a rewarding experience getting to see the exhibition in person, as it brought to life the extensive work we had done over the spring semester to put it together. Seeing people walk in and out of the European Cultural Centre, taking pictures of our exhibition and actively engaging with it was such a treat. It showed me that the time we invested into learning these films and working with them really mattered from a cultural and artistic perspective.” 

Tera Hunter, the Edwards Professor of American History and chair of the Department of African American Studies, had a similar experience. “It was incredible to walk on to the grounds of the European Cultural Centre and see our students’ work featured prominently on the screen outdoors. Erika Kiss thoughtfully curated a beautiful exhibition space that invited visitors to be engrossed by the students’ creative video productions and to see independent Black film through their eyes.” 

“Our students should be proud of what they accomplished and so should the rest of us at Princeton,” she said.

The students and faculty also participated in UCHV’s Palazzo Talks and Workshops on the “Hidden American Arthouse Film Canon,” where they discussed six films by Afro-American auteurs featured in “ArtHouse Memes.”

“My favorite part of the experience was the Palazzo Talks, where we discussed topics like diaspora, generational stories, and representation,” said Hannah Shin, a junior majoring in philosophy. “The diversity of the students and professors — our identities, lived experiences, lineages, and areas of study — coming together to discuss these issues, made the conversations even more insightful.”

She added, “As a Korean American and Asian American student, I approached the conversation through the lens of my own experiences — growing up in Arizona as a part of the 3% Asian population. I’ve been grappling with issues of diaspora, generational identity, and representation, and I found myself reflecting on the Asian American story of exclusion and being a ‘perpetual foreigner.’ While I placed myself in this conversation of underrepresentation and misrepresentation in media and academia, we obviously have different struggles and stories as Asians.”

The talks, which were co-organized by the ECC-Italy, proved to be a rich encounter for everyone.

“I don’t know another time I have been in a space as productive as the Palazzo Talks,” said Robles. “Sometimes, structured discussions can be quiet and intimidating. These workshops were the opposite. Every student actively participated and there were so many ideas being shared that the four sessions weren’t enough to get to everything! Importantly, we were surrounded and supported by the faculty who joined these talks. While not as familiar with our work as we were, their expertise in their respective subject areas proved necessary for pushing us to think about our work in novel ways.” 

“It made for a special opportunity to ‘teach’ the teachers as much as they were teaching us,” Robles remarked.

For Swamidurai, the conversations helped her better understand the films she had worked with during the Research Film Studio. “The professors brought up so many interesting points about archival work and why it was important to work with these films in the first place, which only reaffirmed my commitment to understanding social issues from a film perspective.”

Faculty participants also benefited from the discussions. “The Palazzo talks were quite refreshing to have a group of diverse faculty engage in conversation about film and popular culture with a group of undergraduates outside of our normal classes with Erika as our guide and the gorgeous historic city of Venice as our backdrop,” said Hunter.

The group visited other exhibitions at the Art Biennale, which proved to spark new ideas and tie closely into the themes probed during the Palazzo Talks. 

“During one of our exploratory walks, we stumbled upon the Nigerian exhibition pavilion which was hosting an exhibit entitled ‘Nigeria Imaginary.’ It wasn’t at the Arsenale with other countries so it felt like a gift to find,” said Cailyn Tetteh, a junior majoring in politics. “The exhibit itself was really moving and reminded me a lot of our conversation about archives. The theme of taking charge of your own history kept coming up throughout the week and that has really stuck with me.” 

In addition to the trip’s official programming, students took advantage of all that Venice had to offer, such as touring the Doge’s Palace and visiting several museums and palazzos.

“From getting gelato one too many times to taking the waterbus to the islands of Venice, I'm grateful for the exploration, memories made, and time spent with fellow Princetonians!” said Swamidurai.

Even though the Art Biennale has now closed, “ArtHouse Memes” will live on in mediums with far-reaching cultural platforms, including at the Mallorca Art Biennale, where the exhibition will be reassembled again for new visitors. 

Kiss’ plans for “ArtHouse Memes” also include bringing the exhibition back to Princeton’s campus through a partnership with the Department of African American Studies (AAS).

“I invited African American Studies Professors Tera Hunter and Autumn Womack to Venice to discuss the plan for AAS and the UCHV Research Film Studio to co-found the Zora Neal Hurston Performative Archive,” said Kiss. “For ‘ArtHouse Memes’ to grow, it needs the disciplinary competence of AAS.” 

“I have admired Womack’s curation of the 2023 Toni Morrison exhibition. Her input will improve the exhibition and might extend it in new directions,” she added. 

Finally, “ArtHouse Memes” will live on from an AI standpoint, through the exhibition’s website as well as in the Digital Database of ArtHouse Memes. “The database is a collection of memorable film clips that have been collected by students over the course of multiple terms,” explained Kiss. “It will first be made searchable, then generative, allowing the worldwide public to access and reanimate the films of this hitherto hidden canon. This is what I call ‘performative archiving.’”  

In the meantime, Kiss has embarked on a new Princeton exhibition involving both students and professors, called “Home Beyond Good and Evil.” She is developing this exhibition for ECC-Italy’s Space Time Existence of the Architectural Biennale, happening in Venice from May 10 to November 23, 2025. 

Students can still join the filmmakers’ team that is currently working on a musical documentary on the vernacular art of hair braiding and an environmental documentary on Princeton University’s architecture by fiat with the working title of “Let There Be a Lake!”. Students can also apply for the next Research Film Studio Travel Grant, to participate in the weeklong Research Film Studio Filmmakers’ Camp in Los Angeles.