Upgrade! Tijuana: Elle Mehrmand, Zach Blas, Christopher Head :: December 19, 2009; 6:00 - 8:00 pm :: Protolab, Tijuana, Mexico.

Elle Mehrmand is a performance/new media artist and musician who uses the body, electronics, video, photography, sound and installation within her works. She is the singer and trombone player of Assembly of Mazes, a music collective who create dark, electronic, middle eastern, rhythmic jazz rock. Elle is currently an MFA candidate at UCSD, and received her BFA in art photography with a minor in music at CSULB. Elle has received grants from UCIRA and Fine Arts Affiliates. She is a researcher at CRCA and the b.a.n.g. lab at UCSD. Her performances have been shown in Los Angeles, Tijuana, Montreal, Dublin, San Diego, Long Beach, San Fransisco and Bogotá, Colombia.

Zach Blas is an artist and writer working at the intersections of networked media, queerness, and the political. he is particularly interested in activist art that addresses the methods and styles in which technologies, bodies, and capital impact, reconstitute, and proliferate assemblages of sexuality, gender, and knowledge, alongside the potentials and possibilities of reshaping these assemblages as well as reconfiguring un/human modes of agency and resistance. zach is a phd student in literature & information science + information studies at duke university. he holds a mfa from the design | media arts department at the university of california los angeles, a post-baccalaureate certificate from the school of the art institute of chicago in the art and technology studies department, and a bachelor of science from boston university in film and philosophy.”

Christopher Head is a MFA candidate at the University of California San Diego. His practice is focused on the application of experimental technologies and art to address issues at the intersection between virtual, public, and social spaces. Christopher’s work often engages computer games, data visualization, and issues of software production.