On Wednesday, March 28, VOC co-hosted a webinar with IKONIA on Stories of a Divided World: Virtual Memorial to the Berlin Wall to explore the brutal history and enduring legacy of the Berlin Wall. Ken Pope, CEO of VOC provided opening remarks, followed by a Q&A with Marjan Moghaddam and Felipe Posada, two artists who participated in IKONIA’s “MAUER Project” digital art exhibition. The event was moderated by Julia Shumishyna, COO of IKONIA, and Erik Sunnerö, Digital Strategist of IKONIA, who led the MAUER Project.
About MAUER Project:
MAUER is a charitable NFT art project that is building a virtual memorial to the Berlin Wall, connecting current and future generations with their history, heritage, and humanity using digital assets. Inspired by true stories from history and parallels in our current world, MAUER is constructing a digital Berlin Wall of 10,316 unique art pieces – one for every day the Wall stood. MAUER tells stories of a divided world – as relevant today as ever – through the eyes of five different artists. An homage to the mosaic of graffiti that adorned the Berlin Wall, and with donations to charities working for freedom, the project is working to tear down barriers in our physical world.
Our panelists include:
Marjan Moghaddam arrived in the United States as a political refugee during the Islamic revolution in Iran. Marjan has a long and remarkable career in digital art starting in the 1980s. She now lives and works in Brooklyn where she is a tenured professor of CG, Animation and XR at LIU. Marjan is known for her original, unique and influential style of 3D figuration and animation and is considered one of the top female 3D CG artists in the world. She has been exhibited extensively at international galleries, museums and media festivals. Four times she has been an official selection of the prestigious Siggraph Computer Animation Festival and art gallery. She has been described as “a trailblazer in the world of digital art” by the International Herald Tribune and “the First Lady of Animated Painting” by the Examiner. Her most recent collection of #arthacks gained major international press recognition and went viral with millions of views on social art channels. Marjan was featured between Beeple and XCopy in the BBC Click documentary “Art Goes Digital” and a retrospective of her work can be seen at a solo show spread across the entire second floor of the Museum of Contemporary Digital Art in Decentraland.
Ken Pope is CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Previously he had a 34 year career in the U.S. Army, consulting industry and academia. While in uniform, he served in a variety of Armored Reconnaissance, Special Operations and Russian Foreign Area Officer (FAO) assignments in Europe, the Middle East, and Central America. He commanded an Armored Cavalry Troop during the Persian Gulf War and a Special Operations unit focused on Central America. Ken had over 12 years of operational fieldwork as an Army FAO with a focus on Russia and the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and security issues with a variety of assignments in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kosovo. In the consulting industry, he led teams that provided strategy, planning, analysis and wargaming support to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Staff, and Combatant Commands. Ken also served as an Assistant Professor at the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of Mississippi where he taught courses on intelligence, advanced analytics, senior capstone program and led the center’s national security simulations. He has a B.A. in Sociology, a M.A. in International Relations and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and Staff College and the George C. Marshall Center’s Executive Program for Advanced Security Studies. He speaks Russian.
Felipe Posada is a creative artist torn between his native Colombia and New York, the city where his creativity exploded. Between his past in the world of advertising and his present in artistic production. Originally an engineer in search of an author, a young migrant looking for the right academic path: a path he found thanks to a master’s degree in computer art. Felipe’s work has been exhibited in group & solo shows at galleries in New York City, Texas and Los Angeles. He has been commissioned by brands like Elle, Allure,Vogue, WSJ and Forbes. His recent Edge of Reality series launched through Guy Hepner NYC saw him ship limited editions all over the world and his NFT drop «Quarantine Dreams» sold out in a record 6 minutes.
