Affiliation: Independent
Contributions:
elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ (Nitcha Tothong–ณิชชา(เฟม) & Kengchakaj–เก่ง ฉกาจ) is a Bangkok-born, Brooklyn-based collaborative artist practice focusing on research that examines and decoded past histories by creating, using code, algorithm, multimedia, and technology to experiment, explore, and define decolonized possibilities. elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ is a Thai word that means dispersedly, chaos, all over, and non-direction to break free our practices from being labeled through a Western lens.
elekhlekha was awarded The Lumen Prize Gold Award in 2022 for their first collaborative project, Jitr (จิตร.) The artists have received grants and development funds from Rhizome, the Processing Foundation, the Institute for Electronic Arts(IEA), a City Artist Corps Grant, Queens Council on the Arts, and Babycastles for their projects. elekhlekha is former _____in-Residence at Babycastles, members of NEW INC Y10 Art & Code track, 2023–2024 Artist-inResidence at CultureHub and Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellows 2024. elekhlekha is currently the NEW INC Y11 Extended Realities track member.
Nitcha Tothong (fame) (Thai: ณิชชา โตทอง-เฟม, she/they) is a Thai interdisciplinary media artist, coder, and designer based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY.) her work focused on cross-medium pollination and the juxtaposition between digital/computational and analog that inform each other to create, investigate and express sensory experience and conscious experience, aims to subvert and reconfiguring views, memories, and habits created from soft power, colonization, and contemporary technology's impact on daily life. She has been a former artist-in-residence at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Babycastles, among others, and also a co-founder and 1/2 of elekhlekha, an art collective with Kengchakaj, which was the recipient of the lumen prize gold award in 2022. She is a Y11 NEW INC extended reality track member.
Kengchakaj is a Bangkok-born, New York-based award-winning pianist, improviser, and electronics experimentalist. Kengchakaj practice engages with improvising sounds that draw inspiration from ancestral soundscapes, knowledge, and modes of collaboration and expression rooted in Southeast Asian tradition and lineage. He is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, a Fulbright Scholarship recipient, and a Gold Award Lumen Prize winner with Nitcha Tothong. Kengchakaj is a Collider Fellow at Lincoln Center and a Y11 NEW INC extended reality track member. Kengchakaj was a 2023-2024 CultureHub artist in residence, New Museum’s Y10 NEW INC member, Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellow, Babycastles artist in residence, and participated in Nusasonic’s Common Tonalities project. His projects have received development funds from Queens Council on the Arts, City Artist Corps, Rhizome micro-grant, and Processing Foundation.