RISD Presents Inaugural Movement Lab Symposium

The October 14–16 event will amplify interdisciplinary research conducted at RISD by Movement Lab fellows from 2023–26

PROVIDENCE, RI — September 14, 2026 — Rhode Island School of Design presents its inaugural Movement Lab Symposium from October 14–16, 2026. The three-day event will highlight interdisciplinary research conducted by Movement Lab fellows via panel discussions, performances, screenings, and speakers on RISD’s campus, as well as an exhibition at the nearby Jamestown Arts Center.

The Movement Lab Fellowship offers post-graduate artists and scholars the opportunity to focus on independent creative research that advances the study of movement into uncharted territory. From 2023–26, seven fellows—Melisa Achoko Allela, Azadeh Ahmadi, Patrick Buhr, Maxime Cavajani, Kameron Neal, L.A. Samuelson, and Hunter Whitaker-Morrow—were selected by RISD’s Film/Animation/Video (FAV) department, advancing the study of movement through projects involving animation, filmmaking, immersive arts, performance, game arts, dance, puppetry, robotics, kinetic sculpture, and more. 

The symposium will kick off on Wednesday, October 14 with a special Movement Lab/Hot Nights collaboration in which past fellow Cavajani will partner with faculty and students in RISD’s Glass department on a project connected to his current artistic practice, an investigation of the medium of glass and its presence in the world. 

A series of presentations will follow on Thursday, October 15, including a conversation between the fellows and Institute of Contemporary Art Boston Assistant Curator Tessa Haas, who will tease out shared threads between their practices. Fellows will present original live performance work and film projects on Friday, October 16.

That evening, Imprint and Playback opens at 6 pm at the Jamestown Arts Center, featuring installed works that fellows created during their respective residencies at RISD. Rooted in each artist’s intermedia-based movement research practice, Imprint and Playback pays attention to how beings, materials, ideas, and memories travel—whether that be across time, landscape, or narrative—and will remain on view through November 7.

The seven artists in this show are particularly interested in the gap between sensory perception and recognition as fertile ground for artmaking, and the works they have created slip across this gap—changing form and embracing instability as a way of focusing and transmuting the viewer’s attention. How these works move is as important as what they move—churning matter, media, and time into new forms for perceiving our past and present.

“The Movement Lab Symposium’s structure reflects the adventurous errantry of the seven fellows and their practices,” notes Assistant Professor of FAV Africanus Okokon 13 FAV. “Rather than remaining fixed in a single locale, the symposium will move between spaces on campus and across the state, while challenging and expanding how we think about movement in relation to time-based media, as well as culture, spaces, and bodies.”

RISD’s Movement Lab is funded by the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, cofounded by RISD alum Delle Maxwell 74 TX and Pat Hanrahan to support individual scientists, teachers, conservationists, and creators whose diverse perspectives enable us to discover new things about ourselves and our world.

“In movement study we discover knowledge we always possessed but never recognized. Such awareness yields profound creativity and compassion with which complex knots of every imaginable kind—personal, political, medical, social, environmental—can be untangled,” says FAV Department Head Amy Kravitz. 

More information, including dates, times, and transportation details for the exhibition opening, can be found on the Movement Lab Symposium webpage. 

High-resolution images with caption information can be found here. 

The Movement Lab Symposium 2026 is dedicated to late FAV Professor Sheri Wills (1963–2025), who proposed the idea for a symposium in this form in 2024.

About Rhode Island School of Design
RISD (pronounced “RIZ-dee”) is a creative community founded in 1877 in Providence, Rhode Island. Today, we enroll 2,577 students hailing from 60 countries. Led by a committed faculty, they are engaged in more than 40 full-time bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and supported by a worldwide network of over 33,000 alumni who demonstrate the vital role artists and designers play in today’s society.

Beyond facts and figures, what is the spirit of this community? Through a cross-disciplinary curriculum of studio-based learning and rigorous study in the liberal arts, RISD students are encouraged to develop their own personal creative processes, but they are united by one guiding principle: in order to create, one must question. In cultivating expansive and elastic thinking, RISD seeks to activate a critical exchange that empowers artists, designers and scholars to generate and challenge the ideas that shape our world. RISD’s mission, at both the college and museum, is not only to educate students and the public in the creation and appreciation of works of art and design, but to transmit that knowledge and make global contributions. Visit risd.edu to learn more.

RISD contact:
Danielle Mancuso
Associate Director, Public Relations / RISD
dmancuso@risd.edu
401 454-6334