Jon Bernson

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jon_bernson

Bio: "Jon Bernson is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning media artist whose interdisciplinary practice blends film, music, installation, and theater. His work incorporates layered world-building to explore existential themes with a slow-burn, tragicomic style. This approach has been supported through artist residencies at the de Young Museum, Playwrights Foundation, The Space Program, and The Imaginists. Recent work includes Third Eye Moonwalk, which has been exhibited in various forms at Minnesota Street Project, Catharine Clark Gallery, Stanford University, Custom Made Theater, and The Growlery. Bernson received grants from the Rainin Foundation (New & Experimental Works) and the Venturous Theater Fund to produce Interview with Traveler #582, an experimental film that premiered at the Arizona International Film Festival, Sci-Fi-London, and Festival Fotogenía in Mexico. Other installations include Sound Affects, a multimedia collaboration at Sonos Studio in Los Angeles, and Beautification Machine, a sound sculpture created with Andy Diaz Hope. Exhibited at Catharine Clark Gallery, Saint Joseph’s Art Society, and Miami Project; the work was acquired by the Nevada Museum of Art for its permanent collection. Ideal Solutions is Bernson’s latest addition to The Naturalists, an ongoing project that he is developing into an interactive performance with The Imaginists. Previous installments include Zero Gravity Experiments (360-degree photography), Primary Sources (video installation), and Chronological Experiments by the Naturalists Group (VR short film)."

Statement: "Ideal Solutions is an asynchronous, multi-channel video installation inspired by The Naturalists Group, an independent scientific collective pursuing research beyond the confines of institutional oversight. Working from a self-contained laboratory on an atoll in international waters, the Naturalists are dedicated to inquiry untethered from a political climate that has become hostile to science, truth, and long-term thinking. The project features seven proposed inventions that respond to imminent planetary challenges. The titles, from left to right, are: 1. Nanosatellite Array 2. Old Growth Modules 3. Semiochemical Translator 4. Earth Genome Project 5. Fresh Water Synthesis 6. Celestial Accretion Monitor 7. Whole Brain Archive As the artist, I function not as the originator, but as a translator of the Naturalists’ ideas, rendering research into visual and sonic form. Each of the seven video works began as a hand-cut paper collage, representing a distinct solution-oriented invention. These collages were then animated through a combination of AI-prompted motion and traditional film editing techniques, resulting in an analog-meets-algorithmic sensibility. Black and white video displayed on vintage iMacs highlights the glacial timelines often required for change and reflects my hope that the solutions to our world's problems remain within reach."

Jon Bernson

Artworks