Board of Directors
ANNE BRAY :: Executive Director and Secretary ::
Anne Bray has been working in the field of media arts since the mid ’70s as an administrator, artist and art teacher. With representatives of other communities, she founded the concept of LA Freewaves and has administered the program since inception. As the Executive Director, she has continued to see the organization through the technological, social and aesthetic changes of the 1990s to now. Creating intersections of public art and media art has been her path to providing art for many people much of the time. She teaches graduate seminars in new genres and public art at Claremont Graduate University and the University of Southern California. Her own multimedia artwork is widely exhibited.
André Blas
André Blas is a freelance video maker and editor focusing on experimental documentaries about artists, urban spaces and post-modernist culture. Anthropology describes his point of view, contemporary art his interest, music his source of energy and inspiration. Blas was raised in Brazil and now resides in Los Angeles, California. In addition to English and Portuguese, he speaks Spanish, Italian, German and Hebrew. His diverse cultural experiences lend themselves to subjective and objective perspectives, which he applies to his biographical and anthropological experimental explorations. His professional experience stems from his work in both mainstream media conglomerates and non-profit cultural organizations. He has worked for AOL Time Warner, the Getty Information Institute, and has produced two video documentaries about iconic Franco-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle and about a utopian, monumental housing complex designed by the legendary modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil.
Felicia Filer :: Treasurer ::
Felicia Filer is the Director of the Public Art Division of the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs. She has overseen the commission of over 150 permanent public art projects throughout the city, including the City’s Airport, Animal Services, Bureau of Engineering, Fire, Library, Police, Recreation and Parks, Transportation and Zoo departments. The Public Art Division includes the, Public Percent for Art, Private Percent for Art, City Art Collection, Murals, and Music L.A. programs. Previously, Ms. Filer worked at an arts non-profit organization, ARTS Inc., as a Senior Management Consultant and Loan Fund Manager, providing management consulting in financial management, board governance, marketing, survey design and analysis, and long-range planning, to small and mid-sized non-profit arts organizations. Felicia is a native of Los Angeles. She graduated UC Santa Cruz with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, and Claremont Graduate University, Peter F. Drucker/Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management with an MBA in Finance and Marketing.
Ron Frank
Ron Frank is your basic Hollywood renaissance guy who has directed, produced and acted in numerous contemporary plays and short videos. His multifaceted life originated and remains in Los Angeles after a BA at Reed College and a stint at NYU film school. He regularly attends as many cultural/artistic/musical/spectacular events as is humanly possible after a day of managing the Pasadena Antique Center, an antique & collectibles co-op with over 100 merchants. He brings his business, writing, media and creative acumen to the Freewaves arts community. The next time you go see some exhilarating event in Los Angeles, he will probably be in the audience.
Gabriela Jauregu :: Vice President ::
Gabriela Jauregui, is the author of a poetry collection, Controlled Decay (Akashic Books/Black Goat Press, 2008). She holds an MA in Comparative Literature and Critical Theory from the University of California, Irvine and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside. She is currently a Soros New American Fellow and a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California, where her research focuses on the grotesque in contemporary Film, Literature and Visual Arts. Her critical and creative work has been published in anthologies, journals and magazines in the U.S., Mexico and Europe. She lives in Los Angeles and Mexico City and is working on a novel.
Bill Kelley, Jr. :: President ::
Bill Kelley, Jr. is a Los Angeles based educator, independent curator and theorist focusing on collaborative and public art practices. He received his Master’s degree in 19th Century Colonial Art Studies from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque in 2001. Bill is the former director and current Editorial Advisor of the journal LatinArt.com and is pursuing his Ph.D. in contemporary theory and criticism at UC San Diego. His most recent research projects include co-curating the exhibition ¿por que no te callas? arte, activismo y medio de comunicación (Arte Actual, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales [FLACSO], Quito, 2008) and the accompanying workshop Laboratorio de Arte y Espacio Social (Banco Central del Ecuador, Quito 2008); Proyecto Cívico: Diálogos y Interrogantes (El Cubo, Centro Cultural Tijuana [CECUT], Tijuana, Mexico 2009). Bill is currently a curator of the upcoming 2011 Medellín Encuentro (MDE11) and a founding member of the Third Rail research collaborative.
Cheng–Sim Lim
Formerly the Co-Head of Exhibition & Public Programs at the UCLA Film & Television Archive for seven years, and preceding that a Programmer at the Archive for eight years, Cheng-Sim Lim has curated and managed the theatrical presentation of a diverse array of American and international film programs, both contemporary and historical. Her work has helped to build audiences and appreciation in the US for filmmakers and video artists from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, including now internationally recognized directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Miyazaki Hayao and Wong Kar-wai. In 2003 and 2006, Lim curated a two-part retrospective that brought to the big screen for the first time in over 20 years, many newly restored Shaw Bros. martial arts classics. The series “Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Cinema” launched at the Archive in Los Angeles, and subsequently toured major film museums and cinematheques in the US, Canada and Europe to both audience and critical acclaim. Malaysian-born, Lim studied fine arts at Smith College and filmmaking at UCLA. She has served on numerous grants, awards and film festival juries. While she has recently returned to filmmaking, her curatorial interests remain undiminished, especially in advocating for overlooked popular and “minor” cinemas, and media literacy.
Alessandro Marianantoni
Alessandro Marianantoni earned a degree in Computer Science from the University of L’Aquila, with a thesis on perceptual interfaces at the USC Integrated Media System Center. He then worked for several years as a researcher at the UCLA REMAP center at the Theater, Film and TV Dept where he was able to enrich his research in technology across different fields: culture, technology, environment and art with a multi-disciplinary approach. While based in Los Angeles he often travels to Italy where he started MEDIARS, an Experimental Center focused on Cultural Heritage and Technology with public funding. As a program director at MEDIARS, he runs an international summer program in the Castle of Contigliano. Over the last 15 years he has designed and developed innovative products for music, healthcare and environment. He’s now working with Marcos Lutyens to create a novel interactive art installation on climate change sponsored by the National Trust for a show at the GSK, Royal Academy in London.
Ken Rogers
Kenneth Rogers is Assistant Professor in the Media and Cultural Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. He is the recent recipient of a UCHRI grant for 2010-2011. He has been a fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at UC, Riverside; recipient of a Mellon grant on affect and interactive media; and has lectured at various venues, including the Getty Research Institute, The Kitchen, and New York University. Some recent publications include: LA Freewaves, Too much Freedom?: Alternative Video and Internet Distribution (2007); From Media to Remediation: Transitions in Early Video Culture (2009), and Capital Implications: The Function of Labor in the Video Art of Juan Devis and Yoshua Okón (2009), and We Are Here, We Could Be Everywhere: Freewaves and the Use Value of Video History (2010); and New Media States: Web 2.0 and Embedded Video Practice (forthcoming 2010). His recent book project is Economies of Attention: Media Technology and Biopolitics.
Caleb Waldorf
Caleb Waldorf is an artist currently living in Los Angeles, California. He is the Editor of an online journal for short-form writing and media work called Version. He co-founded and is the Creative Director of the magazine, Triple Canopy, which in 2009 was a finalist for the National Magazine Awards. Most weekends he can be found at a basement in Chinatown at The Public School, an open framework for pedagogy where he is a committee member, class facilitator, teacher, and student. Caleb received his MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego in 2007. From 2002 to 2004 Caleb worked at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies where he was an events coordinator and researcher for the Information, Technology, War and Peace Project. His artwork and projects have shown throughout the United States, and in Denmark, Mexico, Serbia, and Spain. More information can be found at
