Kathy Brew

Kathy Brew is an independent videomaker who has worked on a range of media projects, from experimental work to independent documentaries and public television productions. For the past several years, she has been collaborating with Roberto Guerra, working on independent projects related to the arts. Brew and Guerra are currently working on several projects: a film on acclaimed designers Lella and Massimo Vignelli; Being Bronze: A Portrait of J. Seward Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, who was fired years ago from the family business and took up art instead; Beauty Behind Bars, about a Peruvian women’s prison where a beauty contest takes place each year; and Going Gray, a look at women who are going/not going gray and how this reflects on current attitudes about aging.

Other recent projects include: four short films on Chinese contemporary artists, shot on location in Beijing in fall 2006, part of the Observer Observed series for The Joy of Giving Something, Inc.; ID/entity: Portraits in the 21st Century, commissioned by the MIT Media Lab (screened at the International Festival of Art on Film in Montreal); a collaboration with artist Mierle Ukeles, creating a multiple-channel installation about the Fresh Kills landfill, which was presented at Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island and at Harvard University; Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution, which was broadcast on WNET/Thirteen's Metro Arts and presented at the International Festival of Art on Film in Montreal and the Tang Museum at Skidmore College. Brew and Guerra have also independently produced segments for WNET’s City Arts and Egg, and received two Emmy awards for Outstanding Fine Arts Programming (1999 and 2000).

Other independent media projects Brew has worked on include the following: Line Producer on Barbara Sonneborn’s REGRET TO INFORM, a documentary about widows of the Vietnam War that garnered Best Documentary awards at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and the Independent Feature Project's American Spirit Awards, as well as being nominated for a 1999 Oscar in the documentary category; Emiko Omori’s RABBIT IN THE MOON, a documentary about Japanese-American internment during World War II, another award-winning film at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, which aired on POV in 1999 and won a national Emmy; several commissioned projects for ZDF-Arte Television (in Germany) with artists Lynn Hershman and Gustav Hamos.

Her own independent video work, MIXED MESSAGES (1990), examines gender stereotyping in popular culture and received numerous awards at film and video festivals and was broadcast on San Francisco’s PBS station, KQED-TV, and excerpted on the national PBS series, THE NINETIES. MIXED MESSAGES was also included in the cable series, MIXED SIGNALS, sponsored by the New England Foundation for the Arts, and screened at galleries and other venues around the country, including the American Film Institute’s National Video Festival, New York Expo of Short Film and Video, Artists Space, among many others. Upon returning to New York City in 1994 after fourteen years in the Bay Area, Brew initially worked for two seasons as Senior Associate Producer for City Arts, WNET/Channel Thirteen's weekly Emmy award-winning television program on the visual and performing arts. Ms. Brew has a prior history of working with PBS. From 1981-1984, she was Director of Community Affairs for KQED-TV in San Francisco, where she also served as Associate Producer for arts-related documentaries, including FOUR DANCES FOR TELEVISION; BREAKING THE MOLD (about sculptors in the Bay Area); COMEDY TONIGHT (a live performance series, for which she was responsible for booking Whoopi Goldberg before she was "discovered"); as well as Producer/Writer for ART PREVIEWS (short features). Brew has also worked as media programmer and curator.

From 2004-2007, she was the Co-Director of the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, an international documentary festival that takes place annually at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. While in this position, she also organized several arts/science public programs. She concluded her tenure with the Mead Festival at the end of 2007 in order to return to her own documentary work and to continue as a curator/consultant in the media arts. Previously, she had been working independently as a media producer, curator, and educator after her offices were destroyed as a result of 9/11. From 1997 through 2001, she was Director of Thundergulch, the new media arts initiative of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council that seeks to provide new forms of interaction between artists, audiences, and new technologies. In 1999, she was cited as one of the "Women of Silicon Alley" in Alley Cat News, an industry publication. She has served on the (former) Mayor's New Media Subcommittee on Digital Arts and Culture, and the Steering Committee/Board of Advisors of New York New Media Association's Art and Culture Special Interest Group. She served for four years as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Art's Electronic Media and Film program, and was on the Curatorial Committee of Eyebeam Atelier where she served as Exhibition Director for Beta Launch, the first exhibition of work coming out of Eyebeam’s artist-in-residence program. Other activities in the digital arts realm include: Curator, Engaging Characters, at Art Interactive, Cambridge, MA, Summer 2003; SIGGRAPH Jury, Art/Design Sketches Subcommittee, Colorado Springs, Spring 2003; Moderator, About Space: Installation, Interaction and Media, part of the 10th NY Digital Salon, NYC, 2003; Chair, Drafting Histories of Digital Public Art, part of the symposium, Digital Art and Public Space: Expanding Definitions of Public Art, presented at the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Boston, MA, Spring 2003; and Juror, New Media Arts category, VidArte 2002, Mexico City, Summer 2002. She served as Series Consultant/Curator for Reel New York, WNET/Thirteen’s series for independent film and video makers, for the 2002, 2003, and 2004 season and was one of the programmers for Lincoln Center’s New York Video Festival for two seasons (2006 & 2007). She also worked as an administrator and curator/producer at several Bay Area non-profit organizations, including the San Francisco Art Institute, Capp Street Project (an artist-in-residency project/exhibition space), Life on the Water (a performing arts space), George Coates Performance Works, and the Mill Valley Film Festival. Artists she has worked with (producing and promoting) have included Carolee Schneemann, Michael Tracy, Spalding Gray, Karen Finley, Diamanda Galas, Lynn Hershman, among others. Ms. Brew has also written on media and contemporary art for catalogs and other publications. She wrote a chapter for the book, Women, Art, and Technology published by MIT Press, and has published articles in World Art, Civilization, High Performance, Shift, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Focus, and Artcoast.

Most recently she has been writing for Documentary Magazine. For two years she was an interviewer for KPFA (non-commercial/Pacifica) Radio’s program Bay Area Arts, where she conducted live on-air interviews with artists. She has been a Faculty member in the MFA Computer Arts department at the School of Visual Arts since 2000 and is now also teaching an online course in the new MFA Art Practice department there. She also teaches in the Graduate department of Media Studies at the New School, and has taught in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, at the Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University, and for Pratt Institute/Manhattan.