Contact Zones Collective

Nu A.M. (they/them) is a Chicago based sound artist whose process-focused work uses cassette tape, shortwave radio, forgotten media, self-recorded material and delay effect pedals to produce sound collage. Their work often explores and confronts the politics of a trans body, the reviving of forgotten moments in time, and the resistance to erasure

Rozalinda Borcilă (she/they) is a Romanian immigrant, artist, and activist. She develops long-term research projects that combine analytic and embodied modes of learning. Her work explores settler colonialism as a placemaking project that involves multiple and entangled violences. How do the grammars of settler violence coalesce around extractive forms and flows of capital, around institutional forms and regimes of property—but also around modes of feeling, modes of relation, and everyday experiences of being in place? Recently she has focused on the governance of waterscapes under the calculative logic of offsetting and on glacial narratives as modes of colonial knowing. She creates publications, video essays, installations, media/web platforms, and experimental seminars or learning walks scripted with and for various community groups. She works in different institutional and counter-institutional settings: museums, universities, art centers, community spaces, squats, and in the streets. 

Rozalinda developed the experimental seminar, video, and walking project, Underlying Miami: Sea Level Rise and Settler Futurities, for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and also exhibited in the New Local in Brussels. She completed Meskonsin-Kansan, a book and walking project in collaboration with scholar Nicholas Brown and artist/anthropologist Lance Foster, Vice Chair of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. Her collaborative video installation with Andrea Carlson, entitled Hydrologic Unit Code 071200 – Nibi Ezhi-Nisidawaabanjigaade Ozhibii’igeowin 071200, was commissioned by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Her project Im/Memorial is the recipient of an Arthur and Lila Weinberg Fellowship for Independent Researchers from the Newberry Library. She is a recipient of the Illinois Artist Fellowship and of a MacDowell awards Fellowship.

For the past two decades, Rozalinda has also been active in migrant solidarity and border abolition communities. She is a founding member of NoShelter and A Prison is No Shelter Media, activist media projects that explore the use of congregate care and social service provision as carceral structures, particularly in immigrant detention. Please see www.NoShelterProject.com

Lyn Rye (they/them) is a bassist, singer-songwriter, and multi-media producer. Rye leads their own band and is also a frequent collaborator with musical collectives of many genres as well as cultural projects using art for social change. Rye’s songs often capture deeply personal observations about life and love while being informed by their lifelong dedication to community organizing. Rye's community life has involved building safe spaces for queer Muslims, grassroots struggles against mass incarceration, and truth and reconciliation efforts both domestically and internationally. 

Rye is the co-founder of Casa Al-Fatiha, a sanctuary house for LGBTQ+ asylum-seekers, and Milpa Mizan, a women-led urban garden and green gathering space. Rye also produces two multi-media projects, a story-telling series called Inshallah & The Creek Don't Rise, and a science and music series called Fact Poetry.

“While Rye cites influences like Joni Mitchell and Lianne La Havas, their work sounds distinct and effusive. This is a musician who knows who they are, knows what they want to say, and understands the power and possibility of music as a force for change.” 
– The Chicago Tribune