Ian Alan Paul (b. 1984, US) is an artist-theorist whose work examines regimes of power and practices of resistance in global contexts. Their transdisciplinary practice is formally diverse, often involving writing, code, photography, and video, and is situated at the intersections of critical theory, contemporary art, anarchist thought, and digital media studies.

Ian has developed projects and lived for extended periods in the United States, Mexico, Spain, Egypt, and Palestine, and has exhibited their work and given lectures internationally. Their research-creation practice approaches issues that are geographically diffuse yet thematically connected, including the digitized surveillance of the Mexico-U.S. Border, the contested past and future of the Guantánamo Bay detention facilities, the politics of memory in Post-Revolution Cairo, colonial visualities in the occupied West Bank, and the cybernetic policing and securitization of the Mediterranean.

They received their PhD in Film and Digital Media Studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2016, their MFA and MA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2011. In the past they taught as an Assistant Professor at Stony Book University (US), Visiting Assistant Professor at Al-Quds Bard (Palestine), and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo (Egypt), among other positions and institutions. They presently live in Barcelona where they are teaching in the Graduate Program in Media, Power and Difference at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

All inquiries can be sent via the contact form found here, or can be mailed directly to elbienmaspreciado at ianalanpaul dot com

Positions & Affiliations
Professori Associat, International Studies on Media, Power & Difference, 2023-Present
   // Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Catalunya
Affiliate, Feminist Media Studio, 2020-Present
   // Concordia University, Montreal, Québec
Assistant Professor of Emerging Media, Department of Art, 2017-20
   // Stony Brook University, NY, USA
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Media Studies, 2016-17
   // Al-Quds Bard College, Abu Dis, Palestine
Lecturer, Graduate Program in History & Theory of Contemporary Art, 2016
   // San Francisco Art Institute, CA, USA
Instructor, Department of Film & Digital Media Studies, 2016
   // UC Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism & Mass Communication, 2014-15
   // American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
Affiliate, Berkeley Center For New Media, 2013
   // UC Berkeley, CA, USA
Affiliate, The Program in Critical Theory, 2013
   // UC Berkeley, CA, USA
Affiliate, Center for Documentary Arts and Research, 2013
   // UC Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Lecturer, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts, 2012
   // UC San Diego, CA, USA

Recent Talks & Lectures
The Reticular Society, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, Spain, 2023// The Wastes of Computation, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, 2022 // The Guantanamo Museum, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, 2021 // The Imaginative Strike, Concordia University, Montreal, Québec, 2021 // Digital Art, Digital Memory, University of Minnesota, MN, USA, 2021 // The Informatics of Resistance, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, 2021 // Ten Premises for a Pandemic, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2020 // Counting on Bodies, University of Basel, Switzerland, 2019 // Fragility & Failure, Inter University Center Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2018 // The Society of Post-Control, Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2017 // The Conditions of Possibility, University of Manchester, UK, 2017 // Drone Ethics, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA, 2015 // The Art & Politics of Defamiliarization, University of Buffalo, NY, USA, 2015 // Against Participation, UC Santa Cruz, CA, USA, 2015 // A Concept Is A Weapon: An Affective Deleuze, CILAS, Cairo, Egypt, 2015

Recent Publications
“Controlling the Crisis,” published in Moving Images, Transcript Verlag, 2020 // “Civil Disobedience,” published in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media, 2020 // “A Nonlinear Justice,” published in the Museum of Capitalism Exhibition Catalogue, 2017 // “Between Precarity & Resiliency,” published in the Istanbul Cultural Policy Yearbook, 2016 // “The Mattering of Egyptian Life,” published in Mada Masr, 2015 // “The Revolutionary Practice of Endurance,” published in Jadaliyya, 2015

Recent Exhibitions & Screenings
The Wrong Biennale, Online, 2020 // Digital Rhythms, Virtual Refrains, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2020 // Climate, Capitalism, Control — The Public School, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2019 // Contentious Objects, Ashamed Subjects, Galleria del Progetto, Milan, Italy, 2019 // The National Gallery of Victoria Triennial, Melbourne, Australia, 2018 // Futureproof, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford, PA, USA, 2017 // How Much of this is Fiction, Hek, Basel, Switzerland & FACT, Liverpool, UK, 2017 // As If, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2017 // Make Use, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland, 2016 // Take This Hammer, Yerba Buena Center For the Arts, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2016