Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Armenian writer, artist, and researcher born in Yerevan and residing in Glendale, CA. She is an Associate Professor in Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design. She was a 2021 visiting Mellon Professor in the Practice at Occidental College, where she co-curated the exhibition Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI with Meldia Yesayan at Oxy Arts. From 2017-19, she held a teaching appointment in UCLA’s Department of English. She received a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. Her book, The Institute for Other Intelligences, was released by X Artists’ Books in December 2022 as the first in its X Topics series, edited by Ana Iwataki and Anuradha Vikram. She is the guest editor of the forthcoming spring 2023 issue of Art Papers on artificial intelligence, co-edited with Sarah Higgins. Her current book project considers the role of ancestral intelligence and diasporic worldmaking in emerging technologies.
She serves as a Contributing Editor for Art Papers, an Advisory Board Member for the International Armenian Literary Alliance and Azad Archives, and was a Contributing Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books from 2020-22.
Her writing and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Performance Research Journal, the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Art Papers, Hyperallergic, Georgia Journal, Art in America, AI Now Institute’s “New AI Lexicon” series, and Meghan Markle’s Archetypes.
With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she makes up one-third of Research Service, a media collective that pursues performative and practice-based forms of scholarship.
Performances and projects have been presented at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Drawing Center (NY), Judson Memorial Church (NY), and in the New Museum (NY) Voice Registers Series. Her individual and collaborative work has received coverage in Art in America, Hyperallergic, Asbarez, Los Angeles Times, Hollywood Reporter, and Armenian Public Radio. She has been a guest lecturer and presented invited talks for the University of Chicago, Pacific Northwest College of Art, USC, the UCLA Art|Sci Lab, SAIC, Cooper Union, and elsewhere.
