Comics, Posters, PAR&D
Participatory Action Research & Design
Curated by Jon McKenzie and StudioLab F25
MACRE, 415 N Tioga St, Ithaca, NY 14850
EXHIBITION Nov 7-18, 2025
OPENING Nov 7 5PM-8PM
Support provided by Mellon Rural Humanities/Society for the Humanities, Einhorn Center for Community Engagement, and Department of Literatures in English.
Comics, Posters, PAR&D features information comics and posters created by first-year students at Cornell University. Combining old school and new school, writers mix argument and story, idea and image using forms of transmedia knowledge and strategic storytelling to tackle issues ranging from AI and spiritual homecomings to fast fashion and math prizes.
Information comics situate knowledge in real or speculative scenarios, examine different perspectives, and seek transformation via sharing of worlds. Info comics combine everyday and expert discourse to explore and share contemporary ideas and issues with adults, high school students, and other experts. Their covers serve as posters.
After researching a topic of their choosing, students compose dialogues, storyboards, and hand-drawn, copy-and-paste, and/or AI-generated images. We learn about fair use, copyright, and “copy left” approaches and their vexed connections with neoclassical, Romantic, and avant-garde art and design traditions.
It all comes together using Comic Life software, saving to pdf format, and printing at Gnomon Copy here in Ithaca.
Ry Ferro, director of MACRE (Media Arts Exchange+Resource Exchange), gave two workshops focused on her work as a filmmaker and the importance of practice, community, and resources. Our collaboration focuses on the ways writing, media making, and networking can help restore and strengthen ties with communities and the larger world.
Miki and friends give a close reading of his info comic, “Connecting the Lab to the Land.” Student research and present research from their own fields of interest using a variety of media genres: academic essays, abstracts, proposals, annotated bibliographies, info comics, posters, Pecha Kucha presentations, and exhibition.
Students document and share an interactive video installation. MACRE is a new media arts collective and resource exchange in Ithaca. This semester our exhibit was part of MACRE’s participation in Ithaca Gallery Night. We learned about local artists’ creative processes and shared our process with them.
Kaitlyn, Olivia, and friends connected with artists, educators, and families in the downtown Ithaca community. Writers situate a debate in the world, explore it from relevant perspectives, and produce an info comic and poster to stimulate debate and discussion.
Mia conducts fashion management fieldwork in the cultural competencies required to transmediate her Concept X into the genre of Difficult Listening Hour, pioneered by performance artist Laurie Anderson in the 1980s. The MACRE show featured a Synth Petting Zoo of experimental music interfaces by E of the ElectroZone.
Hamza discusses 3D printing with Prof. Keith Green of the Architectural Robotics Lab. Students shared research and career interests with artists, professors, and local business folks, including faculty and staff from Cornelll’s Department of Human Centered Design and Atkinson Center for Sustainability, and Ithaca ReUse Center.
