Jesse Drew

Jesse Drew is a filmmaker, media artist and writer whose work challenges the complacent relationship between the public and mass media technologies. Drew’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Mill Valley Film and Video Festival, SF Camerawork, San Diego Art Institute, the SF Film Arts Festival, the ZKM(Germany), the World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), Incident (Brussels), Barcelona Cultural Center (Spain), Cinematheque Francaise (France), Dallas Film and Video Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the American Indian Film and Video Festival, the Crocker (Sacramento) and many others. His collaboratory video and installation work has been exhibited at the Wexner Center, NYMOMA, the Walter and McBean Gallery, the Whitney, the SF Arts Commission Gallery and many other institutions. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, journals and anthologies, including STREETOPIA! (Booklyn), Radical Light (UC Press), Resisting the Virtual Life (City Lights Press), Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture (City Lights Press), At A Distance: Art and Activism Before the Internet (MIT Press) and Collectivism After Modernism (University of Minnesota Press). He is the author of A Social History of Contemporary Democratic Media (Routledge). His current film project (with co-producer Glenda Drew) is tentatively titled “Open Country” and is a cinematic exposition of the current state of country music. “Open Country” takes a critical look at the representation of contemporary country music and seeks to reconnect this vital American art form to its original roots in populism and worker’s culture. He is currently Professor of Cinema and Digital Media (formerly Technocultural Studies) at the University of California at Davis.