Abram Stern's (they/he) art and research practice seeks out ways that institutionally situated media tells on itself. Much of this work draws from collections of government media and metadata. They look closely at technical systems and make projects that operate within the gaps of intelligibility. Rather than seeing these gaps as problems to be solved through technical solutionism, Stern makes work that functions in a poetic capacity to surface rhymes and dissonances among institutions, infrastructures, formats, and techniques of sense-making. They are currently making work about cancer surveillance through the lenses of format studies and disability justice, among other projects.
