Touching Minds
Cristina Albu
September 17, 2026 DOI: 10.4324/9781003752370-5 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Key points | The text profiles Ellen Pearlman as an artist and arts writer whose practice draws on Buddhism, computer technology, meditation, and dance to explore the individual and collective psyche. It notes that her work has appeared mainly in new media festivals rather than mainstream museums, that she wrote a monograph on D.T. Suzuki's influence on New York avant-garde artists, and that she led the ThoughtWorks residency from 2016 to 2023. |
|---|
Abstract
Ellen Pearlman is a visionary polymath, putting her knowledge of art, Buddhism, computer technology, science, Southeast Asian Vipassana meditation, and Tibetan tantric dance in the service of inquiries into the individual and collective human psyche. In the art world, she may be better known as an arts writer than as an artist since she has been a regular contributor to art publications such as Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic , and the Performance Arts Journal (PAJ) . 1 Her works have been primarily featured in new media festivals and exhibition spaces and have yet to be integrated in mainstream museum spaces. She has lived many years in Asia and has written a monograph charting the impact of D.T. Suzuki&s;s Buddhist teachings on the work of avant-garde artists in New York. Between 2016 and 2023, she was the leader of ThoughtWorks, a residency program supporting artists’ experimental inquiry into the social impact of the latest technologies. Initiating transnational collaborations is a key part of her artistic agenda, along with advocacy for ethical uses of biofeedback and artificial intelligence (AI).