Cover ​Image from alterR destinY wilimingtoN, by Q Roc Ragsdale

What is the IMMERSION Lab?

​The IMMERSION Lab is an annual artist residency that takes place on the Jengo's Playhouse campus and is run through a partnership between The School of Making Thinking and Cucalorus Film Foundation. The residency is a combination of a virtual reality creation lab and an invitation for artists to engage the racial history of America within the context of a southern city: Wilmington, North Carolina, where the residency takes place. Bringing multiple meanings of immersion together, this residency is an opportunity to put critical thinking into practice through immersive media projects.

In May 2025, eight artists gathered on the Jengo's Playhouse campus for two weeks and created original 360 video works inspired by their time together in Wilmington.  Wilmington in Virtual Reality: The IMMERSION 6.0 VR Exhibit showcases a selection of these works in progress pieces that were created during the IMMERSION 6.0 residency. 

THE WORK & THE ARTISTS

alterR destinY wilimingtoN

Created by Q-Roc Ragsdale
alterR destinY wilimingtoN runtime 5:55
A historical sci-fi narrative set during the 1898 Wilmington coup, this 360° film blends ancestral memory, conjure traditions, and prophetic vision to reimagine escape as an act of ancestral intervention. Guided by color and sacred movement inspired by the visionary drawings of Wilmington artist Minnie Evans, a man follows a quiet call to leave — stepping beyond what is seen, into what is known. Rooted in Afro-futuristic nostalgia — an aesthetic that bridges imagined futures with the emotional resonance of the past — the film unfolds through intuitive choreography, legacy, and unseen protection.
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Afro-futuristic nostalgia
A personal aesthetic framework developed by Q. Roc Ragsdale, Afro-futuristic nostalgia bridges imagined futures with the emotional resonance of the past. It is a creative approach that draws equally from speculative vision and ancestral memory — reimagining Black history, spirituality, and culture through a futuristic lens while honoring the textures of what came before. Rooted in storytelling, movement, and immersive technology, Afro-futuristic nostalgia is not just a reimagination, but a return — a practice of dreaming forward while staying grounded in legacy, rituals—passed down and newly made, and deep reverence for our égún (ancestors).

Q Roc Ragsdale
IMMERSION 6.0 Resident

Q. Roc Ragsdale is an immersive media artist and producer working at the intersection of storytelling, emerging technology, and social impact. His practice spans augmented reality, 3D design, screen content production, and community-rooted installation. He created and curates CineTech, the first emerging tech sidebar at the Maryland Film Festival, and has contributed as a screens designer for Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow, a screens producer/designer for BET’s HBCU Honors Awards, and a movement study animator for the Super Bowl Halftime Show (Kendrick Lamar) and FIFA Halftime Show (J Balvin). As Director of Emerging Technology for Zora’s Room, a storytelling initiative centering Black women and queer people, he explored site-specific AR and immersive experiences that centered queer and trans stories. His creative and consulting work is grounded in filmmaking, social innovation, marketing, and digital strategy.

iamqroc.com

Anger Guide Me, A Ritual (2025)

Created by Tafari Diop Robertson
A poetic consideration of research centering the Black memory of the 1898 Wilmington massacre as held at the site of water. Utilizing first person sources and 360 video footage, this is an expression of the congruent haunting of Black study and natural space.

Video, Editing, and Soundscaping by Tafari Robertson

Presentation Notes: Ideally this will be presented as a spatial shrine, immersing the viewer into study of the records and literature of the people who experienced the Wilmington Massacre. A central video screen with headphones invites the viewer to sit (or stand) while sources are projected onto parallel screens. The space can be small or enclosed but decorated with dried flowers, sand, and framed photos of the quoted sources.

Tafari Diop Robertson
​IMMERSION 6.0 Resident

Tafari Diop Robertson is a Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist, cultural producer, and speculative historian with expertise in event programming, graphic design, and multimedia. His work investigates the dynamics of Black cultural production and sovereignty through a Pan-Africanist lens. Often, Robertson’s work is found through site-specific media installations and community engagements. Utilizing anti-work methodologies, he meanders through a process including but not limited to kite-flying, illustration, relationship building, radical organizing, writing, and administrative critique.
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Most recently, Robertson developed the Black Historians’ Department to explore a speculative historiography that prioritizes the ways that Black people hold and exchange information amongst ourselves, often outside the specter of institutional control.

tafaridiop.com

A nature doc (360), 2024

Directed by clay scofield
A nature doc (360) is part of a larger project A nature documentary: elements of decomposition. This multimedia project plays with transformations through redefinition of language: elements of composition are reinvented through slippage and sculptural activation as methods of meaning-making through accumulation and decay. Transforming trash into sculptural objects, they capture these objects in video that skews context, perspective, and scale so that the viewer questions where and what they are seeing, highlighting the ever-shifting in-betweenness of the objects-as-landscapes. In these landscapes, we can linger in the in-betweenness, in which everything-becomes-everything.

clay scofield, they/them
IMMERSION 3.0 Resident, 2019
​IMMERSION Facilitator since 2021

Intermedia artist and poet, e clayton scofield (they/them) creates multimedia work that threads together poetic narrative, performance and moving image. Emphasizing the repurposing of material across projects, clay develops an intimacy with objects as they accumulate meaning over time. Slippage and illegibility function in their work to allow forms their own becoming. A word repeated across contexts can become malleable material accumulating various meanings. Trash accumulated over time can be repurposed into a sculptural landscape that is transformed through the camera lens.  Their current work, A Nature Documentary: Elements of Decomposition plays with transformations through redefinition of language: elements of composition are reinvented through slippage and sculptural activation as methods of meaning-making through accumulation and decay. Transforming trash into sculptural objects, they capture these objects in video that skews context, perspective, and scale so that the viewer questions where and what they are seeing, highlighting the ever-shifting in-betweenness of the objects-as-landscapes. In these landscapes, we can linger in the in-betweenness, in which everything-becomes-everything. Inspired by Jill Johnston’s definition of intermedia, articulated as, “Re-integration. The everything as everything. The organism as totally illegal. The legality of nothing but pleasure,” clay’s DIY queer aesthetic gets intimate with everyday materials. 

eclaytonscofield.com

In Isolation with Others (in progress)

Created by Sharon De La Cruz
​"In Isolation and With Others" (in progress) is a 5-minute virtual reality experience inspired by the Ferris wheel at Carolina Beach. I explored the concept of freedom as a cyclical phenomenon. The audio combines a memory of Carolina Beach with national ideals of freedom.

Sharon De La Cruz
IMMERSION 6.0 Resident, 2025

Sharon De La Cruz is a storyteller, educator, and activist from New York City whose work lies at the intersection of STEM pedagogy, art, and social justice. Her passion for storytelling, particularly through comics, led her to the Tin House Summer Workshop, where she developed her debut graphic memoir, I’m a Wild Seed (Street Noise, April 2021). Praised by Kirkus Reviews as a “potent graphic memoir about the forming of one woman’s queer identity” that captures “both the fears and joys of discovering one’s marginalized identity,” the book has established her as a compelling new voice in the medium. De La Cruz holds a master’s degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and has been recognized with a Fulbright Fellowship amongst others. She is an Assistant Arts Professor at ITP-NYU.​

sharonleedelacruz.com

Beneath the Surface

Created by Irishia Romaine
In Beneath the Surface, time becomes fluid as a woman moves through an environment where history lingers in the air and spirit resonates in every space. When a portal opens, she encounters a version of herself from another era, witnessing echoes of memory that are both personal and collective. What unfolds is a journey of return; an invitation to look beneath the visible world and feel what still breathes, resists, and remembers.

Irishia Romaine
​IMMERSION 6.0 Resident, 2025

Irishia Romaine (she/her) is a choreographer, filmmaker, and educator from South Carolina. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania and a 2024 Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellow at Yale. Irishia holds an MFA in Modern Dance and a Screendance certification from the University of Utah. Her research focuses on the unwritten history of Black moving image arts, analyzing Africanist Aesthetics in American dance, photography, and film.

irishiahubbardromaine.com

ADDITIONAL IMMERSION 6.0 ARTISTS​

Brittanie Dial
IMMERSION 6.0 Resident, 2025

Brittanie Dial is a creative professional with extensive experience in video production, event management, immersive experiences, and storytelling, with a proven track record of expanding social justice movements by mobilizing communities towards action through marketing and communications. Her leadership helped grow a crime survivor and formerly incarcerated people-led membership movement to over 400,000+ people across the U.S., showcasing her ability to utilize storytelling as a tool to turn creative visions into impactful realities.

linkedin.com/in/brittaniedial

Gabrielle Octavia Rutger
IMMERSION 6.0 Resident, 2025

Gabrielle Octavia Rucker is a writer, editor, and teaching artist from the Great Lakes (Waawiiyaataanong) currently living in the Gulf Coast (Bulbancha). They are a 2020 Poetry Project Fellow and a 2016 Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. She is the sole operator and practitioner of The Seminary of Ecstatic Poetics, a non-traditional learning space for the poetically inclined that believes that the practices of language arts are foundational to the practices of healing arts. Their debut poetry collection, Dereliction (2022), is currently available via The Song Cave. Gabrielle’s work has appeared in various media and publications, including the Sundance Film Festival, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Montez Press Radio, Dance Lawyer, The Aspen Art Museum, and more.​

gogogogo.info

Exhibit Coordinators 

Remi Harris
IMMERSION 2.0 Resident, 2018 &
IMMERSION 6.0 Facilitator, 2025

Remi Harris is a creative producer, performer, choreographer, facilitator, curator, and arts leader based in NYC. Her dynamic career spans formal and experimental collaborations with trailblazers and contemporaries across a wide array of platforms—on stage, in film, on illegal rooftops, during demonstrations, on terrible floors, and on ice-skating rinks. Grounded in the legacy of her mentors and driven by the joy of movement, her work centers on inclusive community-building and a commitment to fostering meaningful artistic connections.

As a performer, she has collaborated with Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, Keigwin + Company, Olek, Racoco/Rx, Christal Brown/INSPIRIT, Coco Karol, Ed Woodham, Catherine Malandrino, Kay Ottinger, Katie Workum, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peter Bjorn, and others. Her choreography has been presented at prestigious venues such as Abrons Art Center (NYC), Brooklyn Studios for Dance (NYC), Danspace Project (NYC), Teatro La Tea (NYC), Triskelion Arts (NYC), CPR - Center for Performance Research (NYC), The Actors Fund Theater (NYC), The Brick Theater (NYC), Thalian Hall (Wilmington, NC), Spectrum Dance Theater (Seattle, WA), the Boll Theatre (Detroit, MI), and numerous site-specific activations across the United States.

As a creative producer and facilitator, Remi has contributed to innovative productions that incorporate cultural histories through movement, sound, research, and immersive technologies. Her leadership in arts administration includes curating interdisciplinary programs, designing residencies, and shaping inclusive spaces that amplify diverse artistic voices. Through her multifaceted roles, Remi continues to explore ways to collaborate, dream, and build together. Born in Barbados and raised in Brooklyn, she remains closely connected to and curious about her roots. www.remitharris.com

clay scofield, they/themmm​
IMMERSION 3.0 Resident, 2019
​IMMERSION Facilitator since 2021

see bio above.

APPLY TO IMMERSION 7.0

FULL LIST OF IMMERSION ALUMNI

Founding Facilitators: Josephine Decker, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Sophie Traub & Dan Brawley
Akeema-Zane
Amy Bergstein
Betsy Holt
brandon king
Bonnie Jones
Bonny Nahmias
Brighid Greene
C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek
Carrie Hawks
CoCoa Alexis
​Courtney Symone Staton
Damani Pompey
Dan Brawley
Deidrea Hamid
Emma Bracy
​Emma Jaster
​Erin Howley
Fereshteh Toosi
Fred Schmidt-Arenales
Gloria Galvez
​Grant Cutler
Ina Indira Shanahan
Inka Rusi 
Ivy Nicole-Jonét
Jaimes Mayhew
Josephine Decker
Kayla M. Lee
Kesswa Music
Kiley Brandt
Kristin McWharter
KS Brewer
Liz Naiden 
Maria Theresa Barbist
Matt Pearson
Maya O. Bush
McLean Fahnestock
Naima Ramos
Natalie Lentz
O Egozy
Remi Harris
Sara Fenton
Sasha Ford
Sherita Solis
Sophia Flo Dacy-Cole
Sophie Traub
Talia Shea Levin
Tara O'Con
Tchaiko Omawale

This event is apart of Fall of Freedom, an artist-led initiative to resist authoritarian forces within the cultural sector.

To learn more, visit the Fall of Freedom Website or read news coverage about the initiative HERE.

Want to support this work? Donate to The School of Making Thinking.

This exhibit and the IMMERSION residency are made possible through a partnership between The School of Making Thinking and Cucalorus Film Foundation, as well as a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and sponsorships from Lensrentals and the Film Studies & Digital Media departments at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW).
The School of Making Thinking
Cucalorus Film Foundation
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Lensrentals generously provided gear and headsets for the residency and the exhibit at a discounted rate.
The National Endowment for the Arts supported the residency that took place in May 2025.