About

Gretchen Burger is an artist, filmmaker, and cultural worker deeply engaged in convenings / conversations / art projects that cultivate possibillties for belonging and care. Gretchen’s work spans documentary filmmaking and video art/installation to, more recently, moving beyond frames (image and prescribed!) to community engagement activations and public-commons interventions in the corporate digital ether.

Gretchen has produced, directed and edited award-winning public television and feature documentaries and has taught traditional, experimental and immersive media and storytelling to students of all ages (Seattle Public Schools, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle University, Art Institute, Northwest Film Forum).

In 2016, Gretchen and Sandy Cioffi co-founded  FEARLESS, a creative agency working at the intersections of public art, public benefit R+D, old and new technologies, education, and community experience and engagement design. As director of programming, Gretchen curated several of the first US immersive media festivals and exhibitions, and created educational programming, public art projects and curriculum to introduce general audiences to the new language of emerging technologies and the opportunities for economic and social transformation when these tools are designed by communities for community benefit. Agency projects include: WE STREET (communities owning their own data design series), Feminizing the Machine (imagining a digital feminist ether, in collaboration with BeAnotherLab), Local Tender (new currency experiments to sustain careers in the arts, incubated at UW CoMotion Fintech Lab), SIFFX (festival exploring the public benefit uses of immersive technologies and storytelling).

Gretchen earned a certificate in documentary filmmaking from the University of Washington and a MFA in experimental film and video installation from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. More recently, she’s studied with Barcelona-based art collective BeAnotherLab in their embodied storytelling methodology designed to enhance empathetic human connection. For 10 years, Gretchen trained as a boxer. The individual and collective body — in physicality, energy, knowledge, and stories — has been central to Gretchen’s thinking and practice.

Gretchen’s work has been shown nationally and internationally at World Economic Forum-Davos, Northwest Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives, Bellevue Art Museum, IMAGINE festival, Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Society of Illustrators, Star & Shadow Cinema - Newcastle, UK, Artists' Television Access, Academic Film Center - Belgrade, The Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. Recent collaborations include All Things Fall Apart with Beth Ireland, 325 MAIN/WHAT BROUGHT YOU HERE?: A Community Conversation with Sarah Cameron Sunde, and Before We Flew Like Birds We Flew Like Clouds with KT Niehoff.