For over 20 years, Rick Feist has worked in New York City as a professional film and video editor. With Alex Roshuk he founded the non-profit video services organization called the Standby Program and was its first editor.
For more than a decade, as Standby’s Executive Director, Rick was involved with hundreds of artistic and independent projects by such artists and producers as Juan Downey, Nam June Paik, Jem Cohen, Dara Birnbaum and many others.
“What guided me then,” he says, “and continues to inspire me today is the importance of independent media. In Search of Tom Paine is my dream project, reflecting the philosophy that has been the core of my beliefs.”
My Collaborators
Jem Cohen is an award-winning New York City based filmmaker known for his observational portraits of urban landscapes, blending of media formats and collaborations with music artists.
Marshall Reese is an artist who works in various media and technologies. For 28 years Antoni Muntadas and he have collaborated on Political Advertisement a video compilation of presidential campaign spots from 1952 – 2012. He also works in collaboration with Nora Ligorano as LigoranoReese; they make new media, installations and video. In 2012, they installed ice sculptures of the words Middle Class at the conventions in Tampa and Charlotte. He has exhibited his work at MoMA, The Museum of Art and Design, AFI Silver Spring, the Kitchen, the New School, and Catharine Clark Gallery among others.
Alex Roshuk is an active hacker, hobbyist, and craftsman. He attended Princeton University where he studied film criticism and electronic engineering while learning the subtleties of phone freaking. At Princeton, he was a founding director of the 185 Nassau Street Corporation with Rick Feist, Madison Smartt Bell and Neil Cartan and later started the Standby Program in New York.
From 1992 to 1997 he attended McGill University, Faculty of Law, where he was awarded joint B.C.L. and LL.B. law degrees, “With Distinction.” He has been legal counsel and fundraising advisor for the Wikimedia Foundation from 2003 to 2006 when Wikipedia became one of the top ten most visited web sites in the world. He currently assists non-profit groups, artists and other individuals with their legal issues. He is also an armiger, having been granted arms by the Canadian Heraldic Authority. On December 25, 2012, he was named “Santa 2.0” by Marketplace Tech, an N.P.R. radio show.