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Neil Gravander HEADSHOT

Neil Gravander

  • Lecturer, Film, Video, Animation and New Genres

Education

  • MFA, Cinematic Arts, UW-Milwaukee, 2015
  • BA, Philosophy, UW-Milwaukee, 2008
  • BA, Political Science, UW-Milwaukee, 2008

Biography

Neil Gravander is an educator, multi-media and performance artist, and musician based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work combines video, sound, sculpture, and performance to explore the psychological, poetic, and material relationships between media technology, personal memory, and narrative form.

He earned dual bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Philosophy while independently pursuing experimental sound and electroacoustic instrument design for musical performance. As a self-taught media artist, he was a recipient of a Mary L. Nohl Fellowship in 2010 where he began working with video in sculptural-installation form using modified analog monitors, and hacking early media-technologies into performative instrumentation. These instruments ranged from analog audio-visual synthesizers to more complex performative tools for manipulating videotape, such as the Video Springer—a device that lets a performer manually turn videotape through a VCR’s play mechanism to create time-stretched, rhythmically pulsing variations of pre-recorded material.

Through the resulting Nohl Fellowship exhibition in 2011, Neil went on to attend the Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres graduate program at UW–Milwaukee where he received his MFA and continues to teach. His time in graduate school expanded his focus toward narrative media installation, exploring how moving image and sound can construct surreal or psychologically charged environments. He has participated in residencies through The Great Poor Farm Experiment (2015) and Funhouse (2017), where his practice took a further turn toward experimental narrative and intermedia storytelling.

Neil’s monitor-based sculptures, inter-arts installations, and live and recorded video-and-sound works have been screened, exhibited, and curated in group shows and platforms across the Midwest and beyond. He has toured the Midwest and East Coast performing music, noise, and media-oriented works under the name Lucky Bone, as well as with the improvised experimental sound group Phoned Nil Trio.

His current research and creative practice explore the intersection of speculative poetry, personal mythology, surrealist dream-logics, and the psychodynamics of family narratives. Rooted in a distinctly DIY approach, his work often involves constructing entire visual worlds by hand—building sets, props, and sculptural elements from everyday construction and home-improvement materials. He is currently completing post-production on Father Figure, Mother Figure, Other Figure—a feature-length experimental video that merges camp aesthetics, gothic horror, and performance art into a fragmented haunted-house epic, in which Gravander performs every role and designed each environment from the ground up.

Links

Recent Work

Paper cut outs of flowers in foreground, window with shadow of girl background, with a looming hand.
still from Father Figure, Mother Figure, Other Figure
Still of the back of a person's head with fluffy, wild white hair
still from Father Figure, Mother Figure, Other Figure
A glowing hand reaching out of the dirt in a drawn row of flowers.
still from Father Figure, Mother Figure, Other Figure
Film still of a dog stuffed animal and a bone in front of a childlike drawing of a house and backyard
still from Father Figure, Mother Figure, Other Figure
Film still of doorknobs and key-holes made out of light
still from Father Figure, Mother Figure, Other Figure
Film still of a bedroom with a man lying on his back on the bed.
documentation still from live 35mm Slide Show Performance @ Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts, 11/15/25

Documentation of Live Performance [35mm slideshow and live audio]

Excerpt of feature film WIP [Father Figure, Mother Figure, Other Figure]

Artistic Works & Performances

  • Untitled. 35mm Slide Performance by Neil Gravander, 11/25/2025; Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts
  • False Facts. album by Neil Gravander [Lucky Bone]; self released Oct. 2025
  • Untitled. Sound Performance by Neil Gravander [Lucky Bone], 08/06/2025