Senior Fellow
Kara Oehler is a documentary artist, radio producer and media entrepreneur. Her Peabody award-winning work has aired around the world and her interactive storytelling projects have been exhibited at MoMA and SFMoMA. She is the Co-Founder of Mapping Main Street, an upcoming podcast and traveling exhibition documenting all 10,000+ streets named Main Street in the United States; GoPop, an app for juxtaposing GIFs, photos and videos acquired by Buzzfeed in 2015; Zeega, an interactive storytelling platform; metaLAB (at) Harvard, a research center focused on network culture; and the UnionDocs Collaborative, an innovative model for documentary arts education and production. She was a Film Study Center Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a Rockefeller Fellow with United States Artists. A guy in a music store recently told Kara that the two most annoying instruments in the world are accordion and banjo. Kara plays both (poorly).
Inspiration
To be human at all is to forget a huge amount and hold on to a tiny amount. And there’s some band between remembering and forgetting in which we survive and exist. – William Kentridge
Me in Three
What was your dream job as a kid?
I was convinced I would move to New York City and become an Opera Singer. I did one of those things.
What’s a favorite piece of advice you’ve received?
Always look like you have a secret. – my grandmother
What are you currently obsessed with?
MLU’s (mobile living units) and trailer villages in cities
This pretty much sums up my existence