VJ Um Amel
Known for creating R-Shief and performing as VJ Um Amel, Laila Shereen Sakr is Department Chair and Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she co-directs the Creative Critical AI Undercommons. Her work merges digital arts, feminist decolonial thought, and critical AI to interrogate global power and technoculture. In 2021, she launched VJ.Live, a platform for art exhibition, gaming, and visualization, and in 2023 published Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives (Stanford University Press). By 2026, she launched a prototype of Contrapuntal for building and sharing datasets, measuring bias, and creative visualization.
Timeline
Publications
Glitching Tradition: Arab Digital Art at the Crossroads of Innovation and Resistance. In Haytham Nawar, editor, The Archaeology of New Media Arts in the Arab World, Hatje Cantz, 2026.
State Futurism vs. Critical Futurism. In Myrna Ayad, editor, What's Between, Between? Gulf Futures: An Edited Volume of Essays, Dialogues, and Opinions. Silvana Editoriale, 2026.
State Futurism vs. Critical Futurism. In Myrna Ayad, editor, What's Between, Between? Gulf Futures: An Edited Volume of Essays, Dialogues, and Opinions. Silvana Editoriale, 2026.
Glitching Tradition: Arab Digital Art at the Crossroads of Innovation and Resistance. In Haytham Nawar, editor, The Archaeology of New Media Arts in the Arab World, Hatje Cantz, 2026.