VICE Magazine, now headquartered nearby in Williamsburg, has grown from a fringe counter culture zine to a global youth brand. Their online television network is one of the most frequented destinations in online video. Focusing on short and medium form journalism, they report on popular and counter culture, often bringing to light fantastic and under told stories from around the world. They navigate terrain from traditional journalism, hosted serial programs, and branded content.

Much of the network’s success is a result of the provocative documentaries produced by Santiago Stelley. He has covered Somali refugees in Kenya, transvestite mosques in Thailand, bestiality in Colombia, and hallucinogenic frogs in the Amazon, to name a few.

Stelley will be presenting highlights of his work in company with collaborators for a discussion on chasing the white whale and the ever evolving world of Vice Media.

Curated with Matt Yoka.

This project is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (www.NYSCA.org www.eARTS.org).

Santiago Stelley was born in Madrid and studied Latin American Studies and Comparative Literature at SUNY Buffalo and the University of Havana. After contributing for years as a correspondent for COLORS Magazine he moved to Venice where he spent 4 years as a full time Editor and Associate Creative Director. In 2004, Mr Stelley left COLORS to head up the Editorial Department of La Fabrica in Madrid and to curate exhibitions for PhotoEspana. During this time he also worked as a Creative Director for LVMH fashion campaigns and catalogues. In 2006 Santiago moved back to NY to work with the Vice Magazine team in developing it’s on-line television network. He is currently the Creative Director for VICE.com.

Thomas Morton is a scrawny nerdlinger from Atlanta who moved to New York to convince the fagbashers he grew up around that he’d “made it.” He’s worked for Vice Magazine since 2004, first as a gofer and drug-mule, then editorial assistant, then assistant editor, then back down to associate editor, then someone had the idea of making him host documentary videos and he’s been living out this cruel prank ever since. As an “on-air personality” he has helped make films in a number of countries around the world, about such subjects as Kyrgyz bride kidnapping, the depredation of the Amazon rainforest, the gay New York leather scene, pollution in the Pacific, witch doctors who give West African email scammers magic powers, and music. Thomas spent the first two years of high school as a goth and is getting a little fat in the stomach area.