Marc Da Costa

Marc Da Costa (b. 1984, USA) is a New York–based artist and anthropologist whose practice examines how technical infrastructures shape our attention and sense of the world. His work explores the tension between archives and lived experience, asking what systems can hold and what they leave out. Projects often begin with in-depth investigation of a specific archive or system before taking form across installation, moving image, and performance.

Recent works include “AlphaGo_Lee: Theory of Sacrifice” (2025), a theatrical staging that reimagines the 2016 Go match between Lee Sedol and Google DeepMind as a ritual of sacrifice; “The Golden Key” (2024), an interactive installation probing the relationship between AI and nineteenth-century folklore taxonomies; and “Tulpamancer” (2023), an immersive installation exploring memory and intimacy through an imagined history of AI.

Earlier projects examined surveillance and placemaking: “The Border Line” (2022) documented the digital traces left along the Turkey–Syria border during the Syrian Civil War, and “Parallels” (2023) situated machine vision within a longer history of how technology transforms our sense of place—questions Da Costa first explored through doctoral fieldwork with Antarctic scientists and critical cartographers.

His work has been presented at the Venice Film Festival, Ars Electronica, Lincoln Center, Centre PHI, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and the Onassis Foundation. He has received the Lumen Prize, SXSW Jury Prize, and a National Science Foundation fellowship. His writing has appeared in “The New York Times,” “The Guardian,” and “Lapham’s Quarterly.”