Summer 2026 Cohort Meet and Greet

Join us on Tuesday, June 9, 2026 to welcome our ninth Pedantic cohort. The Pedantic Residents will be giving brief presentations on their backgrounds and their practices.

Pedantic Arts Residency (Pedantic) is a month-long cross-disciplinary program co-hosted by Headwater Media and Casey Droege Cultural Productions. We have invited three residents whose practices span visual art, curating, and writing to explore the city of Pittsburgh and its creative communities.

We’re looking forward to welcoming jinseok choi (Visual Artist), Joyce Chung (Curator), and Andrew Saito (Writer).

This is a free event, and RSVP is requested to attend. To RSVP, please fill out the brief form below. Registration will also be available at the door. Free drinks and food will be provided at the event.

jinseok choi (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist, fabricator, and community organizer exploring labor, materiality, and collectivity through sculpture, furniture, installations, and community-based projects. His work examines how objects and spaces bear traces of human interaction, serving as both witnesses to and participants in social and political narratives. Deeply engaged in local art communities as an organizer, he co-founded Space 1 (Seoul, 2012) and MOTOR (Los Angeles, 2021- present), artist-run initiatives that support voices outside the mainstream. The projects he has been involved in range from exhibitions in unconventional spaces to practical workshops for community members to outdoor events in public spaces.

Joyce Chung (she/her) is the Curator at Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia, where she leads the organization’s exhibition and performance programs. Her interdisciplinary approach examines identity, memory, and marginalization, with particular attention to how capitalism and power structures shape lived experiences. She is especially drawn to performance and time-based media for their ability to position the body as a site of resistance, reconciliation, and embodied memory. Chung focuses on underrepresented communities, particularly ethnic and gender minorities, and centers work that fosters social inquiry and collective engagement. She has held curatorial roles at institutions in Korea and the U.S., including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Gwangju Biennale, Hyundai Card, Kukje Gallery, and Performa in New York. Chung holds an MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and a BA in Art History from Wesleyan University.

Andrew Saito (he/him) is a playwright and screenwriter who brings together characters with conflicting perspectives in globe-spanning, genre-bending stories that seek to understand multiple sides. His work embodies the dichotomy of his two grandfathers: one fought against the Japanese in World War II; the other was interned under suspicion of being an agent of Japan. Andrew was Mellon Resident Playwright at Cutting Ball Theater, which produced his plays Krispy Kritters in the Scarlett Night and Mount Misery: A Comedy of Enhanced Interrogations, and is commissioned by Asian Arts Initiative and Montalvo Arts Center to write and develop Harlem Canary/Tokyo Crow, with support from NPN, MAP Fund, the NEA, Playwrights Foundation, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and PlayPenn. He has developed plays with Crowded Fire, the Playwrights Center, East West Players, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Civilians, the Orchard Project, AlterTheatre, etc. He graduated from the Paramount Writers Mentoring Program, and staffed on The Lost Symbol. His writing has been shaped by his many experiences living far off the beaten path: being adopted by a celebrity chef in Mexico who cooked for Pope Francis; apprenticing to a shaman in the Amazon; and, as a Fulbright Scholar, interviewing elders in Papua New Guinea about growing up under Japanese military occupation during WWII. Andrew’s brand, ‘Multiracial Mayhem,’ is informed by his intersectional family, which has roots in Japan, Ireland, Hungary, Sierra Leone, Mexico, and Panama.