Neil Zusman is the chief archivist of the Fracking Resource Guide and Earthstage: Palau Edition. He holds a Master of Arts in Humanities (1990) and a Master of Library Science (2007) from the University at Buffalo. He is the managing member of Mixplex LLC and has exhibited video art since 1976. His work bridges archival practice, media art, and software development. From 1983 to 1992, he curated exhibitions of artists working with computers, supported by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the National Endowment for the Arts, and Meet the Composer. He has worked as an educator at both the college and middle school levels and continues to develop his practice as a software developer, artist, archivist, and videographer.
July begins with things changing form: fireworks become rain, a great tree disappears from Washington Park, and small lives continue around what remains. As smoke crosses borders and heat travels beyond where it begins, the walk becomes a way of paying attention—and attention itself becomes a demand for a vibrant, healthful world.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
What brings me joy is gathered in signs and wonders.
The slower video lets me study the vines on a wooden fence transforming into a flower head. Flies alight like fireflies by the stream. The flowers of summer open around me, and even the red painted fire hydrant appears to belong in a garden.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
Some things I found because they were signs. Some were flowers, raindrops, animals, clouds, painted lines, arrows, a cat sleeping in sunlight, a dead bird, an empty discarded drawer, a painting of birds, and the sky opening again and again. Sometimes I had time to stop down and frame the shot. Sometimes I reached for the camera as fast as I could.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
First shown as a two-channel, three monitor video piece on three large boxed blonde Oak black-and-white Setchell-Carlson monitors set on the stage floor. I was inspired by The Vasulkas Machine Vision series (1975-1977) to work in video that way.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
In recent months, I’ve been spending more time walking through Ithaca. Most days, I leave from North Plain Street, cross Buffalo Street, past the Children’s Garden, and follow the inlet trail toward Treman Marina and Cayuga Lake before circling back home.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
Neil’s Mellow Pad aligns with the intention of Earthstage: to attend to the living world as active presence—complex, fragile, and ongoing. These fragments are not arguments. They are acts of attention.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
I combine naturalism, history, diary, always in motion.
March may be my key piece. It is the longest video, and it feels iconic to me — the right time and place. This month seems to contain the full grammar: weather, politics, friends, music, gallery light, water, mud, protest, spring, death, food, thunder, and the body walking through it all.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
The realtime source follows February as a sequence of winter fragments: snow, bridge, art window, ice, warning, screen, moon, water. In the slowed version, the fragments dissolve into one another until danger and play begin to share the same surface.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
A gloved hand traces the curve of an icy orb, snow and ice held in suspension. It reminds me of a control bar for the frozen land. What looks frozen is not motionless. January holds movement inside the pause.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
December gathers snow, moon, gas globe, holidays, animals, and lights into one field of attention. What is civic and what is domestic begin to trade places. The gas globe becomes snowmen. Steam becomes the moon. A patch panel becomes birds by the lake. Holiday lights, brass light, snow light, and household light all begin speaking to one another.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
October is made from texture, wind, insects, water, shadow, protest, and sound. The walk stays close to the ground, then opens suddenly into public language: an Earth flag, no kings, no crowns for clowns, a national anthem played through drum roll and pennywhistle. My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
Walking through Ithaca, I watch streets torn open and repaired, trees pruned, workers tending the ordinary machinery of a city. This is not a war zone. Neither are other American cities made into battlefields because the government describes them as dangerous or proposes using them as military “training grounds.” September asks what happens when the language of climate, dissent, and public life is changed to obscure what is plainly before us. Reality does not yield to the words used against it.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
This video requires deeper listening.
Soothing, melodic, projecting fairness to the generally unseen.
The Cornell University Law School – 2011 Energy Conference (March 31-April 2, 2011) explored, among other topics, the legal issues associated with natural gas drilling and energy policy, different scientific perspectives on how clean and sustainable natural gas is, alternative clean energy sources, and the potential risks and benefits of shale gas development in Upstate New York.
Source: YouTube (2011) Read More
Hydrofracking’s proposed a massive industrial transformation on a huge swath of rural Northeastern U.S. It has divided communities and sparked an intense public debate about science, economics, law making and enforcement. Under the Surface tells the story of the Marcellus Gas Rush and is written by Tom Wilber, a newspaper reporter who covered the environmental beat for Binghamton, N.Y.’s Press & Sun Bulletin. Recommended!
Source: Cornell University Press (2012) Read More
A curated collection of bibliographic resources, government documents, letters, and video investigations serves as a crash course in fracking.
Source: Neil Zusman (2010) Read More