ABOUT 

Founder of Stories Beyond (www.stories-beyond.com), an initiative that envisions to tell restorative and transformative narratives of communities beyond the single story,  JEAN CLAIRE DY is a third-generation Filipino-Chinese from South of the Philippines. She is a former freelance journalist and a published creative writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She is also media artist dealing with multidisciplinary works in video, film,  interactive media, performance and movement arts, and other cross-sectional forms. Her films have been screened in several international festivals and her video pieces have been exhibited in various exhibitions. 

Claire holds a Master of Arts in Media Studies degree from the New School University in New York City, which she completed under a fellowship from the International Ford Foundation Fellowships Program and a Department Merit Scholarship from the New School Media Studies Program. Her academic and production focus was on two tracks: Projects in Multisensorial Spaces, and the Interactive Multimedia Nonfiction Storytelling or Interactive Multimedia Documentary. She is currently taking her PhD in Fine Arts in Music focusing on filmmaking at the Victorian College of Arts of the University of Melbourne. 

Claire headed MindaNews TV, the now defunct convergence media component of MindaNews  where she also worked as Travel Editor and correspondent. She served as Board Secretary of the Mindanao News and Information Cooperative Center. She helped launch the lifestyle magazine M- Life and Living in Mindanao where she was the pioneering Editor-in-Chief.

In the past, Claire has taught in the Creative Writing and Media Arts programs of the University of the Philippines Mindanao and was a Visiting Lecturer at  the Convergent Media Lab of the Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communications in China.

Her research and production interests encompass a range of subjects namely: the cross-sections of gender, media and technology, acoustic ecology, projects  in multisensorial spaces, hybrid video practices, multimodal research and netnography, and interactive multimedia technology and its impact on storytelling/narrative patterns.

Claire’s  past explorations also include engaging in movement/performance art forms. She has studied classical Indian dances like Bharatnatyam and Odissi, and had also ventured into Contemporary Dance. 

Aside from a Masters in Media Studies, Claire holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing. She also studied Masters in Literary Studies focusing on feminist writing. For her fiction writing, she has received fellowships from prestigious workshops, such as, the National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City, and the UP National Workshop, among others.

Her short story, “Big Yellow” was a finalist in the fiction category of the Philippines Free Press Awards in 2009. In 2020, her documentary film A House in Pieces which she co-directed with German filmmaker Manuel Domes won the Golden Herkules Award at the Kasseler Dokfest in Germany. The film was also awarded the DMZ Docs fund in 2019. A House in Pieces was nominated for a Gaward Urian award, the most prestigious film award in the Philippines in 2021. 

Claire was a fellow in the Connecting Stories Program of the Scottish Documentary Institute. She also was an artist resident in the Belgrade Art Studio Online Residency in 2021. In 2022, she attended the Salzburg Fine Arts Academy's workshop on Digital Storytelling using VR and AR under the tutelage of Shezad Dawood.

In the past, she has received grants and fellowships from various organizations and foundations. 

Currently, she is working on completing her book of travel reportage/memoir. She is collaborating with a New York based sound artist on an interactive installation art project. She is very interested in collaborations involving film, video and sound art and physical computing.

INTERVIEWS:
Takt Kunstprojketraum: https://taktberlin.org/interview-with-jean-claire-dy/
New Durian Cinema: www.newduriancinema.com/2020/05/straddling-two-realms-interview-with.html
Belgrade Art Sudio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8n4XCuFe44
http://belgradeartstudio.com/interview-jean-claire-dy-belgrade-art-studio-online-residency/