The video curator, producer, director and artist runs a multidisciplinary platform called Hervisions. It's main focus is promoting femme-focused digital art—moving image, performance, music and various forms of new media—through events, commissions and online distribution. "There wasn't any kind of agenda to what I was doing," Jabbar says about what drew her to this format in the first place. "It felt like I was on the right path. I just kept getting these crazy signs."

After ending a seven year relationship and quitting her job at a big, London-based production company, Jabbar decided to go to Los Angeles on a 'spiritual journey'. Six months later, she'd made a lot of new contacts and decided to do the first Hervisions event there. But, since her savings account was dwindling and her visa was expiring, she had to return to London. As she sat at the airport, ready to board her flight, a voice blared through the speakers announcing that Jabbar's flight was overbooked and there was a $1000 ticket voucher in it for anyone who wanted to give up their seat.

Jabbar immediately decided to stay another night, and take the opportunity to return and set up the first Hervisions event that same year. "I think I could just probably have stayed one or two more nights anyway because I was right up to the limit of my visa, so this was a sign that I have to come back. It was on that ticket that I went back and did the first Hervisions."

"I felt very compromised a lot of the time because the industry, from a commercial point of view, doesn't really embrace experimentation," Jabbar says, continuing that she preferred to work with different formats, like full green screen shoots that were heavy on the post-production, as well as hand drawn animation onto exposed 35mm film. "I think there's always a question of authenticity when you're trying to do something, where you're trying to justify it to yourself but then you're also trying to justify it to a client. It's a very different thing."

While directing music videos, fashion films and commercial commissions, Jabber realized much of the work she followed was created by female and femme short film directors, a realization born out of the organic evolution of her taste as an artist. "The traditional film industry is quite difficult for women to break into. But animation and short form moving image is something where women can more easily take control over the whole production process, not just be part of a creative team as you do with a normal film." After working in the commercial sector for almost seven years, Jabbar felt creatively stifled and in desperate need of a change. It was then, in early 2016, that she left Partizan, headed to Los Angeles and would eventually host the first Hervisions event by the end of the year.

Hervisions started out as an event of screenings, music and discussions featuring over 60 artists—including Danielle Levitt, Hannah Lux Davies, Kytten Janae, Shantell Martin and others—on the rooftop of The Standard Hotel. Jabbar says it felt good working for herself after many years of doing the same for clients. "With directing, especially when you're repped by a company, you just end up pitching all the time," she says. "There are all these ideas that you're trying to put together, and all this energy of pitching, and things that you never make. I found that really disheartening. I just needed to make something."

The first Hervisions was a huge success. It led to a second event in Los Angeles before Jabbar brought it home. The London edition resulted in an offer to become resident curator for LUX Moving Image, an international not-for-profit arts agency supporting artists with funding, distribution, exhibition, publishing, education and research. "It was an incredible opportunity," she says. "They're very well-respected. It was amazing to get this kind of validation for what I was doing. "

Meanwhile, Jabbar spent her residency addressing topics at the intersection of art, technology and culture. She did a lecture performance on the value of biotechnologically-advanced utopias. The talk featured a live-streamed conversation with transhumanist designer Natasha Vita-More about a prosthetic body, which she designed for humans to use after they reached the singularity and uploaded their minds to computers. Gretchen Andrew also took part in an event hosted by Jabbar, where the Los Angeles-based painter and video artist used search engine manipulation to insert her paintings into unrelated Google image search results, reflecting how the internet has grown to favor what Jabbar describes as "companies over communities and products over people". Andrew's work shows up for keywords like 'powerful person', 'made for women', and 'Frieze Los Angeles'.

It follows a series of exchanges between characters named 'OUTPUT' and 'INPUT', who exist in an imaginary online space. The audience follows how they chat through DMs, arrange a date at an e-restaurant and eventually eat emojis for dinner. The performance comments on how we navigate contemporary relationships in a digital world through online and offline language.

"I think I never really labeled myself a curator," says Jabbar about the new role she'd taken on during her LUX residency. "I've got this label but what does that label mean? I'm always trying to live outside of these boxes and I think nowadays people are more understanding of that. I feel like before you always had to be, 'what is it that you actually do, what is that one thing that you do?' When I was directing full-time, more or less, I was really frustrated by that because it's just very one-dimensional."

The films explored the themes of estrangement, queerness, femininity, and trans-identity uniquely with the use of humor and the absurd, while Collins created uncanny abstractions of familiar entertainment tropes, while remaining honest and intimate with the audiences. "I think for me it just comes down to my personal taste," Jabbar says in reply to the question of how she so masterfully manages to bring subculture and popular culture together in her events and productions. "[They're] things that I feel naturally drawn to. I love really weird, edgy things, and I love pop culture and the mainstream as well. I think presentation is really important. It's all about making things accessible."

Standing at the back of the venue watching over the latest Hervisions event, Jabbar made sure everything went according to plan. As the night wrapped up, people poured over to say 'hello', each greeting with her big smile, even though Jabbar confesses she's naturally quite introverted. "People think there is such a contrast because I'm so chatty, or I am sociable but that's not me, that's me being that person. I just go into this mode of, 'this is what people expect from me', and I act accordingly."

With this year of intense curation coming to an end, Jabbar wants to shift her focus and do more hands-on work. She recently shot a 16mm film about the five stages of grief—a mood piece with dance and no dialogue. It will be released in two parts with a score by her good friend Harriet Pittard, who works under the artist name Zoeee and runs a femme-focussed record label called Insecure. The film also features French-British actress Poppy Corby-Tuech. "It's funny because I've known Poppy for so long. When I was starting out and doing stuff, I was like, 'Come, Poppy, come and be in this little fashion film', or some other little video—anything that I was going to shoot. So she was in a few bits but through that she was really inspired to get into acting. Now she's in Hollywood blockbusters."

Jabbar's vision for the next year is to make more art herself and to continue commissioning and curating under Hervisions. "I want to make a website and turn it into more of a go-to agency for supporting female and non-binary artists that work in digital and new media art," Jabbar adds while the moody 4 p.m. darkness descends on the city outside. "Besides Hervisions, I want to grow my own art practice as well, and make stuff only for the pleasure of making stuff; explore a subject as opposed to exploring a brief that sits with a client. Again, coming back to the feeling of being able to justify what I'm doing, which is the most important to me."

Written by Andrea Kelemen