. Conversations at the Edge (CATE)

March 12 – Beatrice Gibson: Two Sisters – POSTPONED

Beatrice Gibson in person In response to the CDC’s guidance on COVID-19, the 30th annual Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, has been postponed. Beatrice Gibson: Two Sisters has been cancelled and will be rescheduled at a later date. Incorporating experimental music, poetry, and improvisation, the award-winning films of London-based artist Beatrice Gibson are […]

Feb 27 – Linda Mary Montano: Laughing, Crying, Living Art

Linda Mary Montano in person Linda Mary Montano is renowned for videos and endurance-based performances that dissolve the boundaries between art and life. In works like Art/Life One Year Performance 1983–1984, a collaboration with Tehching Hsieh, she spent a year bound to the artist by an eight-foot rope; in 14 Years of Living Art (1984–98), she wore monochromatic clothing, […]

Feb 22 – South by Southeast

Curator Greg de Cuir Jr. in person While the countries in southern and eastern Europe share common histories and cultures, they have alternately been classified as Balkan and Mediterranean, as capitalist and socialist, as Western and non-Western, and as European and non-European. South by Southeast convenes a wide range of artistic works, many of which […]

Spring 2020 Season Announcement

We’re pleased to announce the Spring 2020 season of Conversations at the Edge! We have a spectacular program lined up, including appearances by media artists  Vaginal Davis (Feb 6); Lori Felker (Feb 13); Linda Mary Montano (Feb 27); Mariah Garnett (March 5); Beatrice Gibson (March 12); Ian Cheng (March 24), and Wong Ping (April 9), […]

On Louis Henderson

Tomorrow English filmmaker Louis Henderson will join us for his first Chicago appearance!   Video Data Bank‘s Lindsay Bosch blogs about Henderson’s references to the Internet and computing in his complex meditations on neo-colonalism and contemporary Ghana.   Most of video art I watch, I watch on my laptop.  I dream of creating a perfect screening space—uninterrupted hours, big […]

October 8- Louis Henderson: Melts Into Air

Thursday, October 8 | Paris-based filmmaker Louis Henderson in person! In his first Chicago appearance, award-winning director Louis Henderson presents a pair of films on the networked links between colonialism, computing, and capitalism in contemporary Ghana. In Lettres du Voyant (2013), a series of mysterious letters describe the practice of “Sakawa”—e-scams fortified by Western African religious rituals—and the possibilities […]

Nov 13 – Mati Diop: A Thousand Suns

Thursday, November 13th | Mati Diop in person! Known for dreamlike shorts that experiment with the boundaries between documentary and fiction, award-winning French filmmaker Mati Diop mined her own history for A Thousand Suns. The film explores the public and private legacies of the seminal Senegalese film Touki Bouki (1972), directed by her uncle Djibril Diop Mambéty. She focuses […]

On John Smith…

It seems apt this week that Chicago is experiencing such a torrent of rather British-like weather, as we prepare to welcome the legendary John Smith to Conversations at the Edge (CATE). This week is a very special event due to the fact Smith was the first artist to present at CATE in 2001. We are […]

October 16 – An Evening with John Smith

Thursday, October 16th | John Smith in person! In his playful and thought-provoking short films and videos, UK filmmaker John Smith explores the language of cinema and reflects on the image’s role in politics, war, and the global economy. The 2013 Jarman Award winner presents a selection from across his 40-year career, including the seminal The Girl Chewing […]

On Carlos Motta…

This week SAIC graduate student Charles Rice writes about how he has drawn inspiration from Carlos Motta’s work in order to develop a practice informed by abandonment, autobiography and memory. My own artistic practice is centered on my own (queer) body and how I may establish a narrative that acknowledges my own lived histories. I […]

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