Thursday, February 20, 2003, 8pm
Zoe Beloff in person!
Investigating the relationship between imagination and moving image technology, internationally acclaimed media artist Zoe Beloff brings us two works. The CD-ROM Beyond operates in a playful spirit of philosophical inquiry exploring the paradoxes of technology, desire and the paranormal. An interactive work, it allows the viewer to explore a mental geography, in which the viewer travels through time and space encountering Beloff’s virtual alter-ego who, as a medium that “interfaces” between the living and the dead, transmits “movies” that record her impressions. Shadow Land, or Light From the Other Side is a stereoscopic 16mm film for which both the title and the narrative are taken from the 1897 autobiography of Elizabeth d’Espérance, a materializing medium who could produce full body apparitions. The film shows how one might think of a medium as a kind of “mental projector” and the phantoms as representations of her psychic reality. Visually, it explores the origins of what we think of as virtual. Co-presented with Chicago Filmmakers and the University of Chicago (KJ Mohr). 1997—2000, Zoe Beloff, USA, ca. 75 min, CD-ROM & 16mm.