. Conversations at the Edge (CATE)

Special Preview: Marvin J. Taylor interviewed for Video Data Bank

Marvin J. Taylor, Director of Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University sat down with Conversations at the Edge’s program assistant George William Price to talk about his thoughts on the emotional archive, the ethics of custodianship, and the cultural scene of 1980’s Downtown New York City. This interview will be released as part of Video […]

On Mati Diop

For the final installment of our SAIC student writing series, Natalia De Orellana examines the boundaries between documentary and fiction in Mati Diop’s A Thousand Suns. She suggests that Diop creates a world where imagination and reality intermingle. Even as tougher immigration laws are proposed by European leaders–jeopardizing the long-gone fantasy of free movement–immigration has remained one of the principal worldwide […]

Special Preview: John Smith interviewed for Video Data Bank

A special preview of John Smith’s interview for Video Data Bank’s (VDB) ever growing On Art and Artists Collection, due for release late Spring 2015. In this interview excerpt Smith discusses, with VDB’s director Abina Manning, his film Shepherd’s Delight a film largely concerned with how context determines the reading of information. The Jarman Award winning artist presented his […]

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 […]

An Interview with Andrew Lampert

Andrew Lampert sits down with SAIC graduate student Elizabeth Metcalfe to talk about his interest in archiving, current inspirations, and his unique approach to improvisation. Lampert joined CATE on October 9th 2014 and turned his attention to the Gene Siskel Film Center in a site-specific performance created especially for the evening. The performance was accompanied […]

On “The X-Ray of Civilization…”

I first encountered the work of David Wojnarowicz a few years ago whilst interning for the New York City based arts organization Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). I had been asked to research his expansive practice for an upcoming panel discussion David Wojnarowicz: Motion Rhythms and was instructed that I would need to visit Fales Library […]

Nov 6 – The X-Ray of Civilization: Films by Tom Rubnitz, David Wojnarowicz, and Tommy Turner

Thursday, November 6th | Introduced by Marvin J. Taylor, Director of Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University and founder of the Downtown collection The Culture Wars and devastation of the AIDS epidemic contributed to a cultural scene in 1980s New York that crackled with tension and ached with sadness. Against this background, artists Tom Rubnitz, […]