Known for performances that transform films into stunning sculptures of light, New York-based artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder return to Chicago with their latest live work. The piece unites the Gene Siskel Film Center’s two theaters by cycling the reels of one feature-length film through each of its four 35mm projectors. The artists introduce glassware and other diffracting media to bend, scatter, distort, and redefine the film’s image. Joined by Chicago-based musician Brian Case, who builds darkly ambient soundscapes from stuttered tape loops and layered lock grooves, the three guide the audience between the two spaces to produce a spectral montage in three dimensions.
Presented in collaboration with Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
2017, USA, live performance, ca 60 min + discussion
Sandra Gibson, Luis Recoder, and Brian Case in person
Collaborators since 2000, Sandra Gibson (b. Portland, Oregon) and Luis Recoder (b. San Francisco, California) unite the rich traditions of the experimental film, particularly its structuralist and materialist strands, and the multimodal sensibility of expanded cinema that emerged in the 1960s. Their body of work explores this interstice between avant-garde film practice and the incorporation of moving images and time-based media into the museum and art gallery. Based in New York, Gibson and Recoder have exhibited and performed internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Toronto International Film Festival; Tate Modern in London; Viennale, Vienna; International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands; Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, South Korea; Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan.
Brian Case (b. St. Louis, MO) is an artist and musician based in Chicago. He has been involved with the groups 90 Day Men, The Ponys, and the Disappears. His most recent band, FACS, uses minimalism and space to create abstract and modern art rock. His solo efforts (Tense Nature, 2016 and Spirit Design, 2017) range from ambient compositions of rhythm and space to hypnotic beat-driven tracks.