. Conversations at the Edge (CATE)

Deborah Stratman: Last Things

Posted by | otaper | Posted on | March 30, 2023

Thursday, March 30, 6:00 and 8:30 p.m.

An outcropping of rocks with a bright light shining from them.

Deborah Stratman, Last Things 2023, Courtesy of the artist

“Fuses the heart of a poet with the mind of a scientist.” – Chris Stults, ArtForum

Award-winning filmmaker and School of the Art Institute of Chicago alum Deborah Stratman’s (BFA 1990) latest film is a profound exploration of the past and future of Earth through one of its most elemental materials—rocks. Meditating on our planet’s dramatic physical and biochemical evolution, Stratman weaves together sci-fi and sci-fact to imagine a time where life endures but humans have disappeared. Featuring a breathtaking array of sources, including J.-H  Rosny’s turn-of-the-century speculative fictions about rock-like organisms, interviews with renowned geologist and environmental activist Marcia Bjørnerud, revelatory micro photography, and earthly observation, LAST THINGS asks us to ponder our place in this cosmic history and among the innumerable life forms our planet has produced. Stratman will introduce the 6:00 p.m. screening. Afterward, she will be  joined by her research collaborator, the writer Sukhdev Sandhu, to discuss the ideas and questions that informed the project.

Presented in partnership with the 33rd Onion City Experimental Film Festival as the festival’s official opening night screening. The Onion City Experimental Film Festival is a production of Chicago Filmmakers. The festival runs from March 30 to April 5. 

2023, USA, 50 minutes plus discussion
Format: 16mm on digital
In French and English with English subtitles

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ABOUT

Deborah Stratman makes films and artworks that question power, control, and belief, considering how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. She regards sound as the ultimate multi-tool and time to be supernatural. Recent projects have addressed freedom, surveillance, broadcast, sinkholes, comets, raptors, orthoptera, levitation, exodus, evolution, sisterhood, and faith.  Stratman’s work has been exhibited and awarded internationally for the past three decades. She lives in Chicago where she teaches at the University of Illinois.

Sukhdev Sandhu is the author of London Calling: How Black and South Asian Writers Imagined A City (HarperCollins), I’ll Get My Coat (Book Works), Night Haunts (Verso), and Other Musics (MoMA). His writings—on documentary and international film, experimental music, and migrant aesthetics—have appeared in journals such as Film Comment, Frieze, Artforum, Art in America, Wire, 4 Columns, The Guardian, and Süddeutsche Zeitung. He is an associate professor at New York University where he also directs the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture.

Category: 2023
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