2019 – Conversations at the Edge Program Archive

That’s A Wrap! – Fall 2019

Thank you for joining us for our Fall 2019 season! See you in January 2020! […]

Curator Aily Nash in person Re:Working Labor curators Daniel Eisenberg and Ellen Rothenberg in person Organized in conjunction with the exhibition Re:Working Labor at SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries, Image Employment presents a selection of recent moving image works that investigate various modes of contemporary labor and production. Curated by Aily Nash and Andrew Norman Wilson, the program explores the […]

November 14 – Filipa César: Spell Reel

Filipa César in person The genre-bending work of Portuguese artist Filipa César takes up the legacies of European colonialism, focusing on moments and movements of resistance. In 2012, she began investigating a trove of footage documenting Guinea-Bissau’s war of independence from Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s. Long thought to be lost, these films mark […]

November 7 – An Evening With Hiwa K

Hiwa K in person Drawing from individual stories, political actions, and his own experience fleeing Iraq by foot in the late 1990s, the deeply moving and often darkly absurd films, performances, and installations of Iraqi-German artist Hiwa K explore our most pressing issues—displacement, war, and identity. In videos like Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) (2017) or A […]

October 31 – Shengze Zhu: Present.Perfect.

Shengze Zhu in person Award-winning filmmaker Shengze Zhu (MFA 2017) is celebrated for her incisive portraits of everyday life in China. Her latest film, Present.Perfect., spotlights the country’s explosive livestreaming phenomenon. Collaged from more than 800 hours of footage from “anchors” who share their lives with a virtual community, the film eschews the medium’s stars to […]

October 24 – An Evening With Rachel Rossin

Rachel Rossin in person Over the last four years, multidisciplinary artist Rachel Rossin has gained recognition for a series of astonishing exhibitions that blend oil painting, sculpture, and virtual reality. Rossin’s practice investigates the fluid boundary between physical and digital worlds, particularly the ways information and sensory experience are transfigured by each. In the 2015 […]

October 17 – Narcisa Hirsch: Contact Zones

Curator Federico Windhausen in person and Narcisa Hirsch via Skype A pivotal figure in Latin American experimental cinema, Narcisa Hirsch is renowned for her striking explorations of the body, agency, and desire. Emigrating from Germany to Argentina in the 1920s, Hirsch first took up artistic practice through painting, then shifted to performances and happenings before […]

October 10 – Zach Blas: Obedient x3

Zach Blas in person Wry and provocative, the work of multidisciplinary artist Zach Blas (Post-Bac 2006) examines technologies of social control through the lens of queer and feminist politics. In recent years, his projects have addressed biometric capture, microdosing, the hegemony of the Internet, and sex toys. Blas presents a suite of these projects, including the Chicago premiere of Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 (2018). Using Derek Jarman’s […]

October 3 – New Films from the GLAS Animation Festival

GLAS Animation Festival director Jeanette Bonds in person Each year, the GLAS Animation Festival showcases a thrillingly expansive range of films from around the globe. Founded in 2016 by animators Jeanette Bonds and Einar Baldvin, it has become a singular platform for art and industry alike, highlighting experimental and visionary threads across the spectrum. Bonds […]

September 26 – Selina Trepp: I Work With What I Have

Selina Trepp, Tomeka Reid, Jason Roebke, Dan Bitney in person Informed by ideas of improvisation, collaboration, and flux, Chicago-based artist Selina Trepp (BFA 1998) produces exuberant works from radically limited means. Since 2012, she has refrained from bringing new materials into her practice, instead recycling past artworks and remnants into each new project. Her animated […]