Past Programs – Page 27 – Conversations at the Edge Program Archive

Mar 12 & 14 – Encounters: Experimental Film and Animation from Croatia

Thursday, March 12th & Saturday, March 14th | Introduced by Alexander Stewart, filmmaker, curator, and Assistant Professor at DePaul University Zagreb, Croatia has long been an important hub for animation, experimental film, and avant-garde culture. Informed by unique cultural, intellectual, and political legacies, filmmakers there have produced decades of strong, challenging, and fascinating experimental work. Filmmaker Alexander […]

On John Gerrard

This week in our SAIC Student Writing series Matthew Coleman (MA Art History 2015) blogs on John Gerrard’s large-scale digital works. He looks at the way Gerrard reveals the artificial natures of linear time and knowledge progression by bringing into question the provisional structures of power and networks of energy that facilitate our everyday existence. John […]

Mar 5 – John Gerrard: Networks and Power

Thursday, March 5th | John Gerrard in person! The works of John Gerrard (MFA 2000) often take shape as large-scale projections of meticulously crafted virtual worlds, astonishing in their scope and execution. Driven by sophisticated military modeling and video game software, they recreate the outposts of human industry—a 19th-century paper mill in Norway, mysterious roadways along China’s […]

On Rebecca Baron

I am delighted to welcome back Lindsay Bosch, Marketing & Development Manager of Video Data Bank, who this week writes on the lyrical work of Rebecca Baron. Founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement, the Video Data Bank is a leading resource in […]

Feb 26 – Rebecca Baron: Detour de Force

Thursday, February 26th | Rebecca Baron in person! Los Angeles–based filmmaker Rebecca Baron is known for provocative essay films exploring such far-ranging subjects as Britain’s Mass Observation movement, 19th-century Arctic exploration, and the role of recording technologies in shaping our understanding of the world around us. Her latest film,Detour de Force, introduces viewers to the incredible […]

On Robin Deacon

I am delighted that Conversations at the Edge will be opening with my fellow Englishman Robin Deacon‘s multimedia performance White Balance: A History of Video this Thursday, February 19th at the Gene Siskel Film Center. White Balance is a performance that draws on Deacon’s journalistic and documentary approaches to art making. Throughout the performance he engages with different […]

Feb 19 – Robin Deacon: White Balance: A History of Video

Thursday, February 19th | Robin Deacon in person! Acclaimed artist and filmmaker Robin Deacon presents a stirring performance on the history and aesthetics of video. The title White Balance refers to the process by which a video camera is adjusted to account for differences in light. For Deacon, this process also suggests video’s capability to convey […]

Spring 2015 Season

Happy 2015, it’s George, CATE’s program assistant here. Thanks for checking in with Conversations at the Edge blog. You’ll be glad you had as we have a fabulous lineup of international artists and scholars in our Spring 2015 season! Highlights include German born new media artist and theorist Marisa Olson whose projects have taken on […]

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 […]

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 […]