Thursday, March 15, 2007, 6pm Mary Ellen Bute, Color Rhapsody (1948). A pioneer of visual music and electronic art, Mary Ellen Bute produced over a dozen short abstract animations between the 1930s and the 1950s. Renowned for their brilliant color, elegant design, and sprightly, dance-like rhythms, Bute’s films are at once formally rigorous and exuberantly […]
Thursday, March 8, 2007, 6pm | Saul Levine in person! Saul Levine, New Left Note (1968-83). Image courtesy of the artist. “Saul Levine is the foremost dissenting filmmaker in America,” writes critic P. Adams Sitney. “With about thirty-five years of consistent production behind him, and no signs of fatigue, he can show us the shape […]
Thursday, March 1, 2007, 6pm Leighton Pierce in person! Since the 1980s, many of the films and videos of Iowa-based artist Leighton Pierce have painted a lush portrait of Midwestern life. Tonight’s program compiles his rich domestic observations-a gurgling, backyard fountain in Glass (1998); the repetitive clatter of children’s feet on the porch in The […]
Read More… from A Home-Made Optics: Films & Videos by Leighton Pierce
Thursday, February 22, 2007, 6pm Salla Tykkä in person! Disquieting and seductive, the work of Finnish photographer and filmmaker Salla Tykkä mines the edges of experience with the language of our personal and collective dreams. Tykkä’s dense symbolic landscapes re-imagine Hollywood conventions as dreamlike rites of passage fraught with danger and possibility: a shirtless young […]
Saturday, February 17, 2007, 2pm One of the most talked about films in the history of experimental cinema, Michael Snow’s three-hour La Région Centrale is an epic homage to the landscape tradition. Shot in remote Quebec with a specially designed machine capable of rotating the camera in all directions, the film traces spirals, twirls, and […]
Thursday, February 15, 2007,6pm Curator Jon Cates in person! Charismatic video pioneer Phil Morton influenced an entire generation of video and digital artists, founded SAIC’s Video Department, laid the groundwork for what has since become the Video Data Bank, and developed Copy-It-Right, an anti-copyright ethic that set the precedent for the current open-source movement. His […]
Read More… from Copy-It-Right! Selections from the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive
Friday, February 9, 2007, 6pm Michael Snow in person! Renowned for his innovative and revolutionary work in film, Michael Snow is also an accomplished musician and sound artist. He began playing jazz piano in the late 1940s and has worked with free improvisation-piano, voice, radio, microphones, andrecordings-since the 1960s. Tonight, Snow will present his latest […]
Thursday, February 8, 2007, 6pm Michael Snow in person! Michael Snow is one of the true giants of the avant-garde. His films, photography, music, painting, and sculpture, take up life and its representation, revolutionizing and revitalizing each medium along the way. Tonight, Snow presents two of his best-known works, including the perpetual motion film « […]
Thursday, February 1, 2007, 6pm Little more than a decade-and-a-half old, Chinese media art is vigorously energizing the country’s rich aesthetic traditions, ushering in new forms of art-making to express China’s rapid social, economic, and political changes. Curated by Li Zhenhua, this program surveys the field with works from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, including 1201 […]
Thursday, December 7, 2006, 6pm Janie Geiser is at the forefront of today’s experimental animators. Drawing on her renowned work in puppet-theater, her films use the miniaturized scale of paper cutouts, dollhouses, and antique toys to create mysterious, multilayered worlds of cryptic messages, enigmatic women, and half-forgotten dreams. Tonight, she presents an overview of her […]