Oct 30 – Anda Korsts’s Video Metropolis
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 27, 2014
Thursday, October 30th | Followed by a roundtable with documentary filmmaker Judy Hoffman, Media Burn Archive Founder Tom Weinberg, and Executive Director Sara Chapman
Still from Video Letter to Barbara London (Anda Korsts, 1982). Courtesy of Media Burn Archive.
In the 1970s, Chicago journalist and artist Anda Korsts helped pioneer video as a radical tool for art and activism. A key figure in the guerrilla television movement, she worked on a series of media exposés as part of the national video collective Top Value Television (TVTV) and founded Videopolis, a Chicago organization that put video in the hands of everyday people. She also produced hundreds of tapes, many in collaboration with makers around the country, including a groundbreaking television series called It’s a Living, inspired by Studs Terkel’s Working. Filmmaker Judy Hoffman, Media Burn Archive founder Tom Weinberg, and Executive Director Sara Chapman survey Korsts’s prolific career and discuss her legacy today.
Presented in collaboration with Media Burn Independent Video Archive.
1972–82, USA, multiple formats, ca 60 min + discussion
Anda Korsts (1942, Riga, Latvia–1991, Chicago) was a journalist, artist, and video pioneer based in Chicago. Born to Latvians fleeing the Soviets during World War II, her childhood was spent as a refugee throughout Eastern Europe before the family immigrated to the United States in 1950. She worked as a model and radio reporter, covering the City Hall beat for WBBM, before discovering her life’s passion: portable videotape. Seeing in this new technology the potential to open up the television airwaves to the public, Korsts and a few dozen like-minded makers from around the country formed the video collective TVTV to record the behind-the-scenes politics at the 1972 Democratic and Republican national conventions. The result was the first independently produced program to ever air on US television. In Chicago, Korsts founded Videopolis, a collective focused on expanding video production, particularly by women and minorities. The organization also created an archive of the city’s people and events, including Chicago’s vibrant 1970s Lincoln Avenue storefront theatre scene, and produced several projects that combined video with established forms of art like theater and writing. Her body of work is preserved at Media Burn Independent Video Archive.
Tags: 2014 > Chicago > Early Video Art > Experimental Documentary > Midwest > Political > Retrospective > U.S.
On Cao Fei…
Posted by | George William Price | Posted on | October 22, 2014
SAIC Art History student Ke Wang speaks to Cao Fei’s unique depiction of China—a country undergoing significant cultural change. Cao Fei’s new film Haze and Fog screens at Conversations at the Edge tomorrow, October 23rd, at 6pm.
Cao Fei in Venice
Cao Fei’s works are based on the social environment of three major cities in Guangdong, China, known as Zhu Sanjiao, or Pearl River Delta. Guangdong is the epitome of a developing country where a cities’ economy and its population’s life-style has dramatically shifted within the past decade. Even though I have lived in Guangdong, I still find myself in a position of an outsider when I look at Fei’s work. Those familiar subjects were transformed through her work into something extraordinarily bizarre and excitingly refreshing. Fei’s unique depiction of a transforming contemporary Chinese society utilizes private narrative that she collages with social commentary, pop culture, surrealist element and documentary convention.
Unlike many of other internationally well-known Chinese contemporary artists such as Cai Guoqiang, Xu Bing, or Gu Wenda, who use easily recognizable cultural symbols in their works, Fei considers her work to be more confrontational and critically aware of current Chinese culture. She states:
“The 80s generation are way less critical (compared with Cai and Xu’s generation), their works are flat and abstract. They no longer care about collective narratives, but tend to immerse themselves murmuring within their own little intimate space. I am more drawn to the 70s generation, my works are not simply being critical, but also entertaining. It is a combination of reality and fantasy, looking at real life on the side but never outside of it.”
Oct 23 – Cao Fei: Haze and Fog
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 20, 2014
Thursday, October 23rd | Cao Fei in person!
Still from Haze and Fog (Cao Fei, 2013). Courtesy of the artist.
Chinese artist Cao Fei mixes fantasy, documentary, and virtual reality to reflect on the ways China’s rapidly changing economy has transformed the everyday lives and imaginations of its citizens. Her latest film, Haze and Fog (2013) is a darkly humorous reinterpretation of the zombie film set in Beijing. Here the undead are real estate agents, nouveau riche businessmen, security guards, and manicurists seeking contact in an increasingly individualized, materialistic, and alienating society. Cao accompanies the film with her haunting 2007 short i.Mirror–recorded entirely in the virtual world of Second Life–and a discussion of her practice to date.
2007–13, China, multiple formats, ca 80 min + discussion In Mandarin with English subtitles
Cao Fei (b. 1978, Guangzhou, China) is acknowledged as one of the key artists of a new generation emerging from Mainland China. She mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes that are occurring in Chinese society today. Her work has exhibited all over the world, including the Venice Biennale; Shanghai Biennale; Yokohama Triennale; Istanbul Biennale; Guggenheim Museum, New York; the International Center of Photography, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; P.S.1, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Musee d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris; and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo among many others. She was named the Best Young Artist by the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2006 and was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2010. She served on the selection committee for the curatorship of the 8th Berlin Biennale.
On John Smith…
Posted by | George William Price | Posted on | October 15, 2014
It seems apt this week that Chicago is experiencing such a torrent of rather British-like weather, as we prepare to welcome the legendary John Smith to Conversations at the Edge (CATE). This week is a very special event due to the fact Smith was the first artist to present at CATE in 2001. We are delighted to welcome him back to the Gene Siskel Film Center and Chicago. I would like to take this opportunity to thank one of our cosponsors Video Data Bank (VDB) for their continued support in bringing world class moving-image practitioners to Chicago. VDB has distributed much of Smith’s work for many years and I’m delighted to publish the following essay written by Lindsay Bosch, VDB’s Development & Marketing Manager (and avid John Smith fan.)
Still from Dad’s Stick (John Smith, 2012). Courtesy of the artist.
I sometimes have the privilege of talking to classes and student groups about the history of the Video Data Bank. The compilation I regularly show includes John Smith’s The Girl Chewing Gum. The work shows up in the lecture somewhere between the invention of the Portapak and the rise of installation art. I can always rest assured that no matter who has dozed off or is checking their phone, I will get a laugh and reel the group back in with this classic work. A few years ago, I showed The Girl Chewing Gum, along with John Smith’s Slow Glass and Associations to my parents at Christmas. They had asked me to give them a better explanation of “What it is I do.” which leads inevitably to the question: “What is video art?” (They loved the works, and have since stopped telling people that I am a librarian.)
Why do we turn to Smith in these introductory situations? I’m continually drawn to Smith’s film and video work because it offers a certain core accessibility. Smith’s pieces are a video art gateway drug—translating the world of artists’ moving image to the uninitiated. One need not be among an art school in-crowd to “get it,” to feel like Smith’s work is addressing you. Smith’s videos posit the existence of the massive audience that I want for video art; an audience encompassing young students, fans of popular cinema, my parents (and yours too!). Much of Smith’s work offers a certain viewing pleasure, dare I say it, even entertainment—that is often deliberately withheld in video art. This is not to say Smith’s work is ever simplistic. Instead, he savvily speaks of complexity in readily available languages: those of humor, of quick Brit wit, of direct and personal voice-over, and recognizable cinematic tropes.
Tags: 2014 > Essay > Europe > Experimental > Monographic Shows > Political > Retrospective > Video Data Bank
October 16 – An Evening with John Smith
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 13, 2014
Thursday, October 16th | John Smith in person!
Still from Dad’s Stick (John Smith, 2012). Courtesy of the artist.
In his playful and thought-provoking short films and videos, UK filmmaker John Smith explores the language of cinema and reflects on the image’s role in politics, war, and the global economy. The 2013 Jarman Award winner presents a selection from across his 40-year career, including the seminal The Girl Chewing Gum (1976), an absurdist fantasy applied to the banal setting of a busy London street; Throwing Stones (2004), a personal and political meditation on ongoing conflicts in the Middle East; Dad’s Stick (2012), a surprising personal history; and the Chicago premiere of Dark Light (2014), among others.
Presented in collaboration with the Video Data Bank, Northwestern University’s Department of Art Theory and Practice, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, and the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center. Smith presents his work at the Block Museum of Art on Wednesday, October 15 and at the Logan Center for the Arts on Friday, October 17.
1976–2014, UK/Cyprus/Switzerland, multiple formats, ca 76 min + discussion
Since 1972, John Smith (b. 1952, London, UK) has made more than 50 film, video, and installation works which have shown in cinemas, art galleries, and on television around the world. He has been the subject of retrospectives at film festivals in Oberhausen, Germany; Tampere, Finland; St. Petersburg, Russia; La Rochelle, France; Mexico City; Uppsala, Sweden; Cork, Ireland; Regensburg, Germany; Karlstad, Sweden; Winterthur, Switzerland; Bristol, UK; and Glasgow, Scotland. Smith has had solo exhibitions at Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2013); Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate (2012); Weserburg Museum for Modern Art, Bremen (2012); Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden (2011); and PEER Gallery, London (2011). He teaches at the University of East London where he is Professor of Fine Art. In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists, and in 2013 he was the winner of Film London’s Jarman Award. His work is held in numerous collections including Arts Council England, Tate Gallery, Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Ferens Art Gallery, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. He lives and works in London.
An Interview with Jonathan Monaghan
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 10, 2014
During his time in Chicago Jonathan Monaghan sat down with Kayla Lewis, a second year Art & Technology MFA candidate here at SAIC, to speak about his surreal explorations of power, value, and the role of technology.
Monaghan presented a series of his works entitles Alien Fanfare at CATE September 18th 2014. He creates sculpture and animated video installations that challenge the boundaries between the real, imagined, and virtual. Receiving his BFA from the New York Institute of Technology in 2008 and his MFA from the University of Maryland in 2011, Monaghan currently lives and works in Washington, D.C.
Jonathan Monaghan
Kayla Lewis: Can you give a summary of where you’re from and how your upbringing or places you’ve lived have impacted your work?
Jonathan Monaghan: I was born and raised in Rockaway Beach, Queens. It was a pretty Irish enclave, fairly poor, and it was desolate during the winter. The Ramones wrote a song about it. I went to a Catholic School, so there is that connection to some of the religious iconography I use. But beyond that, in my short lifetime I saw Manhattan go from being a prison for the poor to a fortress for the rich. I identity with New York, and seeing its changes, influences the way in which I deal with wealth and power in my work.
KL: Which artists, writers, designers, and directors do you look to for inspiration?
JM: There is so many. I think I steal from Kubrick a lot; there is such a detailed sharpness to his cinematic compositions, which in a way creates this constant menacing sense that something is wrong. Likewise in Franz Kafka and Haruki Murakami, there is this surreal imagery interjected with the banalities of everyday life. I also steal from design magazines. I steal from Pixar. I steal from dead artists, like when Rembrandt paints something gold or furry, or when Zubaron makes a bound lamb seem like a god. I like the saturation in early Netherlandish painting, and I sometimes steal their drapery. Recently I’ve been enjoying the work and writing of Hito Steyerl.
Tags: 2014 > Art & Techonology > Consumerism > Hyperrealism > Jonathan Monaghan > Video Games
On Andrew Lampert…
Posted by | George William Price | Posted on | October 8, 2014
You lucky blog readers are in for another treat this week, with second year graduate Art History student Elizabeth Metcalfe’s musings on how Andrew Lampert as both a producer and a conservator questions, reconstructs and ultimately expands what we as an audience perceive the scope of Cinema to be.
Still from El Adios Largos Y Mas (Andrew Lampert, 2013). Courtesy of the artist.
The term curator derives from the Latin word cura, meaning “care.” As an artist, archivist, and Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives, Andrew Lampert’s practice fully embraces the role of caretaker. Often preserving fragile, outdated technological forms and placing them in contemporary contexts, Lampert encourages viewers to consider the ways in which our interactions with technology transform over time. Working as a type of archaeologist, Lampert discovers what is lost and forgotten—as in the case of the found Spanish language-dubbed print of Robert Altman’s 1973 film The Long Goodbye—and then reconstructs, reenacts, or repeats his discoveries in order to form new narratives.
As an art history student, the anachronistic themes within Lampert’s films appeal to my interest in a dynamic, living history. While an object can be preserved, its surrounding environment is constantly in flux, therefore altering the object’s relationship to history itself. In an age where obsolescent or outmoded technologies are romanticized, Lampert reveals the meaningful relationships that emerge when the past and present are conflated. By blurring the borders of film and performance, Lampert makes these interactions even more apparent. He contracts cinema rather than expanding it, emphasizing the social space that emerges between the projectionist, the flat screen and the active audience.
On October 9, Lampert will bring his “contracted cinema” to the Gene Siskel Film Center for Conversations at the Edge, giving viewers the unique opportunity to actively participate in his site-specific live media performances. I for one am so excited not only to see how Lampert discusses his relationship to the archive but also to experience how he performs that relationship. See you there!
Tags: 2014 > Experimental > Live Cinema > Monographic Shows > Performance > SAIC Student Writing > U.S.
October 9 – Andrew Lampert: Tables Turned
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 6, 2014
Thursday, October 9th | Andrew Lampert in person!
Still from El Adios Largos Y Mas (Andrew Lampert, 2013). Courtesy of the artist.
Artist, archivist, and curator Andrew Lampert is known for his mischievous live media performances and hilarious short films and videos, many of which cheekily turn “cinema” on its head. Lampert uses improvisation, unusual projector placement, and sets of game-like instructions to explore (and exploit) the dynamic relationships between projector, projectionist, audience, and screen. For CATE, Lampert turns his attention to the Gene Siskel Film Center in a site-specific performance created especially for the evening. The performance is accompanied by a series of Lampert’s shorts, including El Adios Largos (2013), an inspired reconstruction of Robert Altman’s 1973 feature The Long Goodbye from imperfect source material.
2013–14, USA/Mexico, multiple formats + live performance, ca 70 min + discussion
Andrew Lampert (b. 1976, St. Louis, Missouri) creates moving images, photographs, and live performances. He has exhibited widely at institutions and festivals including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; MoMA/PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Oberhausen International Short Film Festival; Vienalle (Vienna International Film Festival); Getty Museum, Los Angeles; British Film Institute, London; International Rotterdam Film Festival; Toronto International Film Festival; and The New York Film Festival. Lampert is Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives in New York City, a Visiting Fellow at the New School for Social Research, and he recently edited the book The George Kuchar Reader (Primary Information, 2014). Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) in New York City distributes many of his works.
On Carlos Motta…
Posted by | George William Price | Posted on | October 1, 2014
This week SAIC graduate student Charles Rice writes about how he has drawn inspiration from Carlos Motta’s work in order to develop a practice informed by abandonment, autobiography and memory.
Still from Nefandus (Carlos Motta, 2013). Courtesy of the artist.
My own artistic practice is centered on my own (queer) body and how I may establish a narrative that acknowledges my own lived histories. I am interested in how one can relate the epistemological significance of pre-Hispanic culture to that of contemporary Queer culture—a culture that, although it may not trace its heritage to any specific location, is nonetheless operating as a diaspora within a postcolonial framework. How can one create a personal and collective identity through the transgression of an imposed “colonial” language?
Carlos Motta’s practice directly engages with South America’s visual and vernacular landscape in order to establish counter narratives that recognize those that are suppressed. Motta employs the use of quotation and repetition as a method of reinforcing the suppressed individual’s absoluteness, allowing community members to reinforce their own (collective) self-esteem and worth. This use of self-quotation and self-reflexiveness can be seen in other politically oppositional and combative movements, including the gay rights movement and feminist movement, as embodied by the slogan “The personal is political.”
It is this political gesture found within Motta’s body of work that has made me so excited to see The Nefandus Trilogy at CATE tomorrow. Motta’s concepts of how memories become embedded into a cultural and physical landscape fascinate me. His work allows for these hidden memories to come forward as an act of self-knowing emergence. I believe that this act is an important political statement.
Charles Rice is a second year MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago working in the Performance Department. Charles was born and raised in the northern suburbs of Chicago. He graduated from Arizona State University in 2011 with a BFA and was awarded JurorsFirst Choice Award in undergraduate juried exhibition for video To My Mom and Dad. Charles has participated in exhibitions at several spaces across Arizona and Illinois, including: Sullivan Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Harry Wood Gallery, and Gallery 100.
Tags: 2014 > Artist's Film > Essay > Experimental Documentary > Political > SAIC Student Writing > South America
October 2 – Carlos Motta: The Nefandus Trilogy
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 29, 2014
Thursday, October 2nd | Carlos Motta in person!
Still from Nefandus (Carlos Motta, 2013). Courtesy of the artist.
Carlos Motta’s practice draws upon various political histories in an attempt to articulate counter narratives that recognize suppressed histories, communities, and identities. Composed of the three films Nefandus, Shipwreck (Naufragios) and The Defeated (La visión de los vencidos) his 2013 Nefandus Trilogy is a haunting examination of pre-Hispanic homoeroticism and its brutal stigmatization during Europe’s colonization of the Americas. Motta accompanies the trilogy with excerpts from his ongoing Democracy Cycle, including We Who Feel Differently (2011), a database documentary that addresses critical issues of contemporary queer culture, and Gender Talents (in-progress), a multiplatform documentary on international trans and intersex activism.
2011–14, Colombia/Guatemala/India/Norway/Portugal/South Korea/ USA, multiple formats, ca 60 min + discussion
In English, Spanish, Kogi, Norwegian, and Korean with English subtitles
Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) work has been presented internationally in venues such as Tate Modern, London; New Museum, Guggenheim Museum, and MoMA/PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia; Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany; and Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City. Motta is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2006), was named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow (2008), and was short-listed for the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Prize (2014). He is a member of faculty at both Parsons the New School of Design and the School of Visual Arts.
Tags: 2014 > Activism > Americas > Artist's Film > Carlos Motta > Colonization > Homoeroticism > Monographic Shows > Political > Sexuality > South America
About
Conversations at the Edge is a weekly series of screenings, performances, and talks by groundbreaking media artists.
CATE is organized by SAIC's Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center and SAIC's Video Data Bank.
Programs take place at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State / Chicago, IL / 312.846.2600), unless otherwise noted.
