STEINA!
Posted by | Jessica Bardsley | Posted on | October 9, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 6:00 pm | Steina Vasulka in person! Live performance!
- Image from Violin Power (Steina, 1974-78). Courtesy the artist.
A major figure in the histories of video and electronic art, Steina Vasulka has continually expanded the possibilities of multimedia with her groundbreaking innovations. Trained as a classical violinist in Iceland, Steina turned to video after moving to New York City in the mid-1960s. Her distinctly musical experiments with the electronic signal, including her real-time performances and development of early video synthesizers, reverberate throughout historical and contemporary art practice. Steina’s recent projects continue this pioneering approach, as her dynamic environments of digitally manipulated visual and acoustic landscapes have been installed around the world. This evening, Steina presents a collection of both classic early pieces and newer works, discusses her interest in electronic media, and performs a stirring, not-to-be-missed interpretation of her seminal performance piece, Violin Power (1974-78/1992 – present). Steina Vasulka, 1970-2011, USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
STEINA VASULKA (b. 1940, Reykjavik, Iceland) is a major figure in the history of electronic and media art. She emigrated to the United States in 1965 after marrying Woody Vasulka. Together, they have significantly contributed to the aesthetic, theoretical, and institutional framework for electronic art, founding The Kitchen with Andreas Mannik in 1971, contributing to the development of the video art program at the Whitney Museum in the early 1970s, collaborating with Geoffry Schier to build one of the first real-time, computer-controlled video processors, and developing an open source, online archive from their personal papers at vasulka.org. Steina is the recipient of numerous awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Art Fellowship, an American Film Institute Maya Deren Award, and the Siemens Media Art Prize in Germany. Her work has been screened, installed or performed at festivals and arts institutions in the U.S. and internationally, including at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; The Kitchen, New York, NY; the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Media Festival S’Hertogenbosch, Netherlands; and the L’immagine Electronica Festival, Italy. She currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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LANDSCAPE AS ARCHIVE
Posted by | Jessica Bardsley | Posted on | October 2, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 6:00 pm | Filmmakers Bill Brown and Lee Anne Schmitt in person!
- Image from Bowers Cave (Lee Lynch and Lee Anne Schmitt, 2010). Image courtesy the artists.
In recent years, a number of artists have turned to the landscape itself–using everything from iPhone apps to walking tours–to examine the ways in which ideas, events, and cultures are recorded in the terrain. Curated by filmmaker and SAIC professor Thomas Comerford (Indian Boundary Line, 2010), this evening’s program investigates the notion of landscape as archive. Bill Brown’s distinctively narrated travelogue, Mountain State (2003), views historical markers across West Virginia (as well as the ghosts that haunt them) as indices of US westward expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lee Lynch’s and Lee Anne Schmitt’s Bower’s Cave (2010) explores the implications of the geographic proximity of a California landfill to a cave once containing Native American cultural objects. Sarah J. Christman’s Dear Bill Gates (2006) addresses not only how the mining industry has reshaped the landscape of Pennsylvania, but also how mines serve as literal archives for the cultural ephemera collected by the film’s namesake. Multiple directors, 2003-2010, USA, 16mm, ca. 60 min plus discussion.
BILL BROWN (b. 1969, Cleveland, OH) is a “nomadic” filmmaker, photographer, and author. He has produced films on the United States–Mexico border, North Dakota missile silos, the Trans-Canada Highway, among other places. His work has been exhibited throughout the world. He’s also the author of the travel zine Dream Whip and the book Saugus to the Sea (2001).
LEE ANNE SCHMITT (b. 1971, Cleveland, OH) is a writer and director of essay films and performances, work that exists in the juncture between fiction and documentary. Her film and video work has screened internationally, at venues that include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; SF MOMA, San Francisco, CA; The Cinema du Reel at the George Pompidou Center, Paris, France; Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY; and the Pacific Film Archives, San Francisco, CA. She is currently on faculty at CalArts.
LEE LYNCH (b.1980, Redding, CA) is an award winning filmmaker and conceptual artist whose feature length narrative and documentary films have shown nationally at such festivals as Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah; Tribeca Film Festival, New York, NY; AFI Fest, Los Angeles, CA; Full Frame Film Festival, Durham, NC; and more. He has shown internationally at The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Vienna Film Festival, Vienna, Austria; and the Marseille Documentary Film Festival, Marsaeille, France. He received his BFA from the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts, and his MFA from the University of Southern California.
SARAH J. CHRISTMAN (b. 1978, Philadelphia, PA) makes non-fiction films that examine the intersection between people, technology and the natural world. Her work has screened internationally, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI; and the San Francisco International Film Festival, San Francisco, CA, where “Dear Bill Gates” earned the New Visions Award. She is an Assistant Professor in the Film Department at Brooklyn College.
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LAURA PARNES’S BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Posted by | Jessica Bardsley | Posted on | September 25, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 6:00 pm | Laura Parnes in person!
- Image from Blood and Guts in High School (Laura Parnes, 2004-06). Courtesy the artist.
Laura Parnes’s bracingly inventive, stylized films and videos operate at the intersection of narrative film and video art. This evening, Parnes will present her acclaimed feature, Blood and Guts in High School (2004-06). Distilled from Kathy Acker’s subversive feminist novel of the same title, the film interweaves events surrounding the book’s publication — the Jonestown Massacre, Three Mile Island, the rise of Reagan Republicanism and the Moral Majority — with interludes from the short, violent life of its pre-teen protagonist, Janie Smith. Parnes will also screen episodes from her new web series, County Down (ongoing). Building on the darkly comic spirit of Blood and Guts, County Down is set in a lavish gated community where parents suddenly prey upon their children. Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. Laura Parnes, 2004-11, USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
Artist LAURA PARNES (b. 1968, Buffalo, New York) has screened and exhibited her work widely in the US and internationally, including Light Industry, New York, NY; Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; the Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand; the Institute for Contemporary Art /P.S. 1 Museum, New York, NY; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Galizia, Vigo, Spain; Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Lake Worth, FL; the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; and on PBS and Spanish Television. Her work has been featured in solo shows at Alma Enterprises, London; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles; Participant Inc, New York, NY; Deitch Projects, New York, NY; and in a two-person screening at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. She is currently a Faculty Lecturer in the graduate department at Yale University School.
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MATTHEW BUCKINGHAM: SITUATION LEADING TO A STORY
Posted by | Jessica Bardsley | Posted on | September 16, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 6:00 pm | Matthew Buckingham in person!
- Image from A MAN OF THE CROWD (Matthew Buckingham, 2003). Courtesy the artist.
Answering to the gaps and cracks in history, New York-based artist Matthew Buckingham weaves fact and fiction, past and present into elegant narratives and meditative essays. This evening’s program, culled from across Buckingham’s body of work, explores the ways that historical moments, figures, and places shape the tenor of daily life. Works include Amos Fortune Road (1996), which takes up the mystery of former slave Amos Fortune and a collection of historical markers in his name; Situation Leading to a Story (1999), which transforms four happened-upon home movies from the 1920s into an absorbing investigation of privacy and imperialism; and A Man of the Crowd (2003), which molds Edgar Allen Poe’s short tale to the contours of present-day Vienna; among others. Matthew Buckingham, 1996-2009, USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
MATTHEW BUCKINGHAM (b. 1963, Nevada, Iowa) utilizes a variety of media to question the role that social memory plays in contemporary life. His work has appeared in one-person and group exhibitions at ARC / Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France; Camden Arts Centre, London, England; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Hamburger Bahnhof National Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Germany; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Whitechapel, London, England; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. He was a recipient of the DAAD Artist in Berlin Fellowship, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, received a BA from the University of Iowa, an MFA from Bard College and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program.
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Matthew Buckingham at Murray Guy
Bomb Magazine interview with Matthew Buckingham
CONSUMING SPIRITS
Posted by | Jessica Bardsley | Posted on | September 7, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 6:00 pm | Special preview screening! Chris Sullivan in person!
- Image from Consuming Spirits (Chris Sullivan, 2009). Image courtesy the artist.
Chris Sullivan’s works are among “the most honest, potent, and thoughtful of all animated films.”–Chris Robinson, Unsung Heroes of Animation
Over a decade in the making, Consuming Spirits (2011) is the hypnotic and elegiac feature film by award-winning animator and SAIC faculty member, Chris Sullivan. Set in a dreary rustbelt town, the film follows late-night radio host Earl Gray; wilting violet Genny, who cares for her foul-mouthed, Alzheimer’s-stricken mother; and Genny’s sometime boyfriend Victor Blue, whose days teeter at the edge of sobriety. While driving home one evening, Genny hits a nun in full habit on the highway. The accident sets off a string of events that reveal a long and twisted history between Genny, Earl, and Victor, involving family dysfunction, foster care, and old wounds longing to heal. Sullivan’s intricate hand-drawn and cut-out animations telegraph his characters’ complicated emotions while also depicting the minute tragedies and triumphs that make up a life. Chris Sullivan, 2011, USA, 16mm on HDCAM, 125 min plus discussion.
CHRIS SULLIVAN (b. 1960, Pittsburgh, PA) is an animator and performance artist whose experimental narratives have screened in the U.S. and internationally at the MOMA, New York, NY; Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; Boston Art Museum, Boston, MA; Flaherty Film Seminar, NY; Black Maria 20th Anniversary Show, MOMA, New York, NY; Short Film Expo, Ottawa, Zagreb, and New York; “Animation Celebration,” Los Angeles, CA; and Black Maria Film and Video Festival, Ann Arbor MI. He has performed at a variety of venues including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Franklin Furnace, New York, NY; LACE, Los Angeles, CA; and Randolph Street, Chicago, IL. He is a recipient of numerous awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship; Bush Foundation Fellowship; Illinois Arts Council Fellowship; and an NEA Regional Fellowship. He is a Professor of Animation in the Film, Video, New Media and Animation department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Chris Sullivan interviewed by F News contributor Russell Gottwaldt
Chris Sullivan at Canyon Cinema
CATE’s 10-Year Anniversary Season Starts Sept. 15
Posted by | Amy Beste | Posted on | August 15, 2011
The season line-up includes appearances by Chris Sullivan, Matthew Buckingham, Laura Parnes, Thomas Comerford, Lee Anne Schmitt, Bill Brown, Steina Vasulka, Rebecca Meyers, Luke Fowler, Nicolas Provost, Amar Kanwar. Check out our current season for full details!
- Image from THE SMILE (Amar Kanwar, 2007). Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
Chris Sullivan’s CONSUMING SPIRITS to kick off CATE’s Fall 2011 Season
Posted by | Amy Beste | Posted on | August 13, 2011
Conversations at the Edge will kick off its 10-year anniversary season with a special preview screening of Chris Sullivan’s decade-in-the making animated feature, Consuming Spirits (2011) on Thursday, September 15. Additional highlights include appearances by Matthew Buckingham, Laura Parnes, Thomas Comerford, Lee Anne Schmitt, Bill Brown, Steina Vasulka, Rebecca Meyers, Luke Fowler, Nicolas Provost, Amar Kanwar and a rare US screening of Gregory Markopoulos’s ENIAIOS II (1949-1991). Check back for full details!
- Image from Consuming Spirits (Chris Sullivan, 2009). Image courtesy the artist.
Back in Fall 2011
Posted by | Kelly M Shindler | Posted on | April 21, 2011
CATE’s Spring 2011 season wrapped with Aberration of Light: Dark Chamber Disclosure. Thank you for coming out and thanks to all our guests — Martha Colburn, Rose Lowder, Andrea Geyer, Akram Zaatari, Yael Bartana, Brian Springer, Tony Cokes, Botborg (Joe Musgrove and Scott Sinclair), and Sandra Gibson, Luis Recoder, and Olivia Block — for a terrific season. See you in September for our Fall 2011 series!
- Voiliers et coquelicots (Poppies and Sailboats) (Rose Lowder, 2001). Courtesy the artist.
Aberration of Light: Dark Chamber Disclosure
Posted by | Kelly M Shindler | Posted on | April 11, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 6:00 pm | Live performance! Sandra Gibson, Luis Recoder, and Olivia Block in person!
- Aberration of Light (Sandra Gibson, Luis Recoder, Olivia Block, 2010-11). Courtesy the artists.
“Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder are creating some of the most innovative and engaging light works of the present time.” – Mark Webber, London Film Festival
Since 2001, New York-based artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder have collaborated on a series of performances and installations that transform the mundane mechanics of film projection into sublime experiences of light and space. The duo uses a system of film loops, crystals, and hand gestures to bend, reflect, and refract the projector’s beam, recasting the theatrical space of the cinema into a unique medium for sculpting light. This evening, in their first-ever Chicago appearance together, Gibson and Recoder present their latest projector performance, developed with noted Chicago-based composer and sound artist, Olivia Block. Block, who mixes field recordings and live instrumentation, has been likened to “a good cinematographer who happens to use sounds instead of images” (Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader). This is the second piece the three have created together; the first, Untitled (2008) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and screened at the Tate Modern, London, and Redcat, Los Angeles. 2010-11, Sandra Gibson/Luis Recoder/Olivia Block, USA, multiple formats, ca. 60 mins plus discussion.
SANDRA GIBSON (1968, Portland, OR) and LUIS RECODER (1971, San Francisco, CA) are internationally acclaimed artists whose work primarily addresses the medium and idea of the cinema. Ed Halter, Artforum critic and co-founder of Light Industry, has written: “In their collaborative film performances, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder employ simple mechanical means to hypnotically elaborate ends…Their performances melt the projector’s machine materialism into ethereal experiences.” Gibson and Recoder’s projector performances and installations have exhibited at numerous museums, galleries, and festivals such as the 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Museum of American Art (NY), Performa 09 Biennial at Light Industry (NY), Radical Light at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley), Film.Text.Performance.Film at Ballroom Marfa (Marfa), BFI 50th London Film Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Expanded Cinema: Film als Spektakel, Ereignis und Performance at Hartware MedienKunstVerein (Dortmund), Kill Your Timid Notion at Dundee Contemporary Arts (Dundee), Image Forum Festival at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (Kanazawa), and 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam (Rotterdam).
OLIVIA BLOCK (b. 1971, Dallas, TX) is a contemporary composer and sound artist who combines field recordings, scored segments for acoustic instruments, and electronically generated sound. Block works with recorded media, chamber ensembles, video, and site-specific sound installations. She has performed throughout Europe, America, and Japan in tours and festivals including Sonic Light, Dissonanze, Archipel, Angelica, Sunoni per il Popolo, Outer Ear, and many others. Her works have premiered at La Biennale di Venezia 52nd International Festival of Contemporary Music, and she has completed residencies and premiered works at Mills College of Music and The Berklee College of Music. She has taught master classes at several additional universities. Block has created sound installations for public sites and exhibition spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the library at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the Lincoln Conservatory Fern Room in Chicago, and at the “Echoes Through the Mountains” exhibit at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Her 2008 DVD release with video artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, Untitled, on SOS editions, has been screened at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Expanded Cinema symposium at the Tate Modern in London. Her release Mobius Fuse was voted one of the best albums of the decade by Pitchfork. Block has published recordings through Sedimental, either/OAR, and Cut, among other labels.
Tags: 2011 > Artist's Film > Chicago > Experimental > Live Cinema > Performance > SAIC Faculty > Sound > USA
Botborg!
Posted by | Kelly M Shindler | Posted on | April 4, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 6:00 pm | Live performance! Joe Musgrove and Scott Sinclair in person!
- Principle 2 (Botborg, 2007). Courtesy the artists.
As Botborg, Berlin/Brisbane-based artists and musicians Scott Sinclair and Joe Musgrove fuse and rewire raw electronic signals to create intensely visceral experiences of sound-color synaesthesia. Using a complex array of custom electronics, audio and video mixers, cameras and screens, the duo blends sound and vision into a self-perpetuating web of interdependent color and rhythm, generated (in real time) entirely by device feedback. In their first US duo performance, Musgrove and Sinclair will present a new, improvisatory performance, incorporating the unique characteristics of the Film Center’s theater into their system. Botborg’s work has screened around the globe and they have performed throughout Europe and Australia, including at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria and the Spectropia Festival in Riga, Latvia. Co-presented by the experimental music series Lampo. 2011, Joe Musgrove/Scott Sinclair, Australia/Germany, multiple formats, ca. 60 mins plus discussion.
JOE MUSGROVE (1978, Newcastle, Australia) is an artist, composer, and archivist. His current solo music production is focused on electroacoustic composition, drawing influences from post-industrial musique concrete, early modernist composition, Japanese Gagaku and its Korean antecedents, and super-producers of the 1980s such as Trevor Horn. Musgrove has produced nearly 50 self-releases, many in limited edition with hand-made artwork. As a video artist, his work focuses almost exclusively on psychedelic abstraction. His video work has been screened throughout Australia and internationally. He currently lives and works in Brisbane, Australia.
SCOTT SINCLAIR (1980, Sydney, Australia) is an audiovisual artist, performer, and programmer. His work often collages together disparate media—from computer music and vocal improvisation to video and hand-made costumes—to harsh and humorous effect. From 2002-2005 Sinclair coordinated the Small Black Box sound art performance series at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia. In 2003, he founded the Half/theory web server and online shop to promote experimental Australian and New Zealand artists. Sinclair holds an MA from Kunstuniversität Linz, Austria and performs with Botborg, The Superusers, and his solo noise-karaoke project Company Fuck. He currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Tags: 2011 > Australia > Europe > Experimental > Live Cinema > New Media > Performance
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.
