Reenactments
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 6pm | Curator Irina Botea in person!
Post-Mortem Dialogue With Ceauşescu (Ion Grigorescu, 2007). Image courtesy the artist.
“Artistic reenactments do not ask…what really happened…instead, they ask what the images we see might mean concretely to us” — Inke Arns
Artistic reenactments do not aim to affirm or glorify the past, but rather to examine an event’s relevance in the present. They call into question our very understanding of this present—along with its social, political and cultural potential. This program, curated by artist and SAIC faculty member Irina Botea, proposes a trajectory of reenactment that cycles through highly mediated events and famous works of art, from a propaganda film made by the Romanian secret police in 1959 to Sharon Hayes’s Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) Screeds (2003), in which the artist attempts to recite from memory Patty Hearst’s infamous tapes to her parents after being kidnapped in 1974. Also featuring work by Ion Grigorescu, Ciprian Muresan, Mathew Paul Jinks, and Artur Żmijewski, among others. Multiple artists, 1959-2010, Poland/Romania/USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min.
IRINA BOTEA (1970, Ploiesti, Romania) is a visual artist, whose works combine cinema verite and direct cinema with reenactment strategies, auditions, and rehearsals. She received a BFA and MFA from Bucharest University of Arts in 2001 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. Solo and group shows include: National Gallery Jeu de Paume, Paris; Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid; Gwangju Biennale 2010; U -Turn Quadriennial, Copenhagen; 51st Venice Biennale; Prague Bienale; Kunst-Werke, Berlin; Casa Encendida, Madrid; Salzburger Kunstverein, Austria; Argos Center for Art and Media, Brussels; Artefact Festival, Leuven; Rotterdam Film Festival; HMKV Halle, Dortmund; Casino de Luxembourg; Kunstforum, Vienna; Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art), Bucharest; Museum of Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland; and Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowki Castle, Warsaw. She resides in Chicago.
Tags: Curators and Programmers > Europe > Experimental > Non-Fiction > Performance > SAIC Fac
Erie
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 6, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 6 p.m. | Kevin Jerome Everson in person!
Still from “Erie” (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2010).
Over the past thirteen years, Kevin Jerome Everson has crafted an exquisite—and prodigious—body of work on the working-class culture of African-Americans and people of African descent. Combining documentary and fiction, Everson’s nearly 70 shorts and four features center on everyday tasks and gestures to unearth and illuminate the ordinary grace of daily life. This evening, in conjunction with the Video Data Bank’s release of the 25-title DVD box set, Broad Daylight and Other Times: Selected Works of Kevin Jerome Everson, the artist presents his acclaimed feature Erie (2010) along with a handful of new shorts. Unspooling in a series of hand-held, single-take shots filmed in the urban centers around the great lake, Erie captures the conversation of former General Motors workers as the plant is about to close; hospital employees carefully sorting and sterilizing surgical implements; and young performers krumping and rehearsing musical theater side-by-side, the camera moving between them in a kind of mash-up-en-scene and microcosm of the rich and multifaceted operation of the film as a whole. Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. Kevin Jerome Everson, 2010, USA, HDCAM video, ca. 90 min (plus discussion).
KEVIN JEROME EVERSON (1965, Mansfield, OH) has made four feature-length films and nearly seventy shorts. He received an MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Akron. His films and artwork have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Florida; Wurttenbergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; the Spaces Gallery, Cleveland; the American Academy of Rome, Italy; the Sundance Film Festival; Rotterdam International Film Festival; Cinematexas; Ann Arbor Film Festival; and Chicago Underground Film Festival, among many others. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, an American Academy Rome Prize, and residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell Colony. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Virginia and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Further reading:
- Ed Halter, “The Practice of Everyday Life,” Artforum (May 2010): 228-33.
- Laila Lalami, “The Pay-Off: Kevin Everson Turns the Ordinary into the Extraordinary,” Independent Film and Video Monthly (Jan-Feb 2005); 28 (1): 22-26.
- Kevin Everson at the Whitney Biennial 2008
Civil Status: Films by Alina Rudnitskaya
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 29, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 6:00 pm | Alina Rudnitskaya in person!
Still from “Bitch Academy” (Alina Rudnitskaya, 2008). Image courtesy the artist.
Often absurd and occasionally shattering, Alina Rudnitskaya’s documentaries are tragicomic field notes on the bracing cultural and political changes of “New Russia.” Produced largely through the storied St. Petersburg Documentary Studio, her films examine the day-to-day lives of her fellow citizens while illuminating their aspirations for and fantasies about the future. This evening, in a rare U.S. appearance, Rudnitskaya presents three films from her award-winning body of work. In Bitch Academy (2008), she follows a group of women who go back to school to become “strong women” by learning to seduce millionaire sugar daddies. Some revel in the school’s provocative hands-on lessons while others grimly choke back tears—only hinting at the troubles they hope to escape—as they struggle to master this new form of empowerment. In Civil Status (2005), Rudnitskaya observes the everyday drama of work at the Civil Registry office, where the ladies-only staff transforms the joy, fury, and grief of new brides, divorcing husbands, and recent widows into bureaucratic procedure. And, in Besame Mucho (2006) she sketches an intimate portrait of an amateur choir in rural Tikhvin as they rehearse for group of Italian diplomats. In Russian with English subtitles. Alina Rudnitskaya, 2005-08, Russia, 35mm and Beta SP video, ca. 90 min (plus discussion).
ALINA RUDNITSKAYA (1976, Zaozernyj, Russian Federation) is a director and scriptwriter. She received a degree from the Academy of Aerospace Engineering, St. Petersburg in 1997 and studied film directing at St. Petersburg’s University of Culture and Arts from 1997-2001. Her short films, largely produced through the renowned St. Petersburg Documentary Studio, have garnered over thirty international awards prizes and have screened worldwide, including at the Oberhausen Film Festival, Germany; the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands; International Film Festival Vila do Conde, Portugal; Documentamadrid, Spain; the London Film Festival, UK; Transmediale, Berlin, Germany; and Silverdocs, Maryland, USA; among many others. She lives and works in St. Petersburg.
Read more:
Under the Cement, Sediment: Recent Video In and Around China
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 6 p.m. | Curator Pablo de Ocampo in person!
- Still from “Factory” (Chen Chieh-Jen, 2003). Image courtesy the artist.
In Yang Zhenzhong’s 2003 video Spring Story, a group of 1,500 employees at a Siemens factory recite an oft-cited line from a 1992 Deng Xiaoping speech: “A planned economy is not equivalent to socialism, because there is planning under capitalism too; a market economy is not capitalism, because there are markets under socialism too.” This speech is now seen as a milestone in the creation of China’s new hybrid economy, which embraces both socialist and free enterprise forces. Curated and introduced by Pablo de Ocampo, Artistic Director of the Images Festival in Toronto, the works in this program examine the country’s recent political and economic transformations through its urban and industrial landscape. Additional pieces include Chen Chieh-Jen’s haunting Factory (2003), shot in an abandoned textile factory with its former employees re-enacting their work amidst the ruins; Oliver Husain’s Swivel (2005), which consists of a continuous panning shot of a hyper developed and glossy Shanghai; and Zhao Liang’s City Scene (2005), which captures street life in Beijing in a series of short vignettes. Multiple artists, 2003-05, Canada/China/Germany/Taiwan, multiple formats, ca. 90 min.
PABLO DE OCAMPO (1976, Phoenix, AZ) lives in Toronto, Canada, where he is the Artistic Director of the Images Festival, Canada’s largest platform for the exhibition of experimental and innovative film and video art practice. Prior to his post at Images, de Ocampo resided in Portland, Oregon, where co-founded the experimental film screening series Cinema Project and was the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center.
Read more:
- Condensation: Five Video Works by Chen Chieh-Jen at Asia Society Museum (2007)
- Lance Esplund, “The Aesthetics of Pain,” NY Sun (June 2007)
- Oliver Husain website
- Interview with Zhao Liang
- Yang Zhenzhong website
Interview with Luis Gispert
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 22, 2010
Réne (Luis Gispert, 2008). Image courtesy the artist.
Charlotte Marra spoke with artist Luis Gispert in advance of his October 21 appearance at Conversations at the Edge.
Charlotte Marra: In the video René (2008), you create a portrait of a family friend. There is a marked difference in style and subject matter from your previous work (Stereomongrel, 2005, or Smother, 2008) and elements of neo-realism are perhaps more apparent in this work. Could you tell us more about your impetus for creating René?
Luis Gispert: René came out of a desire to work in an opposite manner to Smother. Smother had been a grand collaboration with filmmakers and actors, referencing the history and conventions of narrative cinema, indulging in fiction. René was to be an intimate portrait of someone close to me. It would only involve René, the camera, and me. It would end up being an amalgam of René’s life and fictions we created together.
CM: Do you feel that a viewer’s understanding of these narratives or references is an essential important part of their understanding of the work as a whole?
LG: Not necessarily. I try to make every piece autonomous. They have to work on their own. My personal cosmology is always a starting point for all work, but at some point it’s superceded by the form, process, and new information that’s picked up along the way. I guess all the sub-plots or narratives (if we can call them that) serve as a guide for me in the studio. It’s not essential for an audience to read all the reference points upon their first encounter with a work. If their curiosity is piqued, then they can dig deeper and make further connections.
CM: Your filmic style has been compared to that of Buñuel and Antonioni. You’ve also mentioned inspiration for recent sculptures coming from a Dave Chappelle skit. What are you currently reading or watching that you feel has influenced your work?
LG: René has lent me his very extensive bootleg collection of Cuban films and television from the 60s through the 90s, none of which have been subtitled or released in the US. It’s been fascinating to see how these filmmakers achieve artistic statements through a state-sanctioned cinema. Some are blatant propaganda but others exist in a nebulous zone that subtly questions the state’s lack of artist freedom. I was recently re-reading Allen Kaprow’s “Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life” and was reminded how little artists’ intents have changed in the last 45 years. The “art world” or “art market” has changed, but artists’ tactics in the studio have not. Art has become very conservative.
CM: You’ve spoken of making a feature film. What can you reveal?
LG: It’s a long-term project and I’m at the stage of writing a story. I’ve gone through several stories but think I’ve found one I’m satisfied with. It will fit within the structure of a noir genre film and follow a three-act structure. All I can say at the moment is that it’s the story of a character overwhelmingly moved by his/her heredity and environment. It’ll end up being a tragedy of someone’s irresistible will.
CM: How do you feel about working within a more conventional structure?
LG: For a feature film project, it’s important that it also function in a cinematic context. It poses a new challenge for me to work within the conventions and structure of a genre. To paraphrase Igor Stravinsky, “once the structure is set, experimentation within it is infinite.” I’ve found it’s been a bigger challenge to experiment within a set three-act structure than it is with free-formed experimental non-linear forms.
Luis Gispert: Hyperreal
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 6 p.m. | Luis Gispert in person!
- Réne (Luis Gispert, 2008). Image courtesy the artist.
In his dramatic photographic tableaux, sculptures, video vignettes, and short films, Miami-New York-based artist and SAIC alumnus Luis Gispert (BFA ’96) mashes up consumerist pop culture and narco-nouveau riche ‘80s aesthetics with Freudian nightmares and socio-economic provocation. Gispert, writes Edwin Stirman in Art in America, “aims for a new kind of baroque drama and satire by contrasting beauty and grotesquerie.” This evening, Gispert will provide an overview of this work in all mediums, including his 2008 film, Smother, and the multi-channel portrait, Réne (2008). Set in 1980s Miami, Smother follows the adolescent Waylon, boombox in tow, on a kaleidoscopic and macabre journey out of his overbearing mother’s clutches into a magical-realist nightmare world of his own making. Réne is an intimate, inventive study of family friend and Cuban émigré Réne as he goes about his daily routine in Miami Florida. Co-presented by Parlor Room, a visiting artist and lecture series created, run, budgeted and curated by graduate students in SAIC’s Photography Department. Luis Gispert, 2001-08, USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min (plus discussion).
LUIS GISPERT (1972, Jersey City) creates art through a wide range of media, including photographs, film, sounds, and sculptures, touching upon hip-hop and youth culture, as well as Cuban-American history. His work has been exhibited internationally, including in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, New York; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Art Pace, San Antonio, TX; the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; the Contemporary Art Museum Houston; Palazzo Brocherasio in Turin; the Royal Academy in London; National Museum of Poznan, Poland; and Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany. His works are in the collections of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He received an MFA at Yale University in 2001 and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. From 1990-92, he attended Miami Dade College. He is represented by Mary Boone Gallery in New York, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, and Frederic Snitzer Gallery in Miami.
Internal Systems: Films by Coleen Fitzgibbon
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 8, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 6 p.m. | Coleen Fitzgibbon in person!
Internal System (Coleen Fitzgibbon, 1974). Image courtesy the artist.
“…Brilliance waiting to be revisited.” — Holly Willis, LA Weekly
Between 1973 and 1975, Coleen Fitzgibbon, operating under the name “Colen Fitzgibbon,” produced a series of films that stand as some of cinema’s most rigorous explorations of the medium. Associated with the Structural film movement and New York’s No Wave scene, Fitzgibbon’s films emphasize time, duration, and their own flickering mechanics while also hinting at a deeper socio-cultural meaning. This evening, the SAIC alumna will present four of these films, including her 1974 standout, Internal System, whose recent restoration is attracting fresh acclaim. In the words of curator Andréa Picard, the film is “a vast, minimalist study of the monochromatic frame, a sort of sublime testing of film’s internal logic, its emulsive permutations and light sensitivities.” Also on the program: Fitzgibbon’s scratchy audio-visual collage Found Film Flashes (1974); the gorgeous FM/TRCS (1974) which uses the process of rephotography to transform the image of a woman dressing into abstract orbs of color and light; and the witty Restoring Appearances to Order (1974), featuring a short sequence of Fitzgibbon scrubbing a dirty sink to suggest the labor of art-making. Special thanks to Sandra Gibson for her generous assistance with this program. Coleen Fitzgibbon, 1973-75, USA, 16mm, ca. 75 min (plus discussion).
COLEEN FITZGIBBON (1950, Illinois) was active as an experimental film artist under the pseudonym “Colen Fitzgibbon” between the years 1973-1980. A student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Independent Study Program, she studied with Owen Land (aka “George Landow”), Stan Brakhage, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci, and worked on film projects for Dennis Oppenheim, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Les Levine. She formed the collaborative X+Y with Robin Winters in 1976, the Offices of Fend, Fitzgibbon, Holzer, Nadin, Prince, and Winters in 1979 and is best known for co-founding the New York based Collaborative Projects, Inc. (Colab) in 1977, along with artists Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Liza Bear, Betsy Sussler, and Tom Otterness, among others. Fitzgibbon has screened her work at numerous international film festivals and museums, including the EXPRMNTL 5 at Knokke-Heist, Belgium; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Anthology Film Archives, Collective For Living Cinema, and Millennium Film Workshop, all New York City, and most recently at the Toronto Film Festival (2009) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Fitzgibbon currently resides in New York and Montana.
Bruce Bickford’s World
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 4, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 6 p.m. | Bruce Bickford in person
Featuring live accompaniment by Jeff Parker and Frank Rosaly
- Bruce Bickford’s plasticine heads. Image courtesy the artist.
“Bruce Bickford is a genius!” — Frank Zappa
Enchanted gardens, epic battles, and creatures that morph out of roiling landscapes of clay are but a few of the visions that make up legendary animator Bruce Bickford’s world—one of metamorphosis, destruction, and regeneration. Best known for his work with Frank Zappa—Baby Snakes (1979) and The Amazing Mr. Bickford (1987)—Bickford’s stunning and surreal animations have influenced generations of artists, filmmakers, and musicians. This evening’s program features a rare theatrical screening of his 1988 tour-de-force, Prometheus’ Garden; recent pencil-line animations, including the hypnotic The Comic That Frenches Your Mind (2007); and a collection of rarely-seen animated sequences and fragments spanning Bickford’s prodigious career, featuring a not-to-be-missed live soundtrack by musicians Jeff Parker (Tortoise, The Relatives) and Frank Rosaly (Viscous). Special thanks to Peter Burr for his generous assistance with this program. Bruce Bickford, 1980-2010, USA, multiple formats, ca. 90 min (plus discussion).
BRUCE BICKFORD (1947, Seattle, WA) began animating clay in the summer of 1964 at the age of 17. He graduated from high school in 1965 and engaged in military service from 1966 to 1969. Upon his return, he resumed animation and began experimenting with line animation. He met Frank Zappa in 1973 and worked for him from 1974-1980, producing imagery for Baby Snakes (1979), The Dub Room Special (1985), Video From Hell (1980), and The Amazing Mr. Bickford (1987). Afterwards, he returned to Seattle and resumed animating, mostly his own personal work. His life and work were featured in the award-winning 2004 documentary Monster Road, directed by Brett Ingram.
MORE
Listen to Alex Chadwick’s interview with Bickford on NPR’s Day to Day
Bruce Bickford’s Official Homepage
Rosa Menkman: Glitched
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 6 p.m | Rosa Menkman in person!
Every technology possesses its own inherent accidents. Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist and theorist whose focus is on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media specifically. She describes these as “the uncanny, brutal structures that come to the surface during a break of the flow within a technology; they are the primal data-screams of the machine.” Working at the experimental junction of glitch, noise, and new media art, Menkman creates glitch work and writes texts about codecs, interpolation, and compression going awry. This evening, Menkman will introduce a selection of videos followed by a real-time performance. Rest assured, the equipment is working, though it may not look like it is. This presentation coincides with GLI.TC/H, an international noise and new media conference taking place from September 29 to October 3 at various locations around Chicago. Visit http://gli.tc/h. Rosa Menkman, 2006–10, Netherlands, multiple formats, ca. 75 min (plus discussion).
ROSA MENKMAN (1983, Arnhem, Netherlands) is the leading international theory-practitioner of glitch art. She has written extensively on digital artifacts and noise, including the Glitch Studies Manifesto (2010). Her videos and real-time performances have been included in festivals like Blip, Europe and U.S.; Haip, Ljubljana; Cimatics, Brussels; Video Vortex, Amsterdam and Brussels; and Pasofest, Ankara. She has collaborated on art projects together with Alexander Galloway, little-scale, Govcom.org, Goto80 and the Internet art collective, Jodi.org. Menkman received her Master’s degree in 2009 and is currently a PhD student at KHM Cologne, writing on the subject of Artifacts.
MORE
Dinca’s Seven Question Interview with Rosa Menkman
Kent Lambert & Jesse McLean interview each other
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 22, 2010
Magic for Beginners (Jesse McLean, 2010). Image courtesy the artist.
On the eve of tomorrow’s program, Have to Believe We Are Magic: Videos by Kent Lambert and Jesse McLean, the artists interviewed each other. Here is the exclusive transcript.
Kent Lambert: Ready when you are!
Jesse McLean: Ready!
KL: Do you have questions prepared? Or should we have more of a casual conversation at the edge?
JM: No. Do you? I like that idea.
KL: Well I did have one question in mind so I’ll go ahead with it… The other night you mentioned something about getting an idea for Somewhere Only We Know and getting cable temporarily in order to get the footage you wanted/needed… Do you usually start with an idea and find footage to support it, or do you ever find footage that fascinates you and then build a piece around it?
JM: That’s a good question. Probably more of the former but it’s complicated; I had seen reality television shows that feature those type of elimination scenes so you could say it was inspired by footage I had yet to collect. If I find something compelling, I’ll buy it, regardless of whether I have immediate plans for it. Not everything pans out, of course. On the most recent piece, Magic for Beginners, I had compiled a lot of material from different sources, but I pared it down to just a few in the end. What about you, same question?
KL: I do the same thing in terms of collecting–I’ll buy or “steal” something if it seems interesting, even if I don’t think I’ll use it right away… but I’d say in most cases I build videos around material that fascinates me–I don’t usually have a plan or overarching idea, I just rely on intuition that one piece of footage or sound might have some sort of powerful chemistry with another piece, and then it’s basically a process of trial and error getting the pieces to stick together meaningfully. With Fantasy Suite, I knew I wanted to do something with this episode of the Bachelor a had friend sent me, and I thought it might fit well with this film Coping that I gleaned from the distributor I worked for 10 years ago, and also with Skymall images, but there was a period during editing when I really didn’t know if I’d be able to get those elements to work together… It took a LOT of trial and error, moving shots around, re-ordering them, taking shots out and putting other shots in, repeat repeat repeat, before it started to feel like a coherent piece. Is it ever like that for you? Like, the footage doesn’t work quite the way you’d imagined when you set out to make the piece?
Quick follow-up to that: do you ever map sequences out in advance or do you (like me) primarily rely on trial and error and intuition? Read more
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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.
