Outer Ear Festival of Sound: Recent Films by Deborah Stratman
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 7, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 6pm | Deborah Stratman in person!
- Deborah Stratman, O’er the Land (2008). Image courtesy of the artist.
The Experimental Sound Studio’s Outer Ear Festival of Sound and CATE team up to present a special preview of award-winning filmmaker Deborah Stratman’s latest film, O’er the Land (2008). Completed in part through a residency at ESS, Stratman’s film meditates on our notions of freedom in an era of elevated threat by interweaving footage from our national pasttimes—football, war re-enactments, machine gun festivals—with the incredible story of Marine Lt. Col William Rankin who, in 1959, was forced to eject from his fighter jet at 47,000 feet without a pressure suit, only to be trapped for 40 minutes in the up and down drafts of a massive thunderstorm. Accompanied by Stratman’s Paranormal Trilogy: It Will Die Out in the Mind (2006), How Among the Frozen Words (2005), and The Magician’s House (2007). The Outer Ear Festival of Sound (November 3–22, 2008) is the only comprehensive interdisciplinary sonic arts festival in the Midwest. For more information, visit exsost.org. 2005—08, Deborah Stratman, USA, 16mm, ca 65 min.
Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker whose work plies the territory between experimental and documentary genres. Her films and frequent work in other media, including photography, sound, drawing and sculpture often explore the history, uses, mythologies and control of highly varied landscapes: from Muslim Xinjiang China, to rural Iceland, to gated suburban California. Her works have been exhibited internationally and she is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship.
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Carolee Schneemann: Film & Performance
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 3, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 6pm | Carolee Schneemann in person!
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Carolee Schneemann, Fuses (1964—67). Image courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix.
Since the early 1960s, legendary multimedia artist Carolee Schneemann has blazed a groundbreaking, taboo-busting path through the art world. Expressive, exuberant and intelligent, her work ranges from hand-made diary films and politically charged performances to painting, poetry, and installation, all the while exploring and overturning preconceived notions of sexuality, gender, and the body. Tonight, Schneemann will present a collection of recently restored films, performance videos, and new work, including the first two installments of her landmark Autobiographical Trilogy: Fuses (1964—67), in which she painted, scratched, and collaged self-shot footage of herself and then-partner James Tenney’s erotic explorations, and Plumb Line (1971), along with the influential performance pieces Body Collage (1967) and Americana I Ching Apple Pie (1978—2007) and her latest video Infinity Kisses—The Movie (2008). Co-presented by SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program and Department of Performance and the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center, which will present a second program of Schneemann’s work on Friday, November 7. 1964—2008, Carolee Schneemann, USA, multiple formats, ca 80 min.
Mutidisciplinary feminist artist Carolee Schneemann is known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the individual in relationship to social bodies. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including a full retrospective at the New Museum of Contermporary Art, and retrospective screenings at the the Centre Georges Pompidou, MoMA, and Whitney. Schneemann has taught at several universities, including the California Institute of the Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hunter College, and Rutgers University, where she was the first female art professor hired. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including: a 1999 Art Pace International Artist Residency, San Antonio, Texas; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1997, 1998); 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship; Gottlieb Foundation Grant; National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME. Lifetime Achievement Award, College Art Association, 2000. Additionally, she has published widely, including, Cezanne, She Was A Great Painter (1976), More Than Meat Joy: Performance Works and Selected Writings (1979, 1997), Imaging Her Erotics: Essays, Interviews, Projects (2003). A selection of her letters edited by Kristine Stiles is forthcoming.
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New York Times: Carolee Schneemann
Semiconductor
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 24, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 6pm | Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt in person!
- Semiconductor, Magnetic Movie (2007). Image courtesy of the artists.
UK artist-duo Semiconductor’s stunning digital animations render our physical world in a constant state of flux. Since 1999, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt have used digital technologies to create what The Wire calls “experimental meta-science fiction” to meditate on the hidden processes around us—sound waves, magnetic fields, tectonic plates, and micro-environments. The pair began their career in the UK electronic music scene, and their work has continued to straddle science, music, and high art, with music videos for Múm and Dat Politics, installations at the Hirshhorn and the Venice Biennale, and a residency at NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory. Tonight’s program surveys their career, including the giddily gorgeous glitch of A-Z of Noise (1999) and 200 Nanowebbers (2005), the elegant urbanscapes of The Sound of Microclimates (2004), and an astonishing trip into the data archives of solar astronomy in Brilliant Noise (2006). Also featured are Magnetic Movie (2007), Do You Think Science…(2006), All the Time in the World (2005), Green Grass of Tunnel (2002), and Retropolis (1999). 1999—2007, Semiconductor, UK, multiple formats, ca 60 min.
Semiconductor was founded by UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt in 1997. Their work has been exhibited extensively, from Tate Britain and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London to the San Francisco Film Festival, MUTEK Montreal and the Venice Biennale. Recent fellowships and residencies have supported site-specific work, including research and experimentation at the NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory UC Berkeley, California.
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Omer Fast: Recent Works
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 17, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 6pm | Omer Fast in person!
- Omer Fast, The Casting (2007). Image courtesy of the artist.
The provocative, whip-smart work of Berlin-based artist Omer Fast is garnering international acclaim, and with good reason. Showcasing an incisive eye, sharp technique and keen wit, Fast’s videos and installations of funeral directors, Colonial Williamsburg re-enactors, Schindler’s List extras, and Iraq war veterans stitch history, personal experience, and mass media conventions into intellectually dissonant, emotionally resonant narratives. In conjunction with his debut Chicago exhibition at SAIC’s Rymer Gallery, Fast will present his latest video, Take a Deep Breath (2008), as well as Looking Pretty For God (After GW) (co-commissioned by SAIC and the Manifesta Foundation, 2008), which draws parallels between mortuary services and a children’s commercial shoot, a single-channel version of The Casting (2007) in which a soldier’s professional and personal trauma underscores a series of tableaux vivants and for which he received the 2008 Whitney Biennial’s Bucksbaum Award, and excerpts from earlier works. Co-presented by SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program and the Department of Exhibitions and Events. 2003—2008, Omer Fast, various countries, multiple formats, ca 90 min.
Omer Fast was born in 1972 in Jerusalem. He lives and works in Berlin. He holds a BA/BFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an MFA from Hunter of the City University of New York. Selected solo exhibitions in 2008 include the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, the Hannover Kunstverein and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. Upcoming exhibitions are planned at Tate Liverpool and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Omer Fast is the winner of this year’s Bucksbaum Award, the largest award given to an individual visual artist, presented to an artist who is shown in the Whitney Biennial.
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Tags: Europe > Instillation > Middle East > Monographic Shows > Political
Joanie 4 Jackie: The Lady Glitterati of the New Movie Uprising
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 10, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 6pm
Joanie 4 Jackie knows that the best lady-made film and video art belongs not only in a gallery, but also in the bedrooms of girls all over America. — J4J
In 1995, multimedia artist Miranda July began inviting DIY women filmmakers to submit work in return for a “chainletter,” or a compilation tape with the filmmaker’s work plus that of nine others. Thirteen years and hundreds of movies later, the Joanie 4 Jackie lo-fi feminist experiment in alternative film distribution is still going strong, now under the care of video artist Jacqueline Goss and Bard College. Tonight’s program surveys J4J’s history, with works by July, Tammy Rae Carland, Naomi Uman, Dulcie Clarkson, Eileen Maxson, C. Ryder Cooley, Zoey Kroll, Sativa Peterson, Vanessa Renwick and Sarah Hanssen, along with a new documentary about the project by July and Shauna McGarry, who also curated this evening’s program. 1983–2003, various directors, USA, multiple formats, ca 90 min.
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Still Raining, Still Dreaming: Films & Videos by Phil Solomon
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 7, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008, 6pm | Phil Solomon in person!
- Phil Solomon w/Mark Lapore, Crossroad (2005). Image courtesy of Phil Solomon.
For over three decades, Phil Solomon’s cinematic alchemy has forged great beauty from images awash in material and emotional grit. Renowned for transforming found footage into molten dreamscapes through chemical and photographic processes, Solomon has recently garnered acclaim for an extraordinary series of videos that turn the imagery from the hyper-violent Grand Theft Auto video game to stunningly poetic ends. Tonight he presents four videos from this series, including Crossroad (w/Mark Lapore, 2005), Rehearsals for Retirement (2007), Last Days in a Lonely Place (2007), and a special preview of the forthcoming Still Raining, Still Dreaming (2008), along with two earlier films, the lush, seething Twilight Psalm III: Night of the Meek (2002), and the staccato Nocturne (1980/89). A preview of his installation, American Falls, which will premiere at the at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Autumn 2009, will also be screened. Co-presented by the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center, which will present a second program of Solomon’s work on Friday, October 10. Solomon will also present his work with Stan Brakhage as part of the White Light Cinema series at the Nightingale on Saturday October 11. 1980–2008, Phil Solomon, USA, multiple formats, ca 90 minutes.
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American Falls
2008, HD Video, 30 min. – loop
A looped 30-minute preview version of a larger, epic “cine-mural” that Solomon will premiere at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Autumn 2009. Inspired by Frederic Church’s sublime 19th-century painting Niagara (in the Corcoran’s permanent collection) and WPA murals of the 1930s, the mesmerizing American Falls employs Solomon’s astonishing cinematic techniques to create an expressive, poetic vision of American history in constant motion. (Description courtesy the Wexner Center for the Arts)
Crossroad
w/Mark LaPore, 2005, DVCAM, 5 min.
Prelude to In Memoriam, Mark Lapore, a series of videos made from the imagery from the video game Grand Theft Auto. “Mark and I made this film for our friend David Gatten, as a prayer, an offering, a “get well soon” card… for all three of us. It was made on the last night that I saw Mark, my best friend of 32 years.”– Phil Solomon
Rehearsals for Retirement
2007, DVCAM, 10 min.
The days grow longer for smaller prizes
I feel a stranger to all surprises
You can have them I don’t want them
I wear a different kind of garment
In my rehearsals for retirement
The lights are cold again they dance below me
I turn to old friends they do not know me
All but the beggar he remembers
I put a penny down for payment
In my rehearsals for retirement
Had I known the end would end in laughter
I tell my daughter it doesn’t matter…
— Phil Ochs, Rehearsals for Retirement
Twilight Psalm III: Night of the Meek
2002, 16mm, 23 min.
In memoriam, Anne Frank. It is Berlin, November 9, 1938, and, as the night air is shattered throughout the city, the Rabbi of Prague is summoned from a dark slumber, called upon once again to invoke the magic letters from the Great Book that will bring his creature made from earth back to life, in the hour of need.
I’m looking at the river,
but I’m thinking of the sea,
thinking of the sea,
thinking of the sea
I’m looking at the river,
but I’m thinking of the sea,
thinking of the sea,
thinking of the sea
— Randy Newman
Nocturne
1980/89, 16mm, 10 min.
Finding similarities in the pulses and shapes between my own experiments in night photography, lightning storms, and night bombing in World War II, I constructed the war at home.
Last Days in a Lonely Place
2007, DVCAM, 20 min.
Farewell my friends
Farewell my dear ones
If I was rude
Forgive my weakness
Goodbye my friends
Goodbye to evening parties
Remember me
In the spring
To work for your bread
Soon you must leave
Remember your families
And work for your children
I don’t need much
and the older I become
I realize
My friendships
Will carry me over
any course of distance
any cause of sorrow
My friends that last
Will dance one more time
with me.
I don’t need words
This, I need.
— Polly Jean Harvey, Before Departure
Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Phil Solomon, forthcoming, DVCAM excerpt
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Phil Solomon has been making films since 1975 and is currently Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994 and has exhibited his films in every major venue for experimental film throughout the US and Europe, including 2 Whitney Biennials and three one-person shows at MoMA. He collaborated on three films with his friend and Boulder colleague, Stan Brakhage. Solomon is currently working on additional films in The Twilight Psalms series and a commission from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to create a six- channel digital installation entitled American Falls, currently scheduled to open in the Corcoran rotunda in Fall 2009 (with a preview set for Oklahoma City in September, 2008). Solomon’s recent Grand Theft Auto series has received numerous awards and was named in the Top Ten experimental films of the year by the Village Voice. He has also begun work on a book entitled A Snail’s Trail in the Moonlight: Conversations with Brakhage, transcriptions of several years of Brakhage’s film salons.
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Michael Sicinski on Phil Solomon’s recent videos (Cinema Scope).
15 Years of the Chicago Underground Film Festival
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 26, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 6pm | Festival director Bryan Wendorf and CUFF filmmakers in person!
Roger Ebert once said of the Chicago Underground Film Festival, “What you get for your money is not just admission to the films, but admission to a subculture.” For 15 years, CUFF has exhibited the vibrant media emerging from Chicago’s schools, production houses, music and performance scenes, and occasionally, from out-of-the-blue. Tonight’s program, co-curated by CUFF co-founder and Artistic Director Bryan Wendorf, charts the festival’s history through the city’s own, from Jennifer Reeder’s 1996 riot grrrl call-to-arms, Clit-O-Matic: The Adventures of White Trash Girl (1995) and James Fotopoulos’ transgressive experimentation, Drowning (2001) to Jim Finn’s Marxist-inspired history of the gerbil,Wüstinspringmaus (2002) and Ben Russell’s transcendent concert film, Black and White Trypps #3 (2007). Also featured: Velvet Welk (Darren Hacker, 1996), Wheels of Fury (Dan and Paul Dinello w/Amy Sedaris, 1998), Stuffing (Animal Charm, 1998), Départ (Thomas Comerford, 2000), Bouncing In The Corner #36DDD (Dara Greenwald, 1999), Receiver (Jon Leone, 2001), I Am a Conjuror (Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby, 2003), and Security Anthem (Kent Lambert, 2003). CUFF presents a second retrospective program on Friday, October 3 at the Nightingale. Visit cuff.org for details. 1995—2007, various directors, USA, multiple formats, ca 90 min.
Tags: Curators & Programmers > Performance > Retrospective > SAIC Alumni
Eyes Wide Open: Videos by Dani Leventhal
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 19, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 6pm | Dani Leventhal in person!
- Dani Leventhal, Show and Tell in the Land of Milk and Honey (2007). Image courtesy of the artist.
At once tender and savage, Dani Leventhal’s astonishing video diaries capture the banal and the horrific to reveal the transcendent beauty and pain of daily life. In the award-winning Draft 9 (2003), Leventhal cuts between skinned animals, well-fed pets, her grandfather’s Holocaust-tattooed arm, and her own romantic liaisons to create, in the words of critic Genevieve Yue, “something that is extraordinarily immediate, both fresh and painful, hard to watch and yet impossible not to watch.” In Show and Tell in the Land of Milk and Honey (2007), Leventhal juxtaposes bucolic shots of farm life with tales of sexual harassment and sick chickens while living and working in Israel; in 9 Minutes of Kaunaus (2007), she captures the fantasies of a wide-eyed boy whose older brother serves in the Israeli army. Also on the program: Picnic (w/Steve Reinke, 2006) and 3 Parts for Today (2007). Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. 2003—07, Dani Leventhal, various countries, Beta SP video, ca 65 min.
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Draft 9
2003, Beta SP video, 28 min.
“This movie was collected for four years before being sprayed scattershot over 28 minutes of psychic mayhem. The line between living and dead is a frontier crossed and re-crossed here. The living are dead while the dead are animated, breathing, swimming, giving birth. Consumed by the animal life of the city, the artist undertakes a first person journey, producing diary notes from one of the most skilled lens masters of the new generation. The camera is her company in this duet of death, the instrument that permits her to see the impossible, the unbearable, the invisible.” –Mike Hoolboom for International Film Festival Rotterdam
Picnic
w/Steve Reinke, 2006, Beta SP video, 3 min.
Picnic, is a collaboration with Dani Leventhal, and all of nature (with bits of culture).
9 Minutes of Kaunaus
2007, Beta SP video, 6 min.
“Inside a Lithuanian synagogue, young Domas Darguzs regales the filmmaker with a whispered, wide-eyed account of mythical events, while the film cross-cuts to images of farm-life. Kid brother of an Israeli soldier, Domas’s stories are part fantasy, part hopeful ruminations of a courageous, young mind interrupted only by an impatient adult.” –KJ Mohr
Show and Tell in the Land of Milk and Honey
2007, Beta SP video, 13 min.
In this piece Dani Leventhal recounts to camera her experiences of living and working in Israel, the fabled land of milk and honey of childhood lessons. With time spent in a metal factory and a battery farm for chickens, her harrowing tale includes stories of sexual harassment and sick birds. Against this background, there are idyllic images of bees and flowers, cows and calves, intimate caresses, dead birds. Every thing is worthy of Dani’s gaze, and is transformed by the encounter, becoming more human or sacred, and we are closer to the pain and beauty of being alive.
3 Parts for Today
2007, Beta SP video, 13 min.
Subtitled “The Refusenik,” “The Zealot,” and “The Father,” this video takes us on a journey where Germans, Turks, Israelis, Palestinians, fathers, grandmothers, daughters and animals are together for 13 minutes.
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Dani Leventhal is a drawer, sculptor and video artist. In 2003 she received an MFA from The University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2007 she received the Visual Arts Award from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and a Book Arts Grant from the Women’s Studio Workshop. Her video Draft 9 received the Directors Choice Award at the International Festival of Documentary Films in Jihlava, Czech Republic in 2005. Dani was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1972, she lives and works in Rosendale, New York.
GLITCH: Creative Problem Creating
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 15, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 6pm | Curator Jon Satrom in person!
What happens when the creative roadblocks—errors, glitches, accidents—become the building blocks in the art-making process? This program highlights artists who intentionally create problems by corrupting data, hacking signals, and manipulating the medium, often to the point of challenging its own display. Curated by new media artist and SAIC faculty member Jon Satrom, tonight’s problem-ridden program gathers together films, videos, corrupted data, hacked TV broadcasts, interactive DVDs, and modified GameBoy tools that revel in failure, rejoice in errors, and celebrate the happy accident. Works include: My%Desktop (JODI, 2002), Suicide Solution (Brody Condon, 2004), Line (Siebren Versteeg, (2000); 486 Short Videos (LoVid, 2008), gameboy_ultraF_uk, (Corby & Baily, 2001); Atari Noise (Arcangel Constantini, 2000); The Website Is Down (Josh Weinberg, 2008); Tiedown (Karl Komp & Totek, 2008), Blinq (Billy Roisz, 2002); Enter the Devil (reMI, 2000); among others. 1966—2008, various directors, various countries, multiple formats, ca 90 min.
Robert Breer by Jim Trainor
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 11, 2008
Check out this 1979 interview with Robert Breer by animator and SAIC Film/Video and New Media Chair, Jim Trainor. It was published in 1980, by the Columbia University literary magazine, Upstart.
Download the full interview here.
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.
