I Love Presets
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | February 21, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008, 6pm | Rob Ray, Jon Satrom, & Jason Soliday in person!
As I Love Presets, Chicago-based sound and new media artists Rob Ray, Jon Satrom, and Jason Soliday do everything wrong the right way. The trio manipulates found sounds and animated GIFs on home-brewed equipment in spectacular live audio/video performances, breaking down, complicating, and glorifying instrument settings, tool presets, and art-making interfaces normally accepted as fixed and stable. From Excel spreadsheets and video games to hacked Casios and discarded drum machines, any and everything electronic is fair game. Tonight, the trio will play several new pieces and demo their latest instruments and a video game. 2008, Rob Ray, Jon Satrom, & Jason Soliday, USA, ca 90 min, various formats.
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Tags: Live Cinema > New Media > Performance > SAIC Alumni > SAIC Faculty
Clandestinos! Mapping Cuba’s Digital Audiovisual Landscape
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | February 14, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008, 6pm | Cristina Venegas in person!
In recent years, Cuba has witnessed an explosion of independent media, ushered in by a dynamic new generation of artists and filmmakers and the increasing availability of digital technologies. Presented as part of a month-long series of Cuban film and video at the Film Center, this program gathers together independent work from throughout the nation—from inventive artist videos to documentaries produced by rural mountain communities—to provide a rare survey of Cuba’s media landscape today. Hombres verdes (2006, Yimit R. González), Degeneración (2006, Aram Vidal Alejandro), Comiendo mierda con la cámara de video (2002, Lázaro Saavedra), Invierno (2006, Roberto Renán Pérez / TV Serrana), Pool With Two Figures (2002, Juan Carrillo), Ping Pong (2006, Luis o Miguel), DeMoler (2004, Alejandro Ramírez Anderson), La época, el encanto y el fin de siglo (1999, Juan Carlos Cremata). Introduced by film scholar and Latino CineMedia Festival co-founder Cristina Venegas. Co-presented by The Nineteenth Step. In Spanish with English subtitles. 1999–2006, various directors, Cuba, ca. 90 min, various formats.
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About the Latino CineMedia Festival
Cuban film at the Gene Siskel Film Center
Tags: Caribbean > Curators and Programmers > Group Programs > Non-Fiction
eteam!
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | February 7, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008, 6pm | Franziska Lamprecht & Hajoe Moderegger in person!
- eteam, 1.1 Acre Flat Screen (2002). Image courtesy of the artists.
Since 2002, the German-born, New York-based duo eteam (Franziska Lamprecht and Hajoe Moderegger) has undertaken a series of witty land-use experiments on small tracts of land purchased through eBay in the American Southwest. Carried out under the guise of “home improvement,” each project is also an inspired investigation into our collective fantasies about the West and its everyday reality. Their most recent effort is a collaboration with their neighbors in tiny Montello, Nevada (“the town that refuses to die”) to create an International Airport and transform the desolate flyover zone into a busy hub. The duo’s experiments become the raw material for their droll videos, three of which will screen tonight: 1.1 Acre Flat Screen (2002) chronicles their first successful land bid; Artificial Traffic Jam (2005) details their ironic efforts to improve the value of their second plot; and International Airport Montello (2007) explores the Montello collaboration in a stunning, three-channel composition. Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. 2002–07, Franziska Lamprecht & Hajoe Moderegger, USA, ca 90 min, various formats.
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About International Airport Montello
Zack Stiglicz: Posthumously Yours
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | January 31, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008, 6pm
When noted Chicago filmmaker, painter, and SAIC faculty member Zack Stiglicz passed away this fall, he left behind a singular body of work. Originally trained as a political scientist, Stiglicz began a new career in art in the late 1980s. His richly textured films and videos weave together desire, violence, masculinity and metaphysics, “literally shred[ing] images of dreams, memories, symbols, and myths into a multi-layered, molten, fin-de-siècle statement” (MoMA). They remain, writes Stiglicz’s wife and fellow filmmaker Shellie Fleming, “both as documentation and as experiences for the audience…mercurial, volatile, yet infinitely tender.” Featuring: Aristophanes on Broadway (1991); Coiled (1991); Nothing, Nobody, Nowhere (1994); God the Pugilist (1996); Murder Will Out (2001); posthumously yours (2003). 1991–2003, Zack Stiglicz, USA, ca. 90 min, various formats.
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At Sea
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 29, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007, 6pm | Peter Hutton in person!
Renowned for his exquisitely photographed land- and cityscapes, Peter Hutton’s latest film is an epic story of the birth, life, and death of the modern container ship. Shot over a period of three years, At Sea opens on a hyper-modern South Korean shipyard, where supertankers loom over the workers who build them, then journeys through the swells and storms of the North Atlantic, and closes on a maritime grave in Bangladesh where ship breakers scrap the beached leviathans piece by piece under medieval conditions. Beautifully shot and keenly observed, Hutton’s film showcases the environmental and human dramas that play out in the life cycle of this invisible engine of globalization and modern-day Noah’s Ark. 2007, Peter Hutton, USA, 60 min, 16mm.
LoVid: Flipped Chips
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 15, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007, 6pm | Tali Hinkis, Kyle Lapidus, and Jon Satrom in person!
- Jon Satrom, Yuppster Video (2003). Image courtesy of the artist.
Curated by the interdisciplinary artist-duo LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus), Flipped Chips pairs the work of pioneering video artists who built their own A/V hardware with the work of a younger generation now doing the same. In the 1970s, artists built hardware instruments in an era of idealism, with the hope their technological advancements would elicit widespread cultural and social change. Today, artists reared in the subsequent “media revolution” return to the tools of their predecessors, inspired by noise, glitch, and hacker culture, as well as the fragility, unpredictability, and limitations of technology and its attendant dreams. Program includes Heart Beat (1970, Bill Etra); Soundgated Images (1974, Steina and Woody Vasulka); Union (1975, Stephen Beck); A Tale of Two Cities (1992, Nam June Paik and Paul Garrin); Spiral 5 PTL (1981, Dan Sandin); Ambient Dance (1986, Jim Wiseman, excerpt); Lumpy Banger (1986, Matthew Schlanger); Rex (2005, Karl Klomp); Yuppster Video (2003, Jon Satrom; Tea w/ Gallactus (2005, noteNdo); Cyclopsii (2006, LoVid); Bye Bye One (2006, NotTheSameColor [billy roisz + dieb13]); Synthcart (2006, Paul Slocum, 2006); Super Mario Movie (2005, Cory Arcangel [beige] and Paper Rad); and special live performances by LoVid and Jon Satrom. 1970–2007, various directors, USA, ca. 120 min, various formats.
Tags: Early Video Art > Live Cinema > Performance > SAIC Faculty > Sound
The Speculative Archive
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 11, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007, 6pm | Julia Meltzer and David Thorne in person!
- Speculative Archive, We Will Live To See These Things… (2007). Image courtesy of the artists.
The effects of state secrets and political uncertainty are at the center of LA-based artist-duo The Speculative Archive’s (Julia Meltzer and David Thorne) work. The two create electrifyingly smart and poetic videos about the ways governments “revision” history and the ways that history shapes our present-day lives and hopes for the future. Shot in Syria, their latest work explores the way everyday people imagine their future while their nation struggles between the forces of a repressive regime, a growing conservative Islamic movement, and mounting pressures from the United States. In Not a matter of if but when… (2006), Syrian performer Rami Farah allegorizes the complications, frustrations, and heartache of the Middle East’s current state-of-affairs through a series of extraordinary vignettes. The prize-winning We will live to see these things, or, five pictures of what may come to pass (2007) pieces together five competing visions of Syria’s future to create a compelling portrait of Syria today. Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. 2006–2007, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, Syria/USA, ca. 70 min, video.
Tags: Middle East > Monographic Shows > Political > USA > Video Data Bank
Outer Ear Festival of Sound: Chris Mann, Danièle Wilmouth, and Morganville
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 8, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007, 8:15pm | Chris Mann, Danièle Wilmouth, Trevor Martin, and Kym Olsen in person!
- Danièle Wilmouth, A Heretic’s Primer on Love and Exertion (2007). Image courtesy of the artist.
The Outer Ear Festival of Sound and CATE present a special two-part evening of films, videos, and performances that mine the relationships between sound, performance, and cinema. For this program, renowned Australian poet, composer, and performer Chris Mann takes advantage of the Film Center’s surround-sound system in boy, what god could’ve done if only he’d had money, a tour-de-force multi-channel audio performance of intelligence and wit. Mann’s performance is paired with SAIC faculty member Danièle Wilmouth’s film collaboration with the performance duo Morganville (SAIC alumni Kym Olsen and Trevor Martin, also SAIC faculty), A Heretics Primer on Love & Exertion: 29 Incidents of Dual Consequence. Scored by Mark Messing and Split Lip Rayfield, Martin and Olsen slip from monologue to dance, trousers to dresses, and male to female as the camera spins around them. “A restless revelation of what film can be” –Goat Island member Matthew Goulish. The Outer Ear Festival of Sound is the only comprehensive interdisciplinary sonic arts festival in the Midwest. Co-presented by Experimental Sound Studio and SAIC’s Department of Sound. 2007, Chris Mann and Danièle Wilmouth, Australia/USA, ca. 70 min, various formats.
Tags: Australia > Live Cinema > Performance > SAIC Alumni > SAIC Faculty
Outer Ear Festival of Sound: The Hysterical Alphabet
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 8, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007, 6pm | Terri Kapsalis, John Corbett, and Danny Thompson in person!
- The Hysterical Alphabet (2007). Written by Terri Kapsalis, video by Danny Thompson. Image courtesy of Danny Thompson.
The Outer Ear Festival of Sound and CATE present a special two-part evening of films, videos, and performances that mine the relationships between sound, performance, and cinema. Hysterical historia. Historical hysteria. The ABCs are seized by a convulsive fit in writer and SAIC faculty member Terri Kapsalis’s The Hysterical Alphabet, each letter introducing an episode direct from the annals of medical lore. Backed by Danny Thompson’s disquieting film collages and SAIC faculty member John Corbett’s vinyl manipulations, Alphabet tracks centuries of female malady, disproving the theory that “time heals all wombs.” A Theater Oobleck production. The Outer Ear Festival of Sound is the only comprehensive interdisciplinary sonic arts festival in the Midwest. 2007, Terri Kapsalis, John Corbett, and Danny Thompson, USA, ca. 75 min, various formats.
A reception and performance by Fred Lonberg-Holm will follow the 6pm show.
At the Heart of a Sparrow: Videos by Barry Doupé
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 25, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007, 6pm
Barry Doupé in person!
The unnervingly seductive videos of Vancouver-based artist and animator Barry Doupé blend painterly skill with the look of early 3D video games in gothic dreamscapes, at once familiar and forever out of reach. Pegged as one of Canada’s rising stars, with screenings across North America and Europe, Doupé is also a member of The Lions, a collaborative drawing group gaining notoriety for their evocative “exquisite corpse” illustrations and watercolors. Tonight’s program features a selection of Doupé’s animation and a glimpse at his latest work-in-progress. In Boy on a Dock Blowing His Nose (2004), opaque figures drift in muggy pools of pastel watercolors; a deer-child is subjected to a series of increasingly cruel tests in At the Heart of a Sparrow (2006); and the Oedipal drama is repeated ad infinitum in Distraught Mother Reunites with Her Children (2005). Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. 2004–06, Barry Doupé, Canada, ca. 70 min, video.
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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.
