Heaven and Earth Magic
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | February 12, 2004
Thursday, February 12, 2004, 8pm
A magician dismembers a woman and tries to put her back together. Such is the plot of this unique feature-length animation, created with 19th-century engravings and compulsive single-mindedness by Harry Smith (1923-1991), beatnik musicologist and one of cinema’s greatest outsiders. As its cutout protagonists undertake mystical journeys of uncertain purpose, viewers may imagine they are watching a complex and mysterious civilization flourish and self-destruct. Like a Cornell box come to life, but with a strange, hostile energy all its own, Heaven and Earth Magic is absorbing and endlessly interpretable. 16mm (Jim Trainor). 1962, Harry Smith, USA, 66 min, 16mm.
Threads of Belonging
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | February 5, 2004
Thursday, February 5, 2004, 8pm
Jennifer Montgomery in person!
Doctors and their schizophrenic patients live together at Layton House, the therapeutic community at the center of Jennifer Montgomery’s startling study of suffering and idealism. Based on the anti-psychiatry movement and the writings of R.D. Laing, Threads of Belonging is shot in a documentary style but is nevertheless a work of fiction. Montgomery encouraged her actors to improvise as they reenacted actual case histories – indeed, for the filmmaker, “the way actors perform madness and the way real insanity can itself resemble a performance”was a primary strategy. As experimental therapies, power struggles, and the individual arcs of mental illness converge, we see a community struggling to understand itself and determine its destiny (Jim Trainor). 2003, Jennifer Montgomery, USA, 93 min, video.
Animal Attraction
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | December 11, 2003
Thursday, December 11, 2003, 8pm
Kathy High in person!
Animal Attraction is a documentary about the relationship between people and animals, the way we project our hopes and desires onto our pets and ascribe human qualities and attributes to their gestures. Frustrated by the obnoxious behavior of her cat, Ernie, the video maker contacts Spring Farm CARES, an animal sanctuary in upstate New York, where an “interspecies telepathic communicator” teaches her to follow Ernie’s instructions. High will also show works in progress, which also look at telepathy, the nature of becoming another life and entering another self and the ways to mess with transgenic beings. Presented in conjunction with the Video Data Bank (VDB). 2001, Kathy High, USA, 59 min, video.
The Aids Crisis Is Still Beginning: Four Video Works
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | December 4, 2003
Thursday, December 4, 2003, 8pm
Curator Gregg Bordowitz in person!
Introduced by SAIC faculty Gregg Bordowitz, who is himself a person with AIDS and leading figure within the AIDS activist media, this program will show a range of video works addressing the now twenty-year-old AIDS crisis. Following the screening, Bordowitz will lead a discussion about the works and current AIDS issues. Stashu Kybartas’ documentary Danny (1987) juxtaposes images, text and voice-over to build a sense of psychological struggle brought on its subject’s impending, premature death from AIDS; an erotic counterstrike to the Helms Amendment, Tom Kalin’s They Are Lost to Vision Altogether (1988) paints a portrait of the national fear and hysteria that usurped compassion and care for people with AIDS; five HIV-positive gay, black men speak of their individual confrontations with AIDS in Marlon Riggs’s Non, je ne regrette rien (1992); finally, in Jack Lewis’s A Luta Continua (2001) a collective of HIV-positive youths makes short films documenting their own lives, which are then screened at taxi ranks and shopping malls in Cape Town’s townships. Presented in conjunction with the Video Data Bank (Jim Trainor). 1987—2001, various directors, USA/South Africa, ca. 98 min, video.
Bad Ideas for Paradise: Videos by Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 20, 2003
Thursday, November 20, 2003, 8pm
Something funny is going on in the world of Duke and Battersby, the Canadian video artists who put themselves at the center of their collage-like explorations, which, nevertheless, are only marginally autobiographical. Speaking shifty aphorisms, singing doleful folksongs and mingling with psycho-babbling and straight-talking cartoon animals, this self-described “sexually compatible collaborative duo” make a sly joke out of their own alienation. In Curious About Existence (2003), a classroom of earnest students takes in a lecture about thermodynamics and dead human relationships; a couple stumbles around an introverted science fiction apartment in I Am a Conjuror (2003); skateboarding teenage boys and an unseen animal running along the ceiling tiles share the stage in The Fine Arts (2003); “My secrets are so boring. I don’t believe in art or socialism” confesses a robot in Being Fucked Up (2001); the languorous protagonists are halfway to a three-way in the bogus Southern gothic Rapt and Happy (1998). Also includes: Bad Ideas for Paradise (2002) (Jim Trainor). 1998—2003, Duke and Battersby, Canada/USA, ca. 70 min, various formats.
Hyperfictions: Film and Video Work by Abigail Child
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 13, 2003
Thursday, November 13, 2003, 8pm
Abigail Child in person!
Among the most accomplished filmmakers of the contemporary American avant-garde, Abigail Child has created a body of films and video known as much for their formal rigor as for the challenging subjects she explores. Deeply committed to the continuing possibilities of the art of cine-montage, Child expands upon those traditions to explore the unique rhythmic energies unleashed in the collision of image and sound fragments. In a dynamic mix of intellectual and metric montage, Child taps into the frenetic poetry of both actual and virtual worlds, from the public spaces of urban life in the Soviet union in the 20’s and the East Village in the 80’s to the inner spaces of erotic fantasy and gender constructions. The program includes: Shiver (1992); Perils (1986); Covert Action (1984); Mayhem (1987); Mercy (1989); Surface Noise (2000); Dark Dark (2001); Cake + Steak (work in progress) (Jeffrey Skoller). 1984—2003, Abigail Child, USA, ca. 92 min, various formats.
old skool revolutionaries
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | November 6, 2003
Thursday, November 6, 2003, 8:15pm
First in the United States to offer BA and MFA degrees in Video Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has a critically important place in the history of this vital medium. SAIC instructor and digital systems specialist jonCates has delved into the School’s archive of seminal video works to recreate a fleeting moment in the development of a new art form. old skool revolutionaries is a conversation with the past, capturing the playful, freewheeling spirit of the days when new technology met with new ideas and everything was up for grabs. Featuring excerpts from videos, lectures, workshops and performances by Woody and Steina Vasulka, Gene Youngblood, John Sturgeon, Christine Tamblyn, Nancy Bechtol, Jessie Affelder and the late Phil Morton, charismatic video pioneer and one of the founders of both the Video Data Bank and SAIC’s video department. jonCates, 2003, USA, ca. 80 min, video.
Tags: Curators and Programmers > Early Video Art > New Media > Performance > SAIC Faculty
Catfilms (For Sailor and Oscar)
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 30, 2003
Thursday, October 30, 2003, 8:30pm
- Martha Colburn, Cats Amore (2001).
Cinematic catnip from filmmakers old and new! Inspired by Intercat, the late 1960’s-early 1970’s international cat film festival organized by experimental filmmaker Pola Chapelle, Catfilms mixes Intercat gems with contemporary feline flicks in a program at once wild and domestic, standoffish and affectionate. Meow! Programmed by Amy Beste, independent curator and PhD student in film at Northwestern University. Female cats bump and grind and torment the canines in punk animator Martha Colburn’s Cat Amore (2002); the life cycle is touchingly evoked in The Private Life of a Cat (1947), an early work by giant of avant-garde cinema Maya Deren, with Alexander Hammid); Pola Chapelle offers Fishes in Screaming Water (1969), which “stars Georgecat; music composed and performed by his brother, Mamacat”; an investigation, motivated by a cat’s vigilance, reconsiders the spaces we inhabit together in Night Light and Leaping (2000) by Rebecca Meyers; a herring-hungry kitty is trapped in a structuralist nightmare in Joyce Wieland’s Catfood (1967-68); a mysterious bird, a pair of blue cats and a severed head help a girl through a startling metamorphosis in Shawn Atkins’ surreal cut-out animation The Traveling Eye of the Blue Cat (2002); in one of his last works, the late, great Stan Brakhage provides “a household depiction of my cat Max sitting guardian of me, filmed in camera” in Max (2002) (Amy Beste). 1947—2002, various artists, ca. 85 min, various formats.
Tags: Animation > Curators and Programmers > Experimental > SAIC Faculty > USA
Kino Dance: An Evening of Butoh Dance Films
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 23, 2003
Thursday, October 23, 2003, 8pm
Katsura Kan in person!
Emerging in late 1950’s Japan, the dance style known as Butoh is one of that nation’s key contributions to the avant-garde. The Film Center is proud to host the critically acclaimed Butoh dancer Katsura Kan, who visits from Japan to present a collection of rarely seen Butoh-inspired dance films. Co-curated by Daniéle Wilmouth, filmmaker and instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, this program features both historical Butoh works and contemporary titles by international filmmakers. Includes: The Duchess (2002, Eric Koziol) adapts choreographer Shinichi Momo Koga’s Cockroach to eerie effect. British performer Liz Aggiss appears in Motion Control (2001, David Anderson) and Six Anarchic Variations (or: Was She Pushed or Did She Fall?) (2002, Aggiss and Billy Cowie). Other titles TBA. Co-presented by the SAIC Visiting Artist Program, the Performance Department and the Betty Rymer Gallery (Daniéle Wilmouth). 2001—2002, various directors, Japan/UK/USA, ca. 90 min, various formats.
Tags: Asia > Curators and Programmers > Europe > Performance > SAIC Faculty
(Very) Short Films By Kevin Everson
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 16, 2003
Thursday, October 16, 2003, 8pm
Kevin Everson in person!
The relentlessness of everyday life, as well as its beauty, is the subject of Kevin Everson’s twenty-odd short films made over the past eight years. Focusing on working-class African-Americans, these brief, intense works are fictional, but mimic documentary in their naturalism and attention to the material life, tasks and gestures of their protagonists. Correctional officers describe their past and present employment in Eleven Eight Two (1997) and Six Positions (1998); in Merger (1999) a disgruntled bank teller has a system for the morning commute; a poem by Vincent Katz is given visual interpretation in Fumble (2002); set in contemporary Rome, Sportello Quattro (2002) explores immigration, work and community among people of color; Second Shift (1999) reveals a correctional officer’s daily routine of gaining access to the correctional facility; a teenage taxi driver must multitask to keep his job in 72 (2002); in A Week in the Hole (2001) a factory worker adjusts to materials, time and space and personal on his first day on the job; Imported (1999) shows three methods of ridding collard greens of a pesky insect; migration, landscape and elevation are explored in Thermostat (2000); particular sources of luck are the subjects of Pick Six (2001.) and The Daily Number (2001); Vanessa (2002) deals with loss and Michelangelo (Jim Trainor). 1997—2002, Kevin Everson, USA, ca. 70 min, various formats.
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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.
