Mysterial Power: Recent Video by Lana Lin
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 9, 2003
Thursday, October 9, 2003, 8:15pm
Lana Lin in person!
Translations of all types are the subject of video artist Lana Lin’s recent work. No Power to Push Up The Sky (2001) is structured around an interview with Chinese student activist Chai Ling in the turbulent days before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre; Lin asked fifteen Chinese-and-English speakers to translate Chai Ling’s emotional speech, thus uncovering the subjective motivations underlying any retelling of history (the title derives, poignantly, from a slogan the 23-year-old student leader scrawled on her clothing to express the feeling of helplessness in the face of state power). Drawing a connection between electronic and cultural translation, Taiwan Video Club (1999) features the artist’s mother engaging in the “benignly illegal trafficking” of bootleg videos dubbed from Taiwanese television. The network of elderly Asian-American women who share the tapes grapple with degenerating image quality but find unity in native culture and common past. Finally, translations of a spiritual sort inform Mysterial Power (2002) which draws inspiration from the artist’s adolescent cousin in Taiwan, who has been communicating with deities of Taiwanese mythology since childhood; Lin describes the work as “both a personal and ethnographic pursuit of knowledge,” in which “the figure of the modern spiritual medium acts as a translator between different categories of experience” (Jim Trainor). 1999—2002, Lana Lin, Taiwan/USA, ca. 90 min, various formats.
Alma
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | October 2, 2003
Thursday, October 2, 2003, 8:15pm
Ruth Leitman in person!
“Everyone I’m related to is some weird, comical pervert,” observes Margie Thorpe of Atlanta, and the rest of this edgy, intimate documentary bears her out, sometimes hilariously, sometimes with horror. Take mother Alma for instance – a working class Norma Desmond who spins tall tales out of tragic memories, but whose obsessive devotion to her daughter masks a bitter secret. Charismatic nightclub performer Margie is something of a Southern diva, but she moves from persona to person after purging this story, as Alma glides from character study to an unnerving tale of mental illness, redemption and forgiveness. As Margie questions her mother about the true details of the past and enlists filmmaker Leitman in the process of uncovering, the film pushes the boundaries of the filmmaker/subject relationship. Also screening: excerpts from Leitman’s work-in-progress, Lipstick and Dynamite, about the pioneers of girl wrestling (Jim Trainor). 1998, Ruth Leitman, USA, 91 min, 16mm.
Nema Problema
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 25, 2003
Thursday, September 25, 2003, 8pm
Susana Foxley in person!
In conjunction with the Film Center’s “Pinochet and Beyond: Contemporary Chilean Documentary” series, Conversations at the Edge is proud to present this poignant clash-of-cultures study, presented by co-director Susana Foxley. Nema Problema (the title is Serbian) traces the lives of 26 refugees from the Balkans War of 1991 who decide to accept the first resettlement program of the United Nations in Latin America, and immigrate to Chile. Their warm welcome by the cheerful Chileans, proud of their new role as benefactors, cannot mask the economic slump which sets the immigrants’ new-found freedom against a material existence more precarious, for some, than before. Foxley and Leighton portray the Croat, Serb and Bosnian refugees as individuals and set their varied attitudes – from snobbish to grateful to resignedly analytical – against the ingenuous observations of their government-appointed Chilean cook. A tale of best intentions with an ironic conclusion, Nema Problema traces a process of disillusionment and along the way demystifies Chile’s self-image as a melting pot – with echoes for the USA (Jim Trainor). 2001, Susanna Foxley & Cristian Leighton, Chile, 62 min, video.
Codependence Some More! Contemporary Independent Animation
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 18, 2003
Thursday, September 18, 2003, 8pm
- James Duesing, Tender Bodies (2003).
Animator and School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor Chris Sullivan has put together a collection of recent work by animators from Chicago and beyond, leaning toward neurosis, relationship dynamics and attraction to disaster. Wild animals confess their sins in Jim Trainor’s work-in-progress Harmony, here presented with live narration; genetically altered characters hunt and are hunted as curiosities in Jim Deusing’s Tender Bodies; a couple negotiates the attraction and repulsion of intimacy in Meredith Miller’s chilly cutout film The Anatomical Distinction; Sole Traverso Munich’s The Ants begins with a video-game war landscape, then takes us into an interior space whose occupants are unmoved by the events around them; a famous human disaster is seen from a nonhuman perspective in Jean Pascal Princiaux’s The Iceberg Club; Robert Becraft presents a world of beings trapped in indecision, where every act gains gravity the longer it is avoided or anticipated in On Stilt Legs (Jim Trainor). 2002—2003, various directors, ca. 85 min, various formats.
Tags: Animation > Chicago > Curators and Programers > SAIC Faculty > USA
Dead Birds
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 11, 2003
Thursday, September 11, 2003, 8pm
“When I walked away from watching Dead Birds I almost seemed to stagger inside myself. Today I am still jarred by it and still trying to understand the guilty significance of what it tells us about ourselves.” (Robert Lowell)
Highly acclaimed yet rarely screened outside of anthropology circles, Dead Birds is a non-fiction film about one of the most remote cultures on earth, the Dani of highlands New Guinea. Filmmaker Robert Gardner (Forest of Bliss) was leader of a 1961-62 Harvard University expedition to the Dani’s Baliem Valley, where his team found a society of people locked in a pattern of incessant warfare against their immediate neighbors. Sober in tone, yet with a certain gritty lyricism, Dead Birds focuses on the warrior Weyak and the boy Pua, the pig-tender, as they go about their daily lives in a world circumscribed by chronic anxiety, obligate vengeance and mourning (Jim Trainor). 1964, Robert Gardner, USA, 83 min, 16mm.
Anti-Space Suit: The Dirty Future
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | September 4, 2003
Thursday, September 4, 2003, 9:30pm
Curators Ben Russell & Sabine Gruffat in person!
UFO’s made of cotton fluff. Cyber-diving rods. Sad robots. Cosmic floating beauty aids. All of this is but a small bit of the detritus that litters our dirty future, a new reality of the always everyday. Media artists Sabine Gruffat and Ben Russell curated this evening of recent experimental video works, presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Anti-Spacesuit: The Dirty Future” at Gallery 2 (847 W Jackson, 8/23-10/11). The program includes: Leaving the 20th Century (1982, Max Almy), Mercury Moon and Warm Jets (2001/2000, Kim Collmer), Out of Space (2003, Sabine Gruffat), Ashley (1997, Animal Charm), The Mysterious Disappearance of Akirema (2003, Stephanie Rosenberg), Lichenland (2003, Lichenland), Skin Job (2002, Jennifer Reeder), No Sunshine (1998, Bjorn Melhus), The Sad Robot (1996, Forcefield), The Ataraxians (2003, Sabine Gruffat and Ben Russell) Co-presented with the Video Data Bank (Jim Trainor). 1982—2003, various directors, ca. 84 min, various formats.
Tags: Chicago > Curators and Programers > Experimental > SAIC Alumni > Video Data Bank
A Body Owner’s Manual: Work by Frédéric Moffet & Daniéle Wilmouth
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | May 8, 2003
Thursday, May 8, 2003, 8pm
Frédéric Moffet & Daniéle Wilmouth in person!
For those of us who need such lessons, Department of Film, Video, and New Media faculty members Frédéric Moffet & Daniéle Wilmouth present five short works that provide technical instruction on the vast possible uses of the human body. Lesson #1: Movement, Myth & Intimacy – Curtain of Eyes (1997). Lesson #2: The Art of Disappearance – Five O’Clock Shadow (1998). Lesson #3: Ceremony, Ritual & Healing – Tracing a Vein (2001). Lesson#4: A Guide to Gaining – Hard Fat (2002). Lesson #5: Ethics & Body Replication – Round (2002). 1997—2002, various directors, USA, ca. 75 min, various formats.
Tags: Non-Fiction > Performance > Political > SAIC Alumni > SAIC Faculty
Edward Rankus: Selected Works
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | May 1, 2003
Thursday, May 1, 2003, 8pm
Edward Rankus in person!
Internationally recognized video artist and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Edward Rankus will present a selection from his award-winning work, including: the premiere of Go Fall Apart (2003), an erotic and mystical misadventure where the allure of the religious path is strewn with earthly temptations; Naked Doom (1983) is a noir-ish metaphysical romp through the tortured psyche of an overwrought killer; She Heard Voices (1986), in which a woman is having a mysterious dream; Nerve Language (1995) is a meditation on the fragility of the human body with simple objects acting as stand-ins for that body (Edward Rankus). 1983—2003, Edward Rankus, USA, ca. 58 min, video.
The Servant’s Shirt (Nankar Ki Kameez)
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 24, 2003
Thursday, April 24, 2003, 8pm
Mani Kaul in person!
Artist-in-Residence Mani Kaul’s third program in our spring Conversations at the Edge series is his deeply compassionate exploration of social issues confronting ordinary Indians, The Servant’s Shirt. In a small Indian town in the early 1960’s, a young, lower caste couple – Santu and his wife Bahu – struggle with a leaking roof and occupational challenges and frustration. Through an experimental narrative form, the film touches on sickness, social intercourse, poverty and class struggle as Kaul successfully portrays the claustrophobic and rigid hierarchical structure that dominates the small town in which the protagonists live. The Servant’s Shirt is an affecting study on the idea of creativity and individual freedom, an ongoing theme in Kaul’s work. 1999, Mani Kaul, India, 104 min, 35mm.
Still/Here and Perseverance and How to Develop It
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | April 17, 2003
Thursday, April 17, 2003, 8pm
STILL/HERE
2000, Chris Harris, USA, 60 min, 16mm
and
PERSEVERANCE AND HOW TO DEVELOP IT
2002, Jenny Perlin, USA, 14 min, 16mm
Directors in person!
The Department of Film, Video & New Media is pleased to welcome back alumni Chris Harris and Jenny Perlin to present their most recent films. Inspired in part by Eugene Aget’s photographs of Paris, Still/Here is Harris’s meditation on the vast landscape of ruins and vacant lots that constitute much of north St. Louis, an area that is home to many working class and working poor African Americans. Though such subject matter has traditionally been approached through the conventions of documentary realism, Still/Here obliquely acknowledges these conventions even as it interrupts them with a series of self-reflexive breakdowns, erasures and gaps. Perlin’s Perseverance and How to Develop It investigates the connections between depression, self-help, controlled environments and success in the US. Perlin pulls together interviews, recreations of people acting out their neurosis, and rare archival footage of union riots from the 1940’s, as well as texts from self-help books and Freud, to create ironic connections between a success oriented workforce then and now. (Descriptions courtesy of Madcat Film Festival)
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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.
