. Conversations at the Edge (CATE)

Spring 2015 Season Wrap-Up

It’s with a heavy heart that we call a close on the busy Spring 2015 season of CATE. We have welcomed artists from far and wide to present a diverse and eclectic spectrum of work here in Chicago this spring. From Soon-Mi Yoo’s beautiful and complex Songs from the North, a film that weaves biography, archival […]

On “Projections, Portraits, and Picaresques”

Projections, Portraits, and Picaresques: Works by Mary Helena Clark, Mariah Garnett, and Latham Zearfoss screens the at Gene Siskel Film Center tomorrow, Thursday, April 23rd at 6pm. Mary Helena Clark, Mariah Garnett, and Latham Zearfoss in person!  Ouroboros—an ancient symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail. Rather than requiring or demanding a space, this reworking […]

Apr 23 – Projections, Portraits, and Picaresques: Works by Mary Helena Clark, Mariah Garnett, and Latham Zearfoss

Thursday, April 23rd | Mary Helena Clark, Mariah Garnett, and Latham Zearfoss in person! Artists Mary Helena Clark, Mariah Garnett, and Latham Zearfoss (BFA 2008) self-reflexively play with portraiture and autobiography in a cultural landscape dominated by selfies and shifting social media platforms. In Home Movie (2012), Zearfoss engages with the contemporary urge to capture personal […]

On Marisa Olson

Tomorrow Marisa Olson will be joining us at the Gene Siskel Film Center to present a selection of her works from the past decade. Olivia Junell, dual degree graduate student in art history and arts administration, blogs for us about Olson’s exploration of technology–it’s precariousness and codependency–within our contemporary culture. Marisa Olson: In Praise of […]

Apr 16 – Marisa Olson: In Praise of Garbage

Thursday, April 16th | Marisa Olson in person! For more than a decade, new media artist, curator, and theorist Marisa Olson has staged on- and offline interventions that shrewdly and often hilariously shed light on the politics of pop culture, histories of technology, and aesthetics of failure. Her projects take shape through an array of forms—YouTube responses […]

On Daniel Sousa

I’m delighted to welcome SAIC art history graduate student Elizabeth Metcalfe to our blog for the second time. Elizabeth writes about Sousa’s unique ability to address the intrinsic human condition through his delicate animation. Keep your eyes peeled for Elizabeth’s upcoming interview with the artist himself! Painting springs to life in Daniel Sousa’s award-winning animated short films. […]

Apr 9 – Daniel Sousa: Feral and other Animations

Thursday, April 9th | Daniel Sousa in person! The lush, painterly films of Cape Verde–born, Providence-based animator Daniel Sousa employ puppets, collage, and hand-drawn characters in tales of memory, perception, and the struggle between the intellect, unconscious, and unknown. A young boy raised in the wild attempts to make his way in civilized society, a man […]

When Art Reveals Unspeakable Social Reality: Recalling Anna

This week for our SAIC student writing series Natalia De Orellana grapples with Massimo Sarchielli and Alberto Grifi’s Anna. She finds herself invested in the directors’ ethics, yet rebuffed by their use of their camera. “We preferred,” explained Grifi, “a movie about reality rather than undertaking the struggle to create a slightly less revolting reality.” Anna | Thursday, April 2nd | Introduced […]

Apr 2 – Anna

Thursday, April 2nd | Introduced by Dennis Lim, Director of Programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center Recently restored by the Cineteca di Bologna, this astonishing 1975 documentary centers on the titular pregnant, homeless 16-year-old girl whom filmmakers Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli encountered in Rome’s Piazza Navona. Mainly shot on then-newfangled video, it documents […]

On Soon-Mi Yoo

An acrobat flies through the darkened hall, followed by two circles of light and a haunting soprano voice. The acrobat seemingly divides into two bodies that intertwine with each other as the music builds to a crescendo. Suddenly, one of the acrobats falls, we hear a startled gasp from the camerawoman, and the footage switches. […]

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