Yvonne Rainer: Lives of Performers
April 12, 6:00 p.m. | Yvonne Rainer in person! Yvonne Rainer, Lives of Performers (1972). Courtesy Zeitgeist Films. Join us for an evening with filmmaker, choreographer, and poet Yvonne Rainer and a rare screening of her acclaimed first feature, Lives of Performers, shown from a pristine new print. Embodying Rainer’s aesthetic rigor and wit, the film […]
We Began By Measuring Distance
Thursday, February 9, 6:00 p.m. | Basma Alsharif in person! Introduced by Tirtza Even! Basma al-Sharif, We Began By Measuring Distance (2009). Courtesy the artist. “We Began By Measuring Distance” reflects on intrinsic and imposed distances—physical, logistical, and psychological—represented in works by women filmmakers from or connected to Palestine, including Jumana Emil Abboud, Basma Alsharif, […]
LAURA PARNES’S BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Thursday, September 29, 6:00 pm | Laura Parnes in person! Image from Blood and Guts in High School (Laura Parnes, 2004-06). Courtesy the artist. Laura Parnes’s bracingly inventive, stylized films and videos operate at the intersection of narrative film and video art. This evening, Parnes will present her acclaimed feature, Blood and Guts in High […]
The Wild Triumphs of Martha Colburn
Thursday, February 10, 6:00 pm | Martha Colburn in person! Destiny Manifesto (Martha Colburn, 2006). Courtesy the artist. Martha Colburn’s wickedly witty animations are assemblages of stop-motion puppetry, multi-layered glass painting, and all forms of pop cultural detritus. Drawing inspiration from the histories of the American West and more recent narratives of methamphetamine use and […]
NAOMI UMAN: THE UKRAINIAN TIME MACHINE
Thursday, March 25, 6pm | Naomi Uman in person! Still from “Unnamed Film” (Naomi Uman, 2008), part of the Ukrainian Time Machine, 2008. Courtesy the artist. In 2006, experimental filmmaker Naomi Uman retraced her great grandparents’ emigration from Eastern Europe in reverse, settling in the tiny village of Legedzine, Ukraine, where she still lives today. […]
THE BLINDNESS SERIES
Thursday, March 11, 6pm | Tran, T. Kim-Trang in person! Still from “ekleipsis” (Tran, T. Kim-Trang, 1998), part of the Blindness Series, 1992-2006. Courtesy the artist and the Video Data Bank. The Blindness Series is Los Angeles-based artist Tran, T. Kim-Trang’s expansive, fourteen-years-in-the-making tour de force on vision and its metaphors. Comprised of eight videos, […]
AN EVENING WITH DARA BIRNBAUM
Thursday, February 11, 6pm | Dara Birnbaum in person! Still from Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (Dara Birnbaum, 1978-79). Courtesy the Video Data Bank. Thirty years before the ubiquitous YouTube mash-up, artist Dara Birnbaum hijacked television imagery in a series of coolly ironic videos that recontextualized pop cultural icons (Wonder Woman, Kojak, Laverne & Shirley), TV grammar […]
ALL TOGETHER NOW: VIDEOS BY HARRY DODGE & STANYA KAHN
Thursday, November 5, 6pm | Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn in person! Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, “Can’t Swallow It, Can’t Spit it Out” (2006). Image courtesy of Elizabeth Dee Gallery. With a biting yet surprisingly tender wit, Los Angeles performance and video artists Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn couch social critique in bizarre, hilarious, […]
Chick Strand: SOFT FICTION
Thursday, September 24, 2009, 6pm Chick Strand, circa 1970. Photo by Neon Park. Celebrated West Coast filmmaker Chick Strand passed away this past summer, leaving behind a body of sensual and smart work significant for its radical exploration of the space between documentary and poetry, truth and fiction, and the politics and pleasure of representation. […]
Through the Looking Glass: Videos by Cecelia Condit
Thursday, February 12, 2009, 6pm | Cecelia Condit in person! Cecelia Condit, Annie Lloyd (2008). Image courtesy of the artist. Since the early 1980s, Cecelia Condit has garnered acclaim for her sweetly gruesome stories of menaced and menacing women. Cultural critic Laura Kipnis calls Condit, “the most serious practitioner of the grotesque in video art” […]
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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.
