. Conversations at the Edge (CATE)

On Lee Anne Schmitt

This week, we are excited to welcome Los Angeles-based filmmaker Lee Anne Schmitt for a screening of her latest film Purge This Land (2017), made in collaboration with her partner, experimental jazz and rock musician, Jeff Parker. Through the life and legacy of the radical abolitionist John Brown, Purge This Land reflects on how the shadows of […]

March 1 – Lee Anne Schmitt: Purge This Land

Just before his execution, abolitionist John Brown wrote, “I am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” Brown was hung on December 2, 1859, less than two months after he led a raid on a federal armory in an attempt to incite an armed […]

On Ephraim Asili

We are delighted to welcome Zach Vanes of the Video Data Bank to write for us. In this essay, Vanes discusses The Diaspora Suite, a series of films on the African diaspora by Video Data Bank artist Ephraim Asili. Screening this week at Conversations at the Edge, these films bring together archival research and Asili’s travels to chart […]

February 22 – Ephraim Asili: The Diaspora Suite

In 2011, New York-based filmmaker, DJ, and traveler Ephraim Asili began an extraordinary series of films on the African diaspora. These films—Forged Ways (2011), American Hunger (2013), Many Thousands Gone (2015), Kindah (2016), and Fluid Frontiers (2017)—bring together archival research and Asili’s travels through Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jamaica, and the United States to chart cultural connections across time and space. Fluid Frontiers, for example, explores […]

On Latham Zearfoss

Our spring 2018 season premieres today with work by Chicago-based artist and School of the Art Institute of Chicago alum, Latham Zearfoss (BFA 2008). Zearfoss produces time-based images, objects, and experiences about selfhood and otherness. Outside of the studio, they contribute to collective motions toward joy and reflection through social projects. This week, we welcome […]

February 15 – Latham Zearfoss: Home Movies

Chicago-based artist and organizer Latham Zearfoss (BFA 2008) has built a multifaceted body of work that unites themes of love, community, family, political legacy, personal agency, and collective action. Their poetic and pop-infused videos mine the territory between public and private, reason and emotion, the extraordinary, and the everyday. In HOME MOVIE (2012) cell phone videos of […]

On Jim Trainor

Our fall 2017 season kicks off this week with a screening of The Pink Egg, the first live-action feature by Chicago filmmaker and animator Jim Trainor.

October 12 – Jim Trainor: The Pink Egg

Featuring his trademark dark comedy and fascination with the natural world, Chicago-based animator Jim Trainor explores the complex and curious lives of insects in his first live-action feature. Casting humans in the starring roles, The Pink Egg follows life-cycles of “The Seven Sisters,” a group of evolutionarily related wasps and bees. Unitard costumes and candy-colored props set the […]

On Wael Shawky

We are excited to screen Cabaret Crusades, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky’s three-part re-staging of the medieval upheaval between the Muslim and Christian worlds. Born in Alexandria in 1971, Wael Shawky makes work that tackles notions of national, religious and artistic identity through film, performance and storytelling. This week, we welcome School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduate student Sama […]

April 13 – Wael Shawky: Cabaret Crusades

The rich and provocative work of Egyptian artist Wael Shawky uses film and performance to explore the complexities of national, religious, and artistic identity. With the three-part Cabaret Crusades, he restages the medieval upheaval between Muslim and Christian worlds with a cast of exquisitely crafted marionettes and score derived from Shia lamentation criers and traditional […]

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