{"id":10253,"date":"2025-11-24T14:04:46","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T20:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/?p=10253"},"modified":"2025-12-02T16:15:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T22:15:24","slug":"frederic-moffet-youre-too-lovely-to-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/2025\/11\/24\/frederic-moffet-youre-too-lovely-to-last\/","title":{"rendered":"Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet: You\u2019re Too Lovely To Last"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Fre\u0301de\u0301ric
Fre\u0301de\u0301ric Moffet Goddess of Speed <\/em>2023. Courtesy of the artist and Video Data Bank.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Join artist and filmmaker Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet for a screening that pairs three of his recent films with works by kindred artists Jamie Ross, Zuqiang Peng, and Amina Ross.<\/strong>

For over three decades, artist and filmmaker Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet has cultivated a practice rooted in queer relationality\u2014drawing inspiration from early gay liberation and thinkers like Michel Foucault, who imagined queerness as a way of being that fosters new forms of intimacy, community, and care. Moffet\u2019s films grow out of his own networks of relation\u2014pedagogical, intellectual, erotic\u2014and are attuned to ephemerality and loss, recovering fugitive traces from cruising grounds, private archives, and history\u2019s margins. In this program, titled after a lyric by Billie Holiday, he presents three recent films\u2014The Magic Hedge<\/em> (2016), Goddess of Speed<\/em> (2023), and The Job<\/em> (2024)\u2014alongside works by kindred artists Jamie Ross, Zuqiang Peng, and Amina Ross, conjuring themes of beauty, impermanence, desire, and memory.

Followed by a conversation between Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet and the artist, curator, and scholar John Neff.

Presented in partnership with SAIC Galleries\u2019 <\/em>Faculty Sabbatical Triennial, on view August 25\u2013 December 6. Moffet and Amina Ross\u2019s works are also included in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago\u2019s exhibition, <\/em>The Garden in a City: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago, on view through May 31, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2016\u201325, Canada, China, USA
Format: Digital
In English, French, and Mandarin with English subtitles
62 minutes followed by discussion

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet<\/strong> is a French-Canadian filmmaker, artist, and educator whose award-winning work blends formal experimentation with cultural inquiry to explore queer desire, identity, and history. His films have been exhibited internationally at festivals and institutions including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Biennale de l\u2019Image en Mouvement \/ Biennial of Moving Images (Geneva). He has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and earned awards from the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Santiago International Short Film Festival, and FLEX\u2014the Florida Experimental Film\/Video Festival (Gainesville), among others. Moffet is currently professor and chair of the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

PROGRAM

The Magic Hedge
<\/em><\/strong>Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet, 2016, 6 minutes
In Spanish and English with English subtitles<\/em>
Set in a bird sanctuary on Chicago\u2019s North Side\u2014once a Cold War missile site\u2014The Magic Hedge<\/em> reveals the park\u2019s hidden life as a site of queer cruising. Wandering through trees and shrubberies, the viewer encounters a space shaped by danger, respite, surveillance, and desire.

La Jungle (Spoils of the Park) work-in-progress
<\/em><\/strong>Jamie Ross, 2025, 11 minutes<\/em>
In English and French with English subtitles<\/em>
Work-in-progress excerpts from Jamie Ross’s upcoming feature. A glimpse into the cruising subculture of Montreal\u2019s Mount Royal Park, where moments of connection unfold under the shadow of persistent police violence.

Sight Leak
<\/em><\/strong>Zuqiang Peng, 2022, 12 minutes<\/em>
In Mandarin with English subtitles<\/em>
Loosely inspired by a text by Roland Barthes, Sight Leak<\/em> takes the perspective of a fl\u00e2neur trailing a man through bars, streets, the cinema, and a mall. Their relationship remains undefined\u2014stalker, friend, or something in between\u2014casting desire and surveillance in an ambiguous light.

The Job
<\/em><\/strong>Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet, 2024, 15 minutes<\/em>
This intimate portrait explores the erotic archive of Canadian photographer John Phillips, who worked in the 1990s for gay male magazines in the US. Tracing the impact of the AIDS crisis and the rise of the digital era, the film reflects on an artist\u2014and an industry\u2014at the threshold of cultural and technological transformation.

Man\u2019s Country
<\/em><\/strong>Amina Ross, 2021, 8 minutes<\/em>
Using publicly sourced images, Ross digitally reconstructs the now-demolished interior of Chicago\u2019s longest-running gay bathhouse, inserting themself into a space they could previously not enter. The result is a meditation on memory, desire, and the longing for sites of queer intimacy, connection, and transformation.

Goddess of Speed
<\/em><\/strong>Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet, 2023, 9 minutes<\/em>
A speculative reimagining of Warhol\u2019s lost Dance Movie<\/em>, Goddess of Speed <\/em>casts artist Stevie Cisneros Hanley as queer dancer Fred Herko in the final days of his life. The film draws on fragmented descriptions and the memoir of Herko\u2019s close friend, poet Diane Di Prima.

ACCESSIBILITY

<\/strong>Conversations at the Edge events have live captions (CART). The Gene Siskel Film Center is fully ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Join artist and filmmaker Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet for a screening that pairs three of his recent films with works by kindred artists Jamie Ross, Zuqiang Peng, and Amina Ross. For over three decades, artist and filmmaker Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet has cultivated a practice rooted in queer relationality\u2014drawing inspiration from early gay liberation and thinkers like Michel Foucault, […]<\/p>\n

Read More… from Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Moffet: You\u2019re Too Lovely To Last<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337,"featured_media":10254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[880],"tags":[115,491,518,623],"class_list":["post-10253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-880","tag-chicago","tag-queer","tag-saic-faculty","tag-video-data-bank"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10259,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10253\/revisions\/10259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}