AN EVENING WITH DARA BIRNBAUM
Posted on | February 5, 2010 | No Comments
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 (inserts, two-shots, wipes), and genres (soap operas, sitcoms, game shows) to reveal their ideological subtexts. Birnbaum described her videos as late 20th century “ready-mades”–works that “manipulate a medium which is itself highly manipulative.” Now renowned as a pioneer in televisual appropriation, she is currently the subject of a major retrospective that began at S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Belgium, and will tour to Museu Fundação Serralves in Porto, Portugal, later in the spring. This evening, Birnbaum will present an overview of her practice, with examples from her seminal early videos (Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978-79; Pop Pop Video: General Hospital/Olympic Speed Skating, 1980), music videos and commercial spots (Airbreak, MTV Inc., 1987), gallery installations (Tiananmen Square: Break-In Transmission, 1989-90), large-scale, interactive outdoor pieces (Rio Videowall, 1989), as well as her latest works. Dara Birnbaum, 1978-2010, USA, multiple formats, ca. 90 min (plus discussion).
DARA BIRNBAUM (b. 1946, New York, NY) lives and works in New York, NY. Previous major solo exhibitions, career overviews, and retrospective screenings include: Kunsthalle Wien and the Norrtälje Konsthall (Sweden); The American Film Institute, Los Angeles and Washington; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Kunstmuseum, Bern; The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Jewish Museum, New York; IVAM Centre de Carme, Valencia; and the Musee d’Art Contemporain, Montreal, in addition to numerous international group shows and museum collections. She has also exhibited in Documenta VII, VIII, and IX, as well as at numerous Venice Biennales. Birnbaum has received myriad awards, including the Special Jury Prize, Deutscher Videokunstpreis, Südwestfunk, Baden-Baden, and Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, 1992; TV Picture Prize, XII Festival International de la Vidéo et des Arts Electroniques, Locarno, Switzerland, 1991; Certificate in Recognition of Service and Contribution to the Arts, Harvard University, 1988; The Maya Deren, American Film Institute Award for Independent Film and Video, 1987; and First Prize for Video, San Sebastian Film Festival, 1983. Birnbaum is represented by the Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris. Her work is distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix and the Video Data Bank.
SPRING 2010 SEASON ANNOUNCED!
Posted on | January 12, 2010 | No Comments
Happy New Year!
Conversations at the Edge kicks off its Spring 2010 season on Thursday, February 4 with the world premiere of Thomas Comerford’s The Indian Boundary Line. Additional highlights include appearances by Dara Birnbaum, Sterling Ruby, Moyra Davey, Tran, T. Kim-Trang, Naomi Uman, Emily Wardill, Ryan Trecartin, the films of Pavel Medvedev, and a live AV performance by glitch animator Takeshi Murata and musician Robert Beatty. Click here for the full lineup.
- Still from The Indian Boundary Line (Thomas Comerford, 2010). Image courtesy the artist.
WORLD PREMIERE: THE INDIAN BOUNDARY LINE
Posted on | January 12, 2010 | No Comments
Thursday, February 4, 6pm | Thomas Comerford in person!
- Still from “The Indian Boundary Line,” 2010. Courtesy the Artist.
Over the last eight years, local musician and filmmaker Thomas Comerford has been at work on a series of quietly-observed films that contemplate the entwined social, political, and environmental histories of Chicago (Figures in the Landscape, 2002; Land Marked/Marquette, 2005). This evening, Comerford will present the world premiere of The Indian Boundary Line (2010). The film follows, as Comerford notes, “a road very close to my home in Chicago, Rogers Avenue,” that traces the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis boundary between the United States and “Indian Territory.” In doing so, it examines the collision between “the vernacular landscape, with its storefronts, short-cut footpaths and picnic tables, and the symbolic one, replete with historical markers, statues, and fences.” Through its observations and audio-visual juxtapositions, The Indian Boundary Line meditates on history and its relationship to the landscape, with its own shifting boundaries, designs, uses and inhabitants across two centuries. With Land Marked/Marquette. Thomas Comerford, 2010, USA, DigiBeta video and 16mm, ca. 75 min (plus discussion).
THOMAS COMERFORD (b. 1970, Richmond, VA) is a media artist, musician, and educator residing in Chicago. Trained in sculpture, performance, and the classics, he began making films in the early 1990s. In 1997, he embarked on an influential series of films, made with a handmade pinhole motion picture camera and microphone, under the title, Cinema Obscura (1997-2002). His recent films are site-specific to Chicago and explore the evidence, revision, and erasure of histories in the landscape. His work has screened at festivals and venues, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the London Film Festival. Comerford has also toured the United States with his films, screening in spaces ranging from church basements and backyards to regular old movie theatres. As songwriter, singer, and producer for the rock band Kaspar Hauser, Comerford has performed his music around the Midwest and eastern U.S. and released three LP records. He currently teaches film production, DIY exhibition, and punk rock history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
An Interview with Laura Heit
Posted on | December 18, 2009 | No Comments
School of the Art Institute Animation Professor Chris Sullivan speaks with Laura Heit about her practice.
Chris Sullivan: What options or answers does animation offer you that are different than other medium?
Laura Heit: My work is visual first, and my background is drawing and printmaking—image making—so this is the way I think, the way I form ideas. Animation is a highly constructed medium, intensely so. There is an innate intimacy in a drawn line or a cut piece of paper and I use that as my voice in my work. The evidence of my hand is the film’s quiddity. The addition of time to drawing and collage is what allows me to tell stories. Live action video and photography feels very raw to me; for myself, my films require another layer of translation.
CS: Your films usually have a female protagonist. Why do you think this is so rare?
LH: I have always chosen a woman as the heroine because that’s what I know, and at the very base level, my work always speaks from personal experience.
CS: Who are some of your art heroes, heroines—in animation, writing, filmmaking, whatever?
LH: David Hockney, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Ingmar Bergman, Guy Madden, Haruki Murakami, Royal Deluxe (giant French Puppets), Hotel Modern (small Dutch puppets), Jim Henson, Hannah Hoch, Italo Calvino, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Janie Geiser, Prince.
CS: What kind of creative relationship do you have with the people who make music for your films?
LH: Music has always been an important part of my process. I haven’t thought about it much other than that I feel I write stories visually, so music complements it organically—where I feel words or text often explain things when I want ideas to be discovered or examined, rather than told. I was working in theater when I first started making films, and the theater work always had a musical element, so I learned to listen and see in this way. I met musicians through the theater and though a love of live music. Most of my earlier films have Chicago musicians I met at the Empty Bottles Free Jazz Tuesdays. I’ve built relationships this way, and when developing a film, I consider the composer/musician early in the process. Then throughout the filmmaking process, it’s a constant dialogue.
CS: Can you talk a bit about the difference between the independent animators world in the U.S. vs. Great Britain?
LH: I went to grad school in London at the Royal College of Art, and stayed on after I graduated to work on a short film commissioned by Channel 4 films and produced by Slinky Pictures. I stayed and worked as an animation director for Slinky for a while after that. London is an amazing place for an animation artist. For twenty years, Channel 4 television was funding independent animation on a very regular basis, so there was a real system of support for new work to be made (a book by Clare Kitson just came out about this). Because of this, there are many small studios of 3-5 people (usually classmates from Royal College of Art). These studios have a great camaraderie—while they are in competition with each other, they are all in favor of keeping the world of independent animation alive. There is a closer relationship with filmmaking than with commercial work. These smaller studios produce short films by their directors whenever they get the chance. Also, the British have a greater appreciation for this kind of work—agencies and television want and expect a more art-based approach to the work when they ask for pitches from animation studios. Here in the States, we are (mostly) run by HUGE studios with a huge reliance on consumer research and fear of the bottom line; the studios here are far less likely to take a risk.
CS: What do you have on the burner these days?
LH: I’m working very slowly on a few projects at the moment. One is a graphic novel based on a true story–it’s about a Succubus and the boy whose soul she must steal. Another is a short film and performance that features a series of cycles, of a woman and a wolf. The animation is done in silhouette using cutouts under the camera and layered with drawings and a collection of long exposure sequences of light through trees at dusk. The loops repeat and change speed altering the translation of the action. A visual dichotomy of fear and desire. This piece works with a singer whose beautiful and eerie voice emulates distant howls.
CS: What’s with the tigers?
LH: I was born in the year of the tiger. Is that what you mean?
LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY
Posted on | December 4, 2009 | No Comments
Thursday, December 10, 6pm | Ben Russell in person!
- Ben Russell, Let Each One Go Where He May (2009). Image courtesy of the artist.
Fresh from its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Chicago-based filmmaker and SAIC alumnus Ben Russell’s stunning feature debut is an epic road movie that draws from documentary and ethnography to imbue its images with a sense of mystery and enchantment. Set in contemporary Suriname (in northeastern South America) and unfolding in 13 extended takes, the film follows two unidentified brothers as they trek from the capital of Paramaribo to the rainforest villages of the Maroons, descendants of African slaves who rebelled against their Dutch captors 300 years ago. Retracing these ancestors’ footsteps, in the opposite direction villagers now take to pursue the global enterprise of the city, Let Each One Go Where He May charts a reverse course through urban congestion, illegal gold mines, Maroon communities, and trance ceremonies to capture a place where history, the supernatural, and modernity collide. 2009, Suriname/USA, 16mm, 135 min.
BEN RUSSELL is an itinerant photographer, curator, and experimental film/video artist whose works have screened in spaces ranging from 14th Century Belgian monasteries to 17th Century East India Trading Co. buildings, police station basements to outdoor punk squats, Japanese cinematheques to Parisian storefronts, and the Sundance Film Festival to the Museum of Modern Art (solo). Russell received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. In addition to his filmmaking, he founded the Magic Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island in 2004 and the Chicago gallery BEN RUSSELL in 2009. A 2008 Guggenheim award recipient, Russell currently teaches at the University of Illinois–Chicago.
“The Unbroken Path: Ben Russell’s Let Each One Go Where He May” by Michael Sicinski, Cinema Scope
Let Each One Go Where He May (EXCERPT) from Ben Russell on Vimeo.
An Interview with Joost Rekveld
Posted on | December 4, 2009 | No Comments
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s F Newsmagazine sits down with Joost Rekveld, Dutch filmmaker and current head of the ArtScience Interfaculty in The Hague. Read the full story in the October edition of F News.
- Joost Rekveld, #23.2 Book of Mirrors, 2007.
F News: In terms of the film work, who would you credit as your influences?
Joost Rekveld: I was triggered to make abstract films by Oskar Fischinger. Also, post-war American abstract films like James Whitney, Jordan Belson, Stan Brahkage. The whole tradition of visual music was very important to me. But the idea of visual music has become less the focus in recent years.
F News: I’m curious about the role that music plays in your work. Are the visuals stimulated by the music, or is the music typically written after the film is completed?
JR: I’m not primarily interested in combining images and sounds, but there are many connections on a higher level, since I see myself as a composer of moving images. My approach is to make a score, and then based on the score I make the imagery. For a while, my dream was to make my own films and my own electronic music. At some point I realized I like electronic music, but I didn’t necessarily like to make it.
Now, I often ask a composer I know to score a film, or I get asked by a composer or theater director to collaborate in a project.
F News: How much direction do you give the composers you work with, and how much artistic liberty do you give them?
JR: We always tend to find common ground in the sense that in the sound, they address the same concepts which inform the images. This method is more about finding a common approach. I choose to work with people I can relate to.
NEW NIPPON: CONTEMPORARY FILM & VIDEO FROM JAPAN
Posted on | December 1, 2009 | No Comments
Thursday, December 3, 6pm
- Akino Kondoh, “Ladybirds’ Requiem,” 2005-6. Courtesy the Artist and Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo.
In a nation that is geographically isolated yet always looking outward, rooted in ancient tradition while existing at the forefront of technological innovation, the complexion of contemporary Japanese moving image is like no other. This evening’s program brings together work by some of Japan’s brightest emerging film and video artists. From digital filmmaking and award-winning shorts to works that draw from the country’s rich experimental film and hand-drawn animation traditions—“flip book” paintings, diary films, and time-based collaborations between avant-garde artists and musicians—”New Nippon” explores the inventive and otherworldly work of Tomonari Nishikawa, Wada Atsushi, Maya Yonesho, Hiroshi Kondo, Stom Sogo, and many others. Curated by SAIC graduate student Kelly Shindler. 2002–09, various artists, Japan, multiple formats, ca. 80 min.
Program
Maya YONESHO, Daumenreise 6: Kyoto Mix (2008, Beta SP, 5 mins)
With Ken Shinno, Maya Tsujimura, Keiji Aiuchi, Jerome Boulbes. Music: Akira Morita
A collaboration between the artist and four of her students, this snapshot of the famous city of Kyoto was first composed as hundreds of still images and then transformed into an animated flip book. “Daumenreise is an animation workshop project with the same method of “Wiener Wuast”—shooting small drawings in our hands in the real view, over the world with students, children and friends. Films have been made in Taiwan, Norway, Croatia, Israel, Kyoto, and Poland since 2007.” (MY)
Tomonari NISHIKAWA, Sketch Films #3-5 (2006-7, Super-8 shown on mini-DV, silent, 3 mins each)
#3: “It starts with series of a pair of frames, a blurred image by camera movement followed by its steady image. Later, it shows my challenge on creating apparent depth on the screen.”
#4: “My first Sketch Film in color, trying to see the mingle of colors through projector. I used Kodachrome, and sent it to Dwayne Photo to process.”
#5: Nominated for a Tiger Award at the 2008 International Film Festival Rotterdam. “All images had been shot in Marin, California, when I had a studio space at the Headlands Center for the Arts for a year. The footage shows the nature in the area, as well as historic buildings, including batteries and the Nike Missile Site.” (TN)
Naoyuki TSUJI, Zephyr (2009, 16mm on DVD, 6 mins)
This newest work by Tsuji, who was featured in CATE’s Spring 2009 season, continues the artist’s fascination with the wind and family. “Zephyr refers to the Greek god of the west wind. Zephyr in Tsuji’s work comes to a baby and takes the baby into inside of the sun. What kind of experience is waiting for the baby?” (Tomio Koyama Gallery, Kyoto)
Atsushi WADA, Well That’s Glasses (2007, DVCam, 5:40 mins)
Hand-drawn cell animation about the veracity of vision, illustrating what happens when work, sleep, chemistry, and the human, animal, and dream worlds collide. Wada’s magic realist approach deftly incorporates repetition and a sparse color palette to illustrate the most curious of stories. (KS)
Joji KOYAMA, From Nose to Mouth (2006, 16mm and video on Beta SP, 18.5 mins)
Commissioned by Animate Projects, UK. “A solitary figure emerges out of seclusion to learn an ice-skating dance sequence. Set in a disorientating arena of shifting boundaries, structures and languages, the lessons are not going well… From Nose to Mouth portrays the unsuccessful efforts of a character trying to make sense of the demands and tasks of a strangely disjointed and fragmented world. Lost in the gaps and ‘in-betweens,’ the film is a kind of homage to awkwardness and inexactitude.” (JK)
Hiroshi KONDO, Live Material 001 and Live Material 002 (2008, DVCam, 1 min each)
Short “documentations” of live VJ performances by this Sapporo-born video artist. Composed with contemporary technologies (AfterEffects and Inferno), both shorts simulate the dated technicolor palate and tone of 90s rave culture. (KS)
Akino KONDOH, Ladybirds’ Requiem (2006, DVD, 6 mins)
Henry Darger meets ladies’ manga in this innovative video by young multimedia artist Kondoh. “Recently, [Kondoh] has been drawing on a special surface treated with gesso so that the pencil lines appear indented from pressure, like soft embroidery. In [Ladybirds’ Requiem], it is as if the world of her drawings is sewn piece by piece into the sequence of images on screen. The drawings of little girls will continue hatching without end, and the pursuit of images will result in a proliferation of variety, until these memories leave the imprint of their stitches throughout the world.” (Sayaka Nishiki)
Ryusuke ITO, Plate #43-44 (The Forked Tongues) (2008, 16mm, 4 mins) 2008
“I make “plates” consisting of film strips cut; it is a kind of transparent collage on a small plastic board. I put this on raw stock and contact print several times (usually 20 times). Most sounds come from the results of the optical-sound-head of a projector reading the images on the film. When the soundtrack of the original stock occasionally gets in a “right” place, we hear segments of some music or human voice. My source material is [found] footage gathered [from my] travels. For this film, I use some images of Czech film, which I got there. I bought tons of abandoned films at a small camera store in Prague.” (RI) Ito, who teaches at the Hokkaido University of Education in Sapporo, holds an MFA in Filmmaking (1992) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Stom SOGO, Try (2002, mini-DV, 9 mins)
A loop of two lovers is slowed to quasi-stillness as the dub soundtrack crackles with static and noise, which is central to much of the artist’s work. “Try was originally shot on Super-8mm film and then re-shot on video. The idea was to have the image of young kids kissing forever. Ecstasy here is so wasted.” (SS) “The films of Stom Sogo are incantatory and self-combustible. An erratic master of low tech do-it-yourself sortilege, he puts his works through seemingly perpetual remakes.” (Mark McElhatten)
Takashi MAKINO, Still in Cosmos (2009, 35mm on HDCam, 19 mins). Music: Jim O’Rourke
“A product purposed of an installation project held at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Recomposed as completed film work in 2009. This film visually demonstrates the fact that human has ability to change Chaos [into] Cosmos. A transcendent Free Jazz soundtrack is presented by band Osorezan, commanded by Jim O’Rourke. Now images and sound break the wall of the universe and plunge in the new world.” (TM)
TRT: 80 mins.
Intelligent Wounds: An Interview with Mike Hoolboom by Abina Manning
Posted on | December 1, 2009 | No Comments
- Mike Hoolboom at work. Courtesy the artist.
Abina Manning: In October, 2009, you were in Chicago for Conversations at the Edge and showed your latest feature, Mark (2009, 70 minutes). Can you tell us a little about it and your process of making it?
Mike Hoolboom: Mark is a portrait of my friend and former editor Mark Karbusicky. Political vegan, caretaker of feral cats (and his own brood of more than a dozen felines), still punk after all these years. He was a large man who had the presence of someone half his size, able to melt into the smallest shadow of his former self, his smile stretched across everything he couldn’t find words to say. His voice was pitched just above his voice box, a nearly French sounding sing-song, which he must have picked up from his partner of ten years, the Quebecois MTF Mirha-Soleil Ross. He was a master of those skills usually not considered skills at all. Listening, waiting, understanding, being present. Everything he ate was politics, and while this occasionally showed itself in demos and office break-ins, it was more often carried in his day to day. His employment, for instance, was housing advocacy for ex-psychiatric patients, and before that caretaking physically disadvantaged folks. He might have unlearned the art of complaining at the punk collective, Who’s Emma. Along with the word ‘no’ which he was reluctant to pronounce, no matter how often we sat facing computer silence at the video co-op. He navigated our treacherous communal shareware in between his real jobs, which usually meant not sleeping. If you put a needle into his finger he would have bled coffee.
On the last day I saw him alive, he came to my apartment with a shining new edit program, and installed it on my computer, and booted it up not once but twice, and even guided me to digitize clips and lay them on a timeline. It was a typical Mark performance: thorough, meticulous, and free from any worried fussiness. He had been urging me for years to work at home, even though that would probably mean leaving Mark as an editor. I didn’t realize then that this was his way of saying good-bye. He was dead less than two months later. His feet hovering an inch or so off the steps that separated upstairs from down. There was no room for error in his death, and it was no cry for help. Like everything else in his life, it had been researched, deliberated, executed. He didn’t leave a note.
For me, for many of his friends and family, his death came as a sudden and terrifying shock. He was just thirty-five years old, healthy and beautiful and filled with a geek know-how that faced down every new glitch with a fascinated and easygoing determination. Perhaps not so easygoing in the end. The movie is a way to say hello and good-bye, to introduce him to strangers, to run my fingers over his pictures. Along the way, I visited with his old childhood friend Andrew Vollmar who lived, up until last year, in the very same apartment they both grew up in. And Lauren Corman, who has just become Canada’s first animal studies prof. Kristyn Dunnion aka Miss Kitty Galore is a queercore punk novelist and member of all-girl metal band Heavy Filth. Lorena Elke is a political vegan, trained in the Celtic Faery Tradition of witchcraft and an animal rights activist. Mark’s life partner, Mirha-Soleil Ross, is a media/performance artist and activist, a slightly larger-than-life speed talker and working class mega donna. Each makes their own approach to Mark, and they are knit together to create a mosaic of intimate distances.
AM: I hear that you will be making a new edit of the film. Did you take anything from the Chicago screening that you will utilize in the editing process?
MH: Digital media resists traditional closure, which might mean: no more monuments or heroes. Though I have to admit a weakness for recutting. Behind the impulse to make every movie, there is some infantile wish to go back and fix the past. Sharpen conversations, fine-tune punch lines and interludes. Next week, for instance, I will begin recutting Tom (2002, 75 minutes), which will likely shrink by fifteen or twenty minutes. There are no plans to air out this new version; it will simply make me sleep better.
What my work presents is a temporarily optimal arrangement. Much of it is available as free online downloads, and in place of a copyright warning, there is a note urging viewers to steal as much of the movie as they please, and revise according to their own necessities. Insofar as the Chicago screening went, the fact that Mark worked as my editor was unclear until the very end of the movie, an ambiguity that was quickly corrected by changing a single line. Further sound level and color adjustments have occurred, and additional picture layerings in soft areas. The work continues.
LOOK FOR ME: ANIMATED FILMS BY LAURA HEIT
Posted on | November 17, 2009 | No Comments
Thursday, November 19, 6pm | Laura Heit in person!
- Image: Laura Heit, The Matchbox Shows (1999-current). Image courtesy of the artist.
Poignant and smart, the animated films of puppet artist and SAIC alumnus Laura Heit employ stop-motion, live action puppetry, hand-drawing, and computer animation. Heit is the co-director of the Experimental Animation department at CalArts and her award-winning work has screened extensively at museums and film festivals around the world. This program showcases her films from the last twelve years and features a special live performance of her acclaimed puppet-show-in miniature, The Matchbox Shows. Films include: Parachute (1997), an allegory following a young woman as she leaves home; (2002), Collapse a 2D computer animation tracing a single tragic moment; The Amazing, Mysterious and True Story of Mary Anning and Her Monsters (2003), about the little-known paleontologist Mary Anning; and Look For Me (2005), a Channel 4 UK television commission imagining one’s own invisibility. 1997-2005, USA, multiple formats, ca. 65 min.
LAURA HEIT has a MA in animation from the Royal College of Art in London and a BFA in film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her award-winning experimental animation and puppet films have been screened extensively in the US and abroad (including Rotterdam, Annecy, Hong Kong International Film Festival, London International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Walker Art Center, Guggenheim). Her most recent film, Look for Me, was commissioned by Channel 4 Television and the British Council. She is an animation director at Slinky Pictures (UK) and Duck Studios (LA). Besides her work in animation, Heit also works in puppet theater-she has been a member of Redmoon Theater (Master builder/designer/artistic associate 1996-2001), Theater Dank, and En Fuego. The Matchbox Shows, her solo cabaret in which tiny stories unfold within matchboxes, has toured all over the world. She is currently co-director of Experimental Animation at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).
Parachute (1997, 16mm, multi-plane cut-out animation, 17:00)
Parachute follows a young woman as she leaves home. Both frenetic and lyrical, this allegorical film is a combination of animation, puppetry and theater design.
Collapse (2002, Beta SP, 2D computer animation, 4:08)
A meditation on a single tragic moment.
The Amazing, Mysterious and True Story of Mary Anning and Her Monsters (2003, live action puppetry and 2D animation, Beta SP, 7:45)
A toy theater show based on the life of amateur paleontologist Mary Anning (1799-1847) from Lyme Regis, England. At a time when most children were afraid of monsters, Mary sought them out. She had a passion for the inexplicable and in the end her discoveries would change more than she bargained for.
Look For Me (2005, Beta SP, 2D computer animation, 3:35)
What would you do if you woke up one day and were invisible? Commissioned by Channel 4 London.
The Matchbox Shows (2000, Performance, 20:00)
“With childlike simplicity and arresting nonchalance, Heit offers 30-second vignettes that make Mr. Bill seem positively Rocco.” (Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader)
VARIABLE AREA: HEARING AND SEEING SOUND, 1966–78
Posted on | November 10, 2009 | No Comments
Thursday, November 12, 6pm | Art Lange, Guillermo Gregorio and Brian Labycz in person!
- Still from The Gypsy Cried (Chris Langdon, 1972). Courtesy the artist.
Experimental Sound Studio’s Outer Ear Festival of Sound and CATE team up once again to present a program of films that investigate the visual and aural possibilities of 16mm optical audio, as sounds perform images and images become sonic scores. Sound functions both as a sonic and visual element in these 6 films. Collectively they propose a new model for listening and seeing – a listening that happens with the eyes, and a seeing that happens with the ears. Curated by SAIC faculty member Michelle Puetz. Co-presented by Experimental Sound Studio. 1966–78, various artists, USA, multiple formats, ca. 65 min.
The OUTER EAR FESTIVAL OF SOUND (November 3–22, 2009) is the only comprehensive interdisciplinary sonic arts festival in the Midwest. Visit www.exsost.org.
Program details
Chris Langdon, The Gypsy Cried (1972, 16mm, 3 minutes, b/w, sound)
“When one likes something very much, or someone, it is hard to do anything but like it. I didn’t want to take anything away or add anything to this song because I like it a lot.” (Chris Langdon)
Paul Sharits, Ray Gun Virus (1966, 14 minutes, 16mm, color, synchronous sprocket hole sound)
Ray Gun Virus consists of a series of rapidly and intermittently flickering fields of color that are accompanied by an “open system” soundtrack made possible by double perf 16mm film. Sharits wrote that Ray Gun Virus was an attempt to “allow vision to function in ways usually particular to hearing . . . rapidly alternating color frames can generate, in vision, horizontal-temporal chords . . . Just as the film’s consciousness becomes infected, so does the viewer’s consciousness: the projector is an audio-visual pistol; the screen looks at the audience; and the viewer’s normative consciousness. The film’s final ‘image’ is a faint blue; the viewer is left to his own reconstruction of self, left with a screen upon which his retina can project its own patterns.”
Robert Russett, Primary Stimulus (1977, 13 minutes, 16mm, b/w, sound)
In Primary Stimulus, the soundtrack printing process was kept completely photographic so that “the sound emitted is the sound the projector interprets from the lines which are the film’s image. What comprises the film are sixteen different ‘grates’ of varying amplitudes (sixteen compositions of black and white horizontal lines): onto each frame of film one of these patterns is printed. The sequence varies. The compositions are similar enough to one another so that the afterimage of one relates compositionally to the next.” (Laurence Kardish)
Peter Kubelka, Pausa! (1977, 12 minutes, 16mm, color, sound)
Peter Kubelka’s first and only sync-sound film, Pausa! captures a rare glimpse of the Austrian artist (and namesake of Kubelka’s famous 1960 film) Arnulf Rainer engaged in a full-body performance with a microphone. The vibrations of Rainer’s breath and highly gestural movements form a visceral sonic and visual portrait of his body.
Barry Spinello, Soundtrack (1969, 10 minutes, 16mm, color, sound)
“During the first half of Soundtrack, the “sound painting” – drawn on the soundtrack – is magnified and redrawn, frame by frame, on the image track so that the viewer literally sees what he hears . . . The closing section of Soundtrack makes use of acetate self-adhesive screens and tapes. These screens and tapes, cut to fit the soundtrack, yield controlled pitch for any duration in as many different timbres as there are patterns.” (Barry Spinello)
Richard Lerman, Sections for Screen, Performers and Audience (1974, 6minutes, 16mm, color, live accompaniment by Art Lange, Guillermo Gregorio, and Brian Labycz)
“I was always fascinated by music scores and often imagined how concerts might be changed if performers were not hidden behind music on stands. In the 1960’s, I made several films that used oscilloscope imagery and, in doing so, learned to ‘play’ various synthesizers to generate images. For this film, I used colored gels while filming and chose to optically print a few visual phrases, allowing for repeated sections. I also super-imposed hi-contrast notation over the film. So, Sections became a kind of feedback piece: sound generated the images for the score and performers created new sounds and a new piece from these images.” (Richard Lerman)
About the artists
Guillermo Gregorio is a composer, improviser, and visual artist in Chicago. Trained in architecture and music, he was associated with the Madi movement in Argentina in the 1960’s, and the spirit of experimentation across forms continues. He is especially noted for his compositions that combine improvisation and composed elements through graphic notation.
Peter Kubelka was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1934 and is an “artist and theoretician who has worked in the art forms of film, cuisine, music, architecture, speaking and writing. In 1964, Kubelka co-founded the Austrian Film Museum and has been its curator ever since. In 1978, he became professor in film at the Art Academy in Frankfurt, where he also served as Rector in the period of 1985-88. Kubelka’s theoretical work in cooking began in 1967, and in 1980 his teaching position was expanded to include ‘Film and Cooking as Art.’ He is a co-founder of the Anthology Film Archives in New York.” (Hong Kong International Film Festival)
Brian Labycz is a Chicago improviser primarily performing with electronics. He draws from a variety of sources including analog systhesizers, acoustic instruments, digital manipulations, field recordings, and self-made devices to produce and explore various expressive forms.
Chris Langdon is from the middle of the country somewhere. He studied art (and a little film) at the California Institute of the Arts roughly between 1972 and 1976, during which time he made somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 films. He collaborated with Fred Worden and worked with Jack Goldstein and John Baldessari on several of their early films.
Art Lange has produced more than two dozen recordings for artists like Matthew Shipp, Ellery Eskelin, Ran Blake, and Guillermo Gregorio, and he has directed ensembles in the music of Cornelius Cardew and Anthony Braxton. His writings on music have been published across the U.S., England, and Europe. He teaches at Columbia College, Chicago.
Richard Lerman has been creating electronic music and interdisciplinary art since the 1960’s and has performed and exhibited his artwork and film in North and South America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. For the last 30 years, he has been designing and building microphones using piezo disks. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the NEA, the Asian Cultural Council, among many others. A 2-CD set of his early audio work, including “Travelon Gamelon” and a performance of “Sections for Screen, Performers and Audience,” is available on EM Records. For more information please visit http://www.sonicjourneys.com
Robert Russett holds degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design and Cranbrook Academy of Art. Following his graduate work at Cranbrook, Russett continued his studies in Paris at Atelier17. His films have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Whitney Museum (NYC), the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, as well as on PBS, The Learning Channel, and Spanish National Television. His tapes and video installations have been shown at SIGGRAPH, the American Museum of the Moving Image (NYC) and the International Symposium on Electronic Art in the Netherlands. Awards include 3 MacDowell Colony fellowships, a Media Fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts and a production grant from the American Film Institute. John Libbey and Co. has published his new book, HYPERANIMATION: Digital Images and Virtual Worlds (2009), in association with the University of Indiana Press. Formally an Honors Professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Russett is now Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts and a full-time artist and writer.
Paul Sharits is widely considered to be the first American filmmaker to make “pure-color” flicker films. He was involved with Fluxus in the 1960’s and worked in a variety of different mediums including film, sound, sculpture, drawing, performance art, typography, and printmaking. His film work investigated visual and aural modes of perception by examining the intersections between shifting fields of color and sound, the mechanics of film projection and optical sound reproduction, and what he referred to as “the operational analogues constructed between ways of seeing and ways of hearing.”
Barry Spinello came to animation from painting, and completed a number of films in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s (Soundtrack, Sonata for Pen, Brush and Ruler, and Six Loop-Paintings) that explored various techniques of painting and drawing images and soundtracks directly onto 16mm film. His films have been shown at the Whitney Museum and at various international film festivals, and he taught animation at the University of California at Berkeley.
