Sterling Ruby, still from Transient Trilogy, 2005-9

Hailed as “one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century” by Roberta Smith of the New York Times, Los Angeles-based artist and SAIC alumnus Sterling Ruby is known for his aggressive biomorphic sculptures, defaced minimalist forms, and large spray-painted canvases. His videos are similarly charged, referencing pornography, abstract painting, and evoking states of transience, entropy, and transgression. In Hole (2002), workers in the back room of a chain store surreptitiously and suggestively stuff merchandise into a hole in a plaster wall. Transient Trilogy (2005-09) finds Ruby playing both a drifter, who fashions talismans from the detritus of an overgrown urban wasteland, and a diva director, who belittles his beleaguered star. For Triviality (2009), Ruby trains his lens on adult movie star Tom Colt, stripped from porn’s traditional tropes and trappings, as he tries unsuccessfully to get himself off. Also on the program: Dihedral (2006) and Cartographic Yard Work: Dog Behavior (2009). Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. Sterling Ruby, 2002-09, USA, Beta SP video and DVD, ca. 65 min (plus discussion).

STERLING RUBY (b.1972, Bitburg, Germany) lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. Ruby takes his subject matter from a wide range of sources, including marginalized societies, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, artifacts and antiquities, graffiti, bodybuilders, the mechanisms of warfare, cults and cult members, and urban gangs. His work invokes minimalism as a means to expose underlying systems and social power structures. Selected exhibitions include: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (both 2009); GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy (solo) (2008-09); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (solo); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; The Drawing Center, New York (solo) (all 2008); The Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art (2007); The California Biennial, Newport Beach (2006); The Renaissance Society, Chicago; The Turin Triennial (both 2005-06); Aspen Art Museum (2005); Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo, Amsterdam (both 2005). Ruby is represented by PaceWildenstein and Foxy Production in New York. His videos are distributed by the Video Data Bank.

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

International Film Festival Rotterdam 2010 Tiger Awards Announces Let Each One Go Where He May as one of three contenders

Let Each One Go Where He May (EXCERPT) from Ben Russell on Vimeo.

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)

David Gatten, The Great Art of Knowing (2004). Image courtesy of the artist.

“Influenced equally by Stan Brakhage and Ludwig Wittgenstein.”—Ed Halter, Village Voice

For more than ten years, filmmaker and SAIC alum David Gatten’s serenely beautiful handmade films have employed experimental techniques—cellophane tape ink transfers and optical printing—to explore the relationships between text and image. Gatten transforms type into sensual topographies of time and place. The bulk of his work has centered around the books, journals, and letters of the William Byrd II family of 18th century Virginia to express the family’s ideas, secret passions, and public lives in poetic and expansive ways. This evening, Gatten will screen three of these films, including Secret History of the Dividing Line (2002), The Great Art of Knowing (2004), and How to Conduct a Love Affair (2007), along with the instructional Advanced Typing Tips Part 5 (anonymous, circa 1940) and sublime Film For Invisible Ink, Case No. 142: Abbreviation for Dead Winter [Diminished by 1, 794] (2008). Co-presented by the University of Chicago Arts Council, which will present a second program of Gatten films on Friday, March 6 at the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center. 1940–2008, Multiple artists, USA, 16mm, ca 85 min.

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Secret History of the Dividing Line
US, 2002, 16mm, b/w, silent, 20 min.
Paired texts as dueling histories; a journey imagined and remembered; 57 mileage markers produce an equal number of prospects. The first part of the Byrd cycle, the film focus on two texts by William Byrd, one published and official, the other secret and circulated privately. A torn timeline tells the history of the world and magnified, misaligned cement splices stand in for early 18th century landscapes. (DG)

The Great Art of Knowing
US, 2004, 16mm, b/w, silent, 37 min.
The fourth 16mm film in the Byrd project series. Taking as a point of departure the volume of the same title by the 17th century Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher, this films attempts a peripatetic exploration of empiricism over the last 500 years. Additional material is drawn from Byrd’s papers, Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex on the Flight of Birds, as well as writings by David Hume and Jules-Etienne Marey. (DG)

How to Conduct A Love Affair
US, 2007, 16mm, color, silent, 8 min.
An unexpected letter leads to an unanticipated encounter. Some windows open easily; other shadows remain locked rooms. Advice is sometimes easy to give, but often hard to follow. Have a cup of tea dear: I’ll trade you a stitch from the past in return for a leaf from the future. At once a Valentine for a friend and a section from the next installment of the Byrd project, this film is composed of words from a 1924 instructional text, close-ups of dried tea bags sewn together into a quilt and found objects that reflect light from the past and cast shadows on the future. (DG)

Advanced Typing Tips Part 5
US, Anonymous, circa 1940, color, sound, 5 min.
An instructional film.

Film for Invisible Ink, Case no. 142: Abbreviation For Dead Winter [diminished by 1,794]
US, 2008, 16mm, b/w, silent sound, 13 min.
The second film in the Invisible Ink series is generated from single sheet of paper, with ink-and-cellophane tape transfers and microphotography of paper fibers. A long-distance dedication for a far-away friend half-way up the mountain, with words by Charles Darwin. (DG)

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David Gatten—filmmaker, Henry James fan, recent Guggenheim fellow, and aspiring audio book producer—makes bookish films about letters and libraries and lovers and ghosts that are filled with words, some of which you can read. His work has shown around the popular planet Earth in museums, festivals, biennials, galleries, archives, access centers, elementary schools, storefronts, on sides of buildings and once on a barge that was floating down river. You can find his films in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago but only rarely can he find his glasses. He lives and works by the water in Red Hook, Brooklyn and on Seabrook Island, South Carolina and teaches 16mm filmmaking/Wallace Stevens appreciation at The Cooper Union in New York City.

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Henriette Huldisch on David Gatten (ArtForum)

The latest feature by artist, filmmaker, and SAIC alum Amie Siegel (Empathy, 2003) is a multi-layered and disarmingly beautiful essay on the German Democratic Republic and its dissolution, which left many of its former citizens adrift in their newfound freedom. Featured at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, DDR/DDR weaves together mundane Stasi surveillance footage, interviews with psychoanalysts, East German “Indian hobbyists,” and lolling shots of derelict state radio stations into an extended and self-conscious assemblage to meditate on history, memory, and the shared technologies of state control and art. 2008, Amie Siegel, Germany/USA, HDCAM video, 135 min.

Amie Siegel works variously in 16mm and 35mm film, video, sound and writing. Born in Chicago, she currently lives and works in New York and Berlin. She received her BA from Bard College and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions and screenings include the 2008 Whitney Biennial, “The Russian Linesman,” Hayward Gallery, London; “Forum Expanded,” KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Austrian Film Museum, Berlin International Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Andy Warhol Museum, BFI Southbank, London; Frankfurt Film Museum and Film Forum in New York. Her first book of poetry, The Waking Life (North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA) was published in 1999. Siegel has been an artist-in-residence of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and is a recent recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship.

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2008 Whitney Biennial

Flingco Sound System releases “textures in the shape of sound.”–Dublab

Since its 2007 launch, Chicago’s Flingco Sound System label has played host to a slate of musicians who work collaboratively with visual artists to create darkly mesmerizing videos and richly textured live performances. Tonight, CATE teams up with FSS to present not-to-be-missed live collaborations by the drone-based Chicago trio Haptic (Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Adam Sonderberg) and real-time video artist Lisa Slodki; the end-of-days strings and digital soundscapes of Interbellum (Brendan Burke), with multi-media artist Annie Feldmeier Adams; as well as the short video Avici (2008), by SAIC alum Clayton Flynn and the experimental Richmond, VA trio Cristal (Jimmy Anthony, Greg Darden and Bobby Donne). 2005–09, multiple artists, Austria/USA, multiple formats, 90 min.

Flingco Sound System was started by Bruce Adams, the co-founder of kranky, an independent record label that Pitchfork recently lauded for its “hard earned niche” and “uncompromising spirit.” The new label is equally innovative, supporting and releasing its musicians’ audio-visual collaborations—FSS’s forthcoming Haptic LP will include a DVD of rotating fourth member Lisa Slodki’s album-length video; FSS’s Interbellum release features media produced by Brendan Burke, the man behind Interbellum, and Annie Feldmeier Adams using Burke’s handheld video footage from a transatlantic sailing voyage; among others. The label is designed to adapt to and take advantage of new digital distribution streams and tap into the rejuvenated market for vinyl. FSS releases DRM-free high sample rate downloads, limited edition LPs on 180 gram vinyl with download coupons, and a subscription service.

The Experimental Sound Studio’s Outer Ear Festival of Sound and CATE team up to present a special preview of award-winning filmmaker Deborah Stratman’s latest film, O’er the Land (2008). Completed in part through a residency at ESS, Stratman’s film meditates on our notions of freedom in an era of elevated threat by interweaving footage from our national pasttimes—football, war re-enactments, machine gun festivals—with the incredible story of Marine Lt. Col William Rankin who, in 1959, was forced to eject from his fighter jet at 47,000 feet without a pressure suit, only to be trapped for 40 minutes in the up and down drafts of a massive thunderstorm. Accompanied by Stratman’s Paranormal Trilogy: It Will Die Out in the Mind (2006), How Among the Frozen Words (2005), and The Magician’s House (2007). The Outer Ear Festival of Sound (November 3–22, 2008) is the only comprehensive interdisciplinary sonic arts festival in the Midwest. For more information, visit exsost.org. 2005—08, Deborah Stratman, USA, 16mm, ca 65 min.

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker whose work plies the territory between experimental and documentary genres. Her films and frequent work in other media, including photography, sound, drawing and sculpture often explore the history, uses, mythologies and control of highly varied landscapes: from Muslim Xinjiang China, to rural Iceland, to gated suburban California. Her works have been exhibited internationally and she is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship.

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Pythagoras Film
Cinemad: Deborah Stratman

Roger Ebert once said of the Chicago Underground Film Festival, “What you get for your money is not just admission to the films, but admission to a subculture.” For 15 years, CUFF has exhibited the vibrant media emerging from Chicago’s schools, production houses, music and performance scenes, and occasionally, from out-of-the-blue. Tonight’s program, co-curated by CUFF co-founder and Artistic Director Bryan Wendorf, charts the festival’s history through the city’s own, from Jennifer Reeder’s 1996 riot grrrl call-to-arms, Clit-O-Matic: The Adventures of White Trash Girl (1995) and James Fotopoulos’ transgressive experimentation, Drowning (2001) to Jim Finn’s Marxist-inspired history of the gerbil,Wüstinspringmaus (2002) and Ben Russell’s transcendent concert film, Black and White Trypps #3 (2007). Also featured: Velvet Welk (Darren Hacker, 1996), Wheels of Fury (Dan and Paul Dinello w/Amy Sedaris, 1998), Stuffing (Animal Charm, 1998), Départ (Thomas Comerford, 2000), Bouncing In The Corner #36DDD (Dara Greenwald, 1999), Receiver (Jon Leone, 2001), I Am a Conjuror (Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby, 2003), and Security Anthem (Kent Lambert, 2003). CUFF presents a second retrospective program on Friday, October 3 at the Nightingale. Visit cuff.org for details. 1995—2007, various directors, USA, multiple formats, ca 90 min.

What happens when the creative roadblocks—errors, glitches, accidents—become the building blocks in the art-making process? This program highlights artists who intentionally create problems by corrupting data, hacking signals, and manipulating the medium, often to the point of challenging its own display. Curated by new media artist and SAIC faculty member Jon Satrom, tonight’s problem-ridden program gathers together films, videos, corrupted data, hacked TV broadcasts, interactive DVDs, and modified GameBoy tools that revel in failure, rejoice in errors, and celebrate the happy accident. Works include: My%Desktop (JODI, 2002), Suicide Solution (Brody Condon, 2004), Line (Siebren Versteeg, (2000); 486 Short Videos (LoVid, 2008), gameboy_ultraF_uk, (Corby & Baily, 2001); Atari Noise (Arcangel Constantini, 2000); The Website Is Down (Josh Weinberg, 2008); Tiedown (Karl Komp & Totek, 2008), Blinq (Billy Roisz, 2002); Enter the Devil (reMI, 2000); among others. 1966—2008, various directors, various countries, multiple formats, ca 90 min.

Prison has long been a popular setting for motion pictures, from the oft-remade Man in the Iron Mask to recent Oscar-nominated hits Dead Man Walking and The Shawshank Redemption. Rarer is the film that examines the prison system’s complicated impact on individuals, families, and communities. Artists Laurie Jo Reynolds and Robert Todd take on this challenge in a pair of lyrical essays on the experiences of incarcerated men and women. Weaving together pop cultural imagery and prison phone conversations, Reynolds’ collage-like Space Ghost (2007) explores confinement and isolation in the lives of astronauts and the imprisoned. Todd’s In Loving Memory (2005) juxtaposes the reflections of prisoners on their lives with haunting landscape shots of prisons around the country, in a moving meditation on memory and a compelling critique of the death penalty. Presented as part of a series of events organized by the Tamms Poetry Committee marking the ten-year anniversary of the Tamms Supermax prison in Tamms, Illinois. 2005–07, various directors, USA, ca. 90 min, various formats.

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AREA Dialogue: Art on the Outside: Chicago Artists and Prisons (with Laurie Jo Reynolds)
Tamms Year Ten