CURRENT SEASON
THE INDIAN BOUNDARY LINE
Thursday, February 4, 6pm | Thomas Comerford in person!
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Still from The Indian Boundary Line (Thomas Comerford, 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).
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AN EVENING WITH DARA BIRNBAUM
Thursday, February 11, 6pm | Dara Birnbaum in person!
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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).
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LONG LIVE THE AMORPHOUS LAW: VIDEOS BY STERLING RUBY
Thursday, February 18, 6pm | Sterling Ruby in person!
- Still from Transient Trilogy (Sterling Ruby, 2005-9). Courtesy the artist.
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).
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DUST: VIDEOS BY MOYRA DAVEY
Thursday, February 25, 6pm | Moyra Davey in person!
- Still from Fifty Minutes (Moyra Davey, 2006). Courtesy the artist.
New York-based photographer and writer Moyra Davey is known for her finely observed photographs of domestic interiors. Her graceful, straightforward images catalog life’s in-between moments and overlooked objects–still lifes of crowded bookshelves, empty whiskey bottles, and dust. In recent years, Davey has turned to video, combining her eye for the everyday with a literary voice. This evening, she will present two of these works. In Fifty Minutes (2006), Davey uses the standard length of a therapy session to examine her own history with psychoanalysis while also raising questions about autobiography, nostalgia, and the ways we all come to know and invent ourselves. In My Necropolis (2009), she explores notions of history, biography, and the memorial, by pairing images of Parisian gravesites (Gertrude Stein, Simone de Beauvoir, and others) with a lively, open-ended interpretation of an enigmatic letter written by Walter Benjamin from 1931. Davey, writes admirer John Waters, “will catch you off guard with her smudged, elegant, low-tech intelligence.” Moyra Davey, 2006-09, USA, Beta SP video and DVD, ca. 90 min (plus discussion).
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VIDEO & SOUND FROM TAKESHI MURATA & ROBERT BEATTY
Thursday, March 4, 6pm | Takeshi Murata & Robert Beatty in person!
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Still from Cone Eater (Takeshi Murata, 2004). Courtesy the artist.
Live performance!
For the last six years, artist Takeshi Murata and musician Robert Beatty (Hair Police, Three Legged Race) have collaborated on a series of visceral glitch-based animations, setting Murata’s psychedelic imagery to Beatty’s hypnotic compositions. Murata’s videos range from hand-drawn animations of fluidly morphing shapes to painterly abstractions of meticulously hijacked digital code. Beatty employs hacked electronics and thrift store cast-offs to craft otherworldly sonic narratives. Together, the duo’s electronic alchemy transforms the detritus of consumer culture into dazzling tapestries of sound and color. This evening, CATE teams up with experimental music and intermedia series Lampo to bring you Murata and Beatty in a special screening and performance. The two will present their work in three sets: a solo performance by Beatty, a screening of videos by Murata, and a new audio-visual performance, created especially for this program, by both. Visit www.lampo.org. Takeshi Murata and Robert Beatty, 2003-10, USA, multiple formats, ca. 90 min.
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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, the series draws upon notions of blindness to explore broader political and cultural themes of identity, sexuality, society, and technology. This evening, to celebrate the Video Data Bank’s release of The Blindness Series in a new DVD box-set, Tran will present five works from the cycle, including a provocative documentary on hysterical blindness and the Cambodian civil war (ekleipsis, 1998); an essay on cosmetic eyelid surgery (operculum, 1993); and a meditation on the phenomenon of word blindness (alexia, 2000). “We are invited to approach these works with all our senses,” writes scholar Laura Marks. “The Blindness Series, crankily, and finally tenderly, gives us our eyes back.” Tran, T. Kim-Trang, 1992-2006, USA, Beta SP video, ca. 82 min (plus discussion).
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NAOMI UMAN: THE UKRAINIAN TIME MACHINE
Thursday, March 25, 6pm | Naomi Uman in person!
- Sill 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 result of her adventures is the quietly picaresque quintet of 16mm films, The Ukrainian Time Machine. In capturing the joys and hardships of her neighbors’ centuries-old way of life– traditions that are eroding with the encroaching pressures of modernity–Uman creates a new kind of living history, fresh with curiosity and verve. In this evening’s program, Uman will present Unnamed Film, her keen documentary about life in Legedzine, cataloging its inhabitants’ various strategies of labor and resourcefulness necessary for survival; Kalendar, a poetic collection of shots, one for each month of an entire year; and Coda, a black-and-white epilogue encapsulating the themes of the series as a whole. Naomi Uman, 2008, Ukraine, 16mm, ca. 70 min (plus discussion).
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ON THE THIRD PLANET FROM THE SUN: THE FILMS OF PAVEL MEDVEDEV
Thursday, April 1, 6pm
- Still from On the Third Planet from the Sun, (Pavel Medvedev, 2006). Courtesy the artist.
The documentaries of Pavel Medvedev are haunting portraits of some of post-Soviet Russia’s most isolated people and places. This rare screening presents four different facets of Medvedev’s remarkable oeuvre. Vacation in November (2002) follows Russian miners in the tundra. On a forced furlough from their regular jobs, they embark on an annual massive reindeer slaughter to supplement their income. On the Third Planet from the Sun (2006) studies life in the country’s resource-rich Arkhangelsk region, where inhabitants forage for scrap metal left behind from H-bomb testing. Wedding of Silence (2003) depicts a deaf community in St. Petersburg, juxtaposing an expressive wedding celebration with the din of a foundry where many work. Following a different kind of party, Medvedev’s The Unseen (2007) captures the behind-the-scenes dinners and rituals of the 2006 G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, along with their corresponding impact on Russian citizens. Russian with English subtitles. Pavel Medvedev, 2003-08, Russia, 35mm and Beta SP video, ca. 100 min.
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EVERYTHING I TELL YOU NOW IS TRUE: THE SHORT FILMS OF EMILY WARDILL
Thursday, April 8, 6pm | Emily Wardill in person!
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Still from Ben (Emily Wardill, 2007). Courtesy the artist and Lux.
The films of British artist Emily Wardill are brilliant cinematic labyrinths. Visually striking and playfully rigorous, they draw upon an array of sources– underground theater, psychoanalytic case studies, the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Rancière, and even the game logic of Nintendo Wii–to pose fundamental questions about vision, representation, and media and their role in how we come to know ourselves. Wardill has been the recipient of much recent critical acclaim: Tate Modern film curator Stuart Comer rated her film The Diamond (Descartes’ Daughter) (2008) as one of his top ten picks of 2008 and The Guardian newspaper deemed her its “artist of the week.” In this special program, Wardill presents five of her short films, all of which are Chicago premieres: Born Winged Animals and Honey Gatherers of the Soul (2005), Basking in What Feels Like ‘An Ocean Of Grace’ I Soon Realise That I’m Not Looking at It, But Rather I Am It, Recognising Myself (2006), Ben (2007), Sick Serena and Dregs and Wreck and Wreck (2007), and The Diamond (Descartes’ Daughter). Co-presented by CATE and Refracted Lens, a Chicago-based film series dedicated to showcasing emerging and underrepresented artists. Emily Wardill, 2005-08, United Kingdom, 16mm, ca. 60 min (plus discussion).
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RYAN TRECARTIN: NEW WORK
Thursday, April 15, 6pm | Ryan Trecartin in person!
- Still from Sibling Topics (Section A) (Ryan Trecartin, 2009). Courtesy the artist and Elizabeth Dee Gallery.
Both in form and in function, Ryan Trecartin’s video practice advances understandings of post-millennial technology, narrative, and identity, while also propelling these matters as expressive mediums. His work depicts worlds where consumer culture and interactive systems are amplified to absurd or nihilistic proportions and characters circuitously strive to find agency and meaning in their lives. The combination of assaultive, nearly impenetrable avant-garde logics and equally outlandish virtuoso uses of color, form, drama, and montage produces a sublime, stream-of-consciousness effect that feels bewilderingly true to life. This evening, as part of a special two-part presentation organized by the Visiting Artists Program and Conversations at the Edge, Trecartin will introduce two pieces from his latest project, Trill-ogy Comp (2009-10): Sibling Topics (Section A) (2009) and P.opular S.ky (section ish) (2009). Trecartin will give an overview of his practice on April 14 at 6pm in the SAIC Columbus Auditorium. Ryan Trecartin, 2009, USA, HDCAM video, ca. 90 min.
