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THURSDAY • May
29 • 2007 • 7:30 PM
PROGRAM
01: NEW YORK CITY (part 1)
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Men and Women | Natalie Frigo | 2006 | 3:00 min. |
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Men and Women is composed of movie footage
showing subjects "watching" and " and "being watched"
clips. Men and Women reveals how we learn to look at women as audience
and out in the world.
Natalie Frigo, a video artist residing in Brooklyn, New York, received
her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since graduating,
her work has appeared internationally in over twenty festivals, galleries
and conferences. |
Rebelión en la Pulperia
| Rubén Guzmán | 2006 | 2:54 min. |
|
Rebellion at the
Local Store uses the technique of the tableaux vivants to reenact
Rembrandt’s The Blinding of Samson (1636 Oil on canvas 206 x
276 cm). In this tableau, the characters in the painting re-present a
contemporary, regional motif to the viewer. Although the end-action performed
emulates the original painting, it is re-signified by the new context.
Rubén Guzmán. Born in 1959 (Argentinean-Canadian). Media Arts curator,
programmer, professor and independent film and video artist. His work
has been exhibited in shows and festivals around the world. |
Swamp | Megan
Cump | 2001 | 3:00 |
|
Swamp,
set in the haunting Florida everglades, depicts a woman immersed in murky
water. Dreamlike and disorienting, this video is punctuated by eerie buzzing
and ominous noises. The figure evokes tales of Ophelia, mermaids, and
B-movie swamp creatures. She is forever emerging and submerging, suggesting
mutability and transformation, yet locked in the morass of this transitional
state.
Megan Cump has had a solo White
Room exhibition at White Columns. She has exhibited at Islip Art Museum,
Hudson Clearing, ARENA Gallery, dumbo arts center, and the Bronx Museum
of Art, among other venues. Outside New York she’s exhibited at
Berlin Kunst Projekt, Soap Factory, TBA Exhibition Space, Chicago Project
Room, Southern Exposure, Diverse Works, and Rockford Art Museum. Cump
has been awarded a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency at the Woolworth
Building, two C.A.A.P. grants, and attended Skowhegan. |
SPORTS: A 12 Part History | Robert Greene | 2005 | 13:00
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SPORTS is a
12 part "history" of the social-political role and influence that
organized gaming has come to have in our culture. Mixing footage we shot
of George W. Bush at the 2004 Army/Navy football game in Philadelphia, a
demolition derby in Maryland just months after 9/11, wrestling in a small-town
in Mexico, a Prospect Park contest between football players and birds, kids
playing basketball before Sunday service in North Carolina, found footage,
and TV coverage of the start of the current war in Iraq, SPORTS is an attempt
to get at some truths about how political, perceptual, and personal realities
have come to be shaped by the Big Game. RG
Robert Greene is a videomaker and editor based in New York. His documentaries
and experimental works have played in film festivals across the country,
including the 1998 Hi-Mom Film Festival in Chapel Hill, NC; the 2002 New
York Expo; the 2003 and 2004 New York Underground Film Festival; 2003 Rooftop
Films; and the 2004 Milwaukee Underground Film Festival. SPORTS played at
the 2005 Chicago Underground Film Festival. |
November 22, 1963 | Natalie Frigo | 2004 | 0:26 |
|
November 22, 1963,
presents the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination with JFK removed
from each frame. Experience of this event was/is almost exclusively through
television; interestingly, the original footage was corrupted before it
was released to the public. Manipulation of the footage changes not only
our experience, but the assassination-in-itself is forever altered. If
this version were shown in place of the “orginal” footage,
our memory of this date would be tied to Jacqueline’s ride in Dallas,
not JFK’s assassination.
Natalie Frigo is a video artist residing in Brooklyn.
She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute. More recently
Frigo was a finalist for the Whitney Independent Study Program, and has
exhibited in galleries and at film festivals throughout the United States.
She removes prominent historical figures from footage by cropping the
films or “erasing” the figures frame-by-frame. When a figure
from past footage is eliminated, such as JFK from the Zapruder film, the
mediation of historical experience is uncovered. |
First Ladies | Natalie Frigo | 2004-2005
| 1:30 |
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First Ladies utilizes
news footage originally focused on Presidents of the United States, but
turned to First Ladies. The constricted view of the camera is highlighted,
with footage changed only by shifting the picture frame. The hegemonic narrative
advanced by the media is transferred to form a new account of history. With
the composition of the film altered slightly in one direction, First
Ladies addresses unnoticed alternate histories once disregarded because
of implicit cultural structures.
Natalie Frigo is a video artist residing in Brooklyn. She received
her MFA from the School of the Art Institute. More recently Frigo was a
finalist for the Whitney Independent Study Program, and has exhibited in
galleries and at film festivals throughout the United States. She removes
prominent historical figures from footage by cropping the films or “erasing”
the figures frame-by-frame. When a figure from past footage is eliminated,
such as JFK from the Zapruder film, the mediation of historical experience
is uncovered. |
Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly’s Trapped In The Closet Synched and
Played Simultaneously | Michael Bell-Smith | 2005 | 4:38 min. |
|
R. Kelly’s 12 part R&B epic mashed inward.
Michael Bell-Smith (East Corinth, ME, 1978) holds a BA in Semiotics
from Brown University, Providence, RI. Selected exhibitions include: The
Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland (screening) (2006); And/Or
Gallery, Dallas, TX (two person) (2006); LISTE, the Young Art Fair, Basel
(2006); Vilma Gold, London (2006); Foxy Production, New York (solo) (2006);
BankART, Yokohama, Japan (2006); RX Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2006); Glassbox,
Paris (2006); PROJEKT 0047, Berlin (2005); Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (2005);
Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2005); Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, CA
(2003); University of Washington Center for Digital Arts and Experimental
Media, Seattle, WA (2003); Eyebeam Gallery, New York (2002). His work has
been featured in Time Out New York, The New York Times and Artnet. |
Elysian Fields
| Rashaad Newsome | 2005 | 2:23 min. |
|
Elysian Fields, is a study of the
moment of spiritual euphoria, or "Holy Ghost," as it is expressed
in the Southern Baptist faith. The gestural archive of these instances
in which worshipers are literally possessed by the spirit suggests that
religion can create a means of escapism. The protagonists experience a
moment of intensity when they are both inside and outside their body.
This estrangement is further emphasizedby the accompanying gospel sung
by the Barrett Sisters. Played backwards, it adds another layer of detachment
to the already isolated motions of the worshipper and the separation from
any kind of knowable context. This defamiliarization offers a way to reflect
on the physical language that constitutes ritual in traditional models
of organized religion.
Rashaad Newsome. Born in New Orleans, LA, lives and works in NYC.
His work has been exhibited at K.U.E.L., Berlin, Germany; Glassbox Gallery,
Paris, France; Rush Arts Gallery, NYC; Zero Station, Portland, Maine;
Veletrzni Palace, Prague, Czech Republic; Fondation Cartier, Paris, France;
Fiac, Paris, France; The Film Gallery, Paris, France; The Contemporary
Arts Center, New Orleans, LA. He also has been the recipient of several
awards including the Franklin Furnace Grant, l'Entreprise Culturelle AIR
and
Harvestworks AIR. |
Love Songs # 2 (War Songs): “Civil” | Art Jones | 2006 | 3:30
min.
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The first of two visual
poems on the US, a county at war
Art Jones is a well-known video artist who is planting seeds at the
Studio Museum of Harlem, School of Art Institute of Chicago, and others
as professor, artist and lecturer. He knows what he’s talking about. His
old skool cred is as a member of media activists Not Channel Zero and
working with social commentators Public Enemy. |
Love Songs # 2 (War
Songs): “Desert For Real” | Art Jones | 2006 | 3:17 min. |
|
The second of two
visual poems on the US, a county at war.
Art Jones is a well-known video artist who is planting seeds at the
Studio Museum of Harlem, School of Art Institute of Chicago, and others
as professor, artist and lecturer. He knows what he’s talking about. His
old skool cred is as a member of media activists Not Channel Zero and
working with social commentators Public Enemy. |
Candy Coated Humvee | Drew Waters | 2005 | 1:00
Oh Dude | Drew Waters | 2005 | 1:00 |
|
Through the creation of a
single iconic repetitive image Candy Coated Humvee displays the
intersection between official political spin and the realities of a failing
war on terror. Eternal flames in an eternal war.
Oh Dude breaks with the heroic or benevolent war narrative that
commonly frames images from Iraq as they are presented to a mainstream
Television audience. In displaying a segment of footage deemed too explicit or
ambiguous for the daily news narrative, a clearer perception arises, a
closer view of the realities of technological warfare.
Drew Waters is an Australian digital and video installation
artist residing in Brooklyn, NY. As well as creating works of art he is
a freelance video editor at NBC Studios in New York |
60 Explosions | Jennifer Matotek | 2004 | 1:20
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In a world of many explosions, here are just
60. Jennifer Matotek is an emerging curator, interdisciplinary
artist, and videomaker whose work has been shown across North America in
galleries and film and video festivals such as the Chicago Underground Film
Festival, the New York Underground Film Festival, and Cinematexas. |
untitled. (an animation suite)
| John Richey | 2004 | 3:21
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|
A collection of generic figures vacantly ‘practice’
choreographies of fear. Stark white bodies with slow and deliberate movements
crouch and shield their heads, dive for cover, or roll across screen all
against an ominous black void. Multiple figures collide/embrace a billowing
white form. A simple and repetitive ‘I’m safe’ is implied
in order to simultaneously question/re-enforce notions of safety and stability.
A figure enters from the left, approaches a pile of something, slowly digs
in, and deliberately buries his head inside.
John Richey is a cross-disciplinary artist who creates intimate works
about the paradoxical situations of fear and control. He received a BFA
from The University of Arizona in 2001 and a MFA from the University of
California, San Diego in 2004. His animations have been exhibited nationally
and internationally and were mentioned in the “Best of 2004”
issue of ARTFORUM International. Richey currently resides in Brooklyn,
NY and is the Head Preparator at Greene Naftali Gallery. |
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SHORT DOCUMENTARY ON FAMOUS ARTISTS: CHRISTO'S VALLEY CURTAIN
| Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Ellen Hovde | 1974 | 28 minutes |
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Recipient of an Academy Award Nomination,
CHRISTO'S VALLEY CURTAIN celebrates the dramatic hanging of a huge orange
curtain between two Colorado mountains and the powerful effect it has
on a community. |
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THURSDAY • June
7 • 2007 • 7:30 PM
PROGRAM
02: NEW YORK CITY (part 2) |
SPECIAL: A LEGENDARY ARTISTS FILM:
Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) | Fischli/ Weiss | Switzerland
1987 | 30 min |
A film about a precisely calculated chain reaction
Inside a warehouse, a precarious 70-100 feet long structure has been constructed
using various items. When this is set in motion, a chain reaction ensues.
Fire, water, law of gravity as well as chemistry determine the life-cycle
of objects - of things. It brings about a story concerning cause and effect,
mechanism and art, improbability and precision.
FISCHLI / WEISS (US/CH) is a world famous duo conceptual artists |
Black Pyramid | Bec Stupac | 2006 | 3:00 min.
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A fantasy film with mystical creatures in trance,
energy is seeping out of their bodies.
Bec Stupak is an artist living and working in New York City, and
is also the founding member of Honeygun Labs, an experimental video project
that after a few years blossomed into a collaborative effort that at any
given time had several people creating and experimenting with different
styles and techniques.
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Learning Stalls: Lesson Plans | Torsten Zenas Burns
and Darrin Martin | 2005 | 6:00 min. |
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Learning
Stalls: Lesson Plans
Strange science: spoon-bending, psychic surgery, object formation, image
synthesis.
Torsten Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin began their collaborations in the
video and sculpture programs at the School of Art and Design at Alfred
University, where they both received their BFAs, 1990 and 1992 respectively.
Burns was born in 1968 and received his an MFA in video and performance
from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993. Martin was born in 1969
and received an MFA in media and sculpture from The University of California,
San Diego in 2000. Together, they have based their single channel videotapes,
curations and current performance works on their research into diverse
speculative fictions including reimagined educational practices, cryptozoological
musical productions, and transhumanist sexuality recontructions. They
have jointly participated in a residency at Eyebeam in New York City.
In 2003, Electronic Arts Intermix commissioned their net art project,
which can be found at www.eai.org/lessons.
Selected videotapes are distributed by VTAPE, Canada; Recontres Internationale,
France; and Video Data Bank, USA. Videotapes have screened at venues including
The Museum of Art and Design (NY), Scanners: The New York Video Festival,
The New York Underground Film Festival, The Chicago Underground Film Festival,
Cinematexas, Pacific Film Archive (CA), Aurora Picture Show (TX), Madrid
Museum of Contemporary Art (Spain), Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary
Art (FL), Recontres Internationale, (Paris/Berlin), and the 50th Edition
of Oberhausen Short Film and Video Festival (Germany). They most recently
presented their work in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California’s
Transformations 3: Fiction Science conference.
Both artists also have exhibited and screened other collaborations and
solo projects extensively in a variety of national and international venues.
Burns is a visiting associate professor at KyungSung University in Pusan,
South Korea. Martin is an assistant professor at UC Davis.
MEET THE MAKER: Torsten Zenas
Burns is Guest Prof at Kyungsung University and will be present at the
screening!!! |
Lo-Fi Green Sigh | Kristin Lucas |
2004 | 2:20 min.Lo-Fi Green Sigh | Kristin Lucas | 2004
| 2:20 min. |
|
Shot on location at Biosphere 2 and in the surrounding Arizona
desert, Lo-Fi Green Sigh is a playful pastiche of science fiction
movie conventions, scored to ominous electronic drones. Residents of an
imagined society don makeshift space-suits and play badminton among the
cacti, while Lucas scans the electromagnetic spectrum with a vegetable steamer.
Lo-Fi Green Sigh merges B-movie science and science fiction, with
echoes of Roswell, alien life, and extra-terrestrial feedback. Synopsis
courtesy of EAI.
Kristin Lucas investigates visions of future from previous decades,
the physical and psychological effects of an accumulation of rapid spread,
flash-in-the-pan technology, and the impact of the digital medium on perceptions
of time and space. Her video, performance, installation and internet works
are distributed by EAI and Postmasters in New York. Lucas received her
BFA from The Cooper Union in 1994 and her MFA from Stanford University
in 2006. |
Science’s Ten Most Beautiful Experiments: [#2 ) Galileo’s Experiment
on Falling Objects | Jeanne Liotta | 2006 | 2:00 min. |
|
The first real experimentalist was Galileo, who supposedly
dropped a feather and a hammer simultaneously from the Leaning Tower of
Pisa in order to prove by demonstration that the two would hit the ground
at the same time. Approx. 400 years later that trick still works. (courtesy
& sincerity, NASA 1971.)
Jeanne Liotta lives and works in New York City where she makes films
and other ephemera. She also teaches widely and variously, including The
New School , Pratt , The San Francisco Art Institute, and The Museum School
in Boston and the Bard MFA program .Her latest project, Observando el
Cielo' consists largely of 16mm field recordings of the night sky, and
spans a constellation of mediums in an Emersonian framework at the intersection
of art, science, and natural philosophy. |
Blew Line | Ken Solomon | 2006 | 5:00 min. |
|
The Blew Line
video presents the process of photographing all of the red horizontal
lines that I encountered over the course of a year. This daily obsession
to gather data results in images of every day, universal mundane visual
details united together by the “same” horizontal red line. It creates
a harmony and relationship with totally unrelated elements- such as a
snickers bar, with a Sol Lewitt painting with a row of kitchy bar stools.
|
Read My Lips | Stephanie Lempert | 2:00 min.
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Read My Lips is a video piece
which addresses the role of language as a method of communication. I worked
with speech pathologist Beatrice Dulgarian to decipher the words being
“spoken” by each fish. By using a speech pathologist to “read” the fish’s
lips, I draw attention to the use of language and interpretation within
our society.
Stephanie Lempert was born in Dallas, Texas. She received here B.F.A.
from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work exists in a wide variety
of media including sculpture, photography and video. Her work has been
exhibited domestically and internationally at places such as Socrates
Sculpture Park, Weisspollack Gallery, The Moscow World Fine Art Fair,
and The 2006 New York Video Festival. In April of 2007 the A.I.R. Gallery
in New York will feature a solo show of her works.
|
Untitled (Three Revisited Fairytales) | Eileen Maxon
| 2003 | 3:35 min. |
|
Aurora picks more than berries, Lady gets a new reputation,
and Cinderella meets 90210.
Eileen Maxson drowns in white walls and cable television, emerging
on occasion to press record. Selected screenings and exhibitions include
the New York Underground Film Festival, New York. Cinematheque Ontario,
Toronto; Aurora Picture Show, Houston; Portland Documentary and Experimental
Film Festival, Portland, Oregon; The Dallas Museum of Art, and Cinematexas
International Film Festival. She is the recipient of grants from The Artadia
Award, The Dallas Museum of Art, the Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris
County, and the Austin Film Society.
|
Untitled (Rambo) | Rä die Martino | 2003 | 06:00 min.
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|
Rambo, the character, is embroiled in a series of failed attempts
to stop all war. The American icon becomes a parody of himself when seen
in the context of silent cinema, his words replaced by affected inter-titles
and his actions underscored by a clunky and obsessive piano piece. Famous
world-wide, the original expensive production is completely destabilized
by using little devices. Extrapolating bits of sequences from the original
Rambo II film and then re-editing and manipulating them so that everything
becomes completely different.
Rä di Martino was born in Rome in 1975 and she lived in London since 1997
where she graduated with an MFA at the Slade School of Art. In 2004 she
moved to New York with a research grant award at Columbia University.
|
Coin
Toss | Matthew Garrison | 2006 | 3:46 min. |
|
Coin Toss
connects a game of chance to ideas of fate and conflict by spinning silhouetted
coins against a red background of archival war footage. The color red
connects the imagery to violence and a state of emergency, while the choreographed
coins represent players navigating a violent past. The game also draws
attention to the polarization of conceptual and political issues within
a system of heads or tails. The emotional cost of war is acknowledged
in Coin Toss through wartime anonymity, intense color and the
use of essential forms.
Matthew Garrison is a professor of Digital Art at Hunter College,
NYC, and Albright College, Reading, PA. He received his MFA from Hunter
College and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Selected exhibitions
include the Roger Smith Lab Gallery in Manhattan, The University of Wisconsin’s
Foster Gallery and the Waterfront Center for the Arts in Belfast, Ireland.
|
The Frequency Of The Sun | Jason Boughton | 2005 | 10:00
min. |
|
An American paratrooper tries to describe a firefight twice,
but becomes confused; a confusion of places (Iraq, Kansas, London), times
(1941, 1991, the present) and ways to die.
A gradual collage of Hollywood panorama, propaganda footage and combat reporting,
The Frequency of the Sun plays a quotation game which is never fully resolved,
tells a joke but the punch line is never entirely spoken. Performing a series
of violent displacements of intention between mourning and celebration,
the sky and the ground, Frequency is an exploration of the horizon line
as the structuring element of American violence – an unreachable end-point,
the boundless space which seems to verify a god-like power.
Boughton was born and raised in Washington State. He studied Literature
and Studio Arts at The Evergreen State College. Now he lives in Brooklyn,
NY, and is a MFA candidate in Visual Art at Columbia. |
Temper Tantrum | John Richey | 2006 | 1:00 min.
|
|
A temper tantrum is an unplanned, unintentional expression
of anger, often with physical and verbal outbursts; it is not an act to
get attention, as is commonly thought. During a temper tantrum, children
typically cry, yell, and flail their arms and legs. Temper tantrums usually
last 30 seconds to 2 minutes and are most intense at the onset.
In Richey's characters, the outburst carries everything and nothing -
A universe of emotions and yet, nothing but a tiny glitch. (C.S.)
John Richey is a cross-disciplinary artist who creates intimate works
about the paradoxical situations of fear and control. He received a BFA
from The University of Arizona in 2001 and a MFA from the University of
California, San Diego in 2004. His animations have been exhibited nationally
and internationally and were mentioned in the “Best of 2004” issue of
ARTFORUM International. Richey currently resides in Brooklyn, NY and is
the Head Preparator at Greene Naftali Gallery.
|
Boxes, Jesus and Sandwiches | Jennifer Matotek | 2004
| 2:20
|
|
I found this bitchin’ doomsday cult recording
from the 1980s, and thought about the 80s, and the whole weird conservative
thing that was happening then, which is happening now… and then I thought,
“fuck it – let's throw some stuff together.”
Jennifer Matotek is an emerging curator, interdisciplinary artist, and
videomaker whose work has been shown across North America in galleries
and film and video festivals such as the Chicago Underground Film Festival,
the New York Underground Film Festival, and Cinematexas.
|
|
THURSDAY • June
14 2007 • 7:30 PM
PROGRAM
01: MEXICO CITY
|
Yepa Yepa Yepa | Miguel Calderón | 2002 | 4:23 min. |
|
Yepa, Yepa, Yepa! is an eclectic
music video for Mexico City musician Silverio, known for his cutting-edge
performance-based electronic rock music, filmed at the infamous Patrick
Miller transvestite night club in Mexico City. Calderón is the co-founder
of La Panaderia, an alternative art space in Mexico City.
Miguel Calderón (Mexico City, 1971) is a video and installation artist
whose work has been exhibited in Mexico and abroad, including at the Museo
Rufino Tamayo, La Panadería and the Diego Rivera Gallery in Mexico, the
San Francisco Art Institute and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New
York. He both curates and writes about art. Calderón has a BFA from the
San Francisco Art Institute. |
VS [versus]
| Demián Flores/Orlando Jiménez | 2005 | 8:00 min. (excerpt) |
|
Starring Blue Panther, Hijo del Santo, VS is a conglomeration of
short videos that originate from the evidencing of the sport-spectacle of
“lucha libre”, its identity, theatricality, aesthetics, etc. The structure
of these videos is based in repetition, in the multiple, the interminable,
in a time-space game. |
Microftalmia
| Andrea Robles/Adriana Bravo | 2005 | 5:45 min. |
|
This animation dives into the daily world of Benjamin. The
sound track was constructed based on his emotional states. It¢s made by
sounds produced by himself and by sounds that fascinate him. The images
in this work are an attempt to interpret Benjamin¢s perceptions and sensations.
Andrea Robles (Mexico City 1976) obtained a bachelor degree on Visual
Communication on 1999. In 2001 she formed the collaboration group dobleA
(doubleA) together with Adriana Bravo. In 2002 Robles she created Mirada
pérdida (Lost sight). The piece is an animation done with objects. She
conceives the work Anatomy of a Moth on 2004. During the same year she
received the stipendium Young Creators 2004-2005 from Arts and Culture
National Fund. Within this period Robles produces Microftalmía (Microphthalmia),
an experimental animation of oil drawings on glass.
Adriana Bravo. She was born on December 9th, 1972 in La Paz Bolivia. She
obtained a bachelor in Fine Arts with a major in painting. In 2000 she
moves to Mexico City to study an MFA at San Carlos Academy at the National
University
of Mexico. In 2002 she ventures into the moving image area with the animation
Lost Sight which marks the beginning of
her work in video and animation. In 2003 she creates the animation Anatomy
of a Moth. This work was shown at Video Brasil, Interfilm Berlin, Mex
Parismental Festival, Paris. It was also shown at the Antimatter festival
2005 in Victoria Canada. It was included in the section Foreign Matter:
Mexican Experimental Videos Latest Trends. In 2005 she produces Microftalmía,
an experimental animation of oil drawings on crystal. |
Ciudad
Moderna | Terence Gower | 2004 | 6:30 |
|
Shown as a digital video projection, Terence Gower's Ciudad
Moderna is a composite of clips taken from a popular Mexican Film released
in 1966. The source film, Despedida de Casada (Dir. Juan de Orduña),
is treated as a document of the contemporary city, and is re-edited to show
off the architecture. Clips from the original film are interspersed with
single frames which each capture an image of the architecture in pristine
black and white, or dissolve to a perspective rendering like illustrations
from an architectural monograph.
Terence Gower is a Canadian artist living and working between New
York City and Mexico City. He works primarily with strategies of representation
in modernist architecture, with a special focus on Mexican Modernism.
He has exhibited his installations and videos in museums, galleries and
public sites in Europe, Latin America, the US and Canada. His most recent
book, Appendices, Illustrations & Notes was published by Smart Art
Press, Los Angeles in 1999. |
Parálisis |
Gabriel Acevedo Velarde | 2005 | 2:15 min. |
|
A large sequence of geometrically shaped
shrubs is shown in a very fast edition, interrupted by regular streets shots
of the same shrubs crazily shaking their leaves. The humorous result tends
to hide the meanings of this hysterical joke, shot in Mexico City’s typical
middle-class neighborhoods.
Gabriel Acevedo Velarde (Lima, Perú, 1976) works mainly in animation
and video. After studying Fine Arts and working in film production in Mexico
City, his work has been shown in different art spaces as well as video festivals,
like in Museo Carrillo Gil (Mexico), Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS,
Mexico), Festival de Arte Electronica VideoBrasil (Sao Paulo), Galerie Adler
(Frankfurt), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucarest), Centre pour
l’Image Contemporain (Geneve), among others. Currently he lives in Sao Paulo
and Mexico City. |
Saida, Asra
| Graciela Fuentes | 2006 | 3:20 min. |
|
This video attempts to reflect on the construction of subjectivity
through performative acts. It focuses on two young girls as they dance during
a family event in Egypt. Employing a formal strategy of visual isolation
their body language becomes accentuated, revealing the tension between self-awareness
and self-absorption. In their performance the girls awkwardly alternate
from adult-like seductive gestures to childish jostling among themselves.
By focusing on the singularities of the represented subjects the work transcends
its cultural specificity to question notions of girlhood, sexuality and
identity formation. Born in 1975 in Monterrey, Mexico.
Her practice includes installation, photograpy and video work that questions
notions of geopolitics and cultural identities in the current global landscape.
Fuentes recently completed the Whitney Independent Study Program. Her work
has been presented in solo exhibitions in New York, Mexico, Portugal and
Puerto Rico and in group shows in venues such as Stux Gallery, The Queens
Museum, The Chelsea Art Museum, Smack Mellon, El Museo del Barrio, Exit
Art,among others. She has received three grants from the National Council
for Culture and the Arts in Mexico (CONACULTA) and was a 2005 Visual Arts
Grant recipient from Fundación Marcelino Botín. |
Escenario
| Gabriel Acevedo Velarde | 2004 | 3:00 min. |
|
This black & white animation depicts a group of little
characters doing a strange and endless ritual in the middle of the mountains:
one by one, they go up on a stage, where the shine of a strong spot light
makes them pass over. After that, they recover among the audience, waiting
for the next turn to climb back up to the stage.
Gabriel Acevedo Velarde (Lima, Perú, 1976) works mainly in animation
and video. After studying Fine Arts and working in film production in
Mexico City, his work has been shown in different art spaces as well as
video festivals, like in Museo Carrillo Gil (Mexico), Sala de Arte Público
Siqueiros (SAPS, Mexico), Festival de Arte Electronica VideoBrasil (Sao
Paulo), Galerie Adler (Frankfurt), National Museum of Contemporary Art
(Bucarest), Centre pour l’Image Contemporain (Geneve), among others. Currently
he lives in Sao Paulo and Mexico City. |
El Legado de
Mc Gava | Paulina Lasa | 2003 | 5:44 min. |
|
MC Gava teaches his famous dance steps
to a person who teaches them to someone else after. We see the same thing
happening subsecuentely until the ninth person, that learns a series of
steps that have very little to do with the original ones. It works like
the telephone game in which information is modified in the process of sharing
it.
Paulina Lasa graduated from visual arts by the art departmen of UNAM in
Mexico City. Her work has been shown individually and collectivelly in shows
like: "Declaraciones", curated by Guillermo Santamarina at Reina
Sofía, Madrid; "A place in time", curated by Claudia Arozqueta
at Camp Street, San Antonio; "Free Trade", curated by Outpost
for Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; "Dadapsicodeli", curated
by Xavier Rodríguez at X-Teresa museum; "Pregúntale a Alicia",
a site specific project at La Torre de los Vientos, Mexico City. Has been
granted by the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture-UNESCO 2005,
FONCA-CONACULTA 2005-2006, Fulbright-García Robles 2007-2009 and achieved
the best documentary award by AluCine Film Festival 2006. |
Crack, Line, Twig, Hole, Universe
| Mauricio Alejo | 2002 - 2004 | 5:00 |
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Starting with the compositive
elements related to the still image, these videos function on two levels,
visual and semantic, translating purely formal issues –enhanced by
texture and volume- into emotionally charged images. Works such as Crack
and Hole bring to mind not only the instability of the image and the
trick of perception, but also make one reflect on more complex and abstract
themes, such as the vulnerability of the human condition. —Paola Santoscoy.
Mauricio Alejo. Fulbright Grant 2000 2002. Master in Arts for
New York University 2000 2002. He has held solo shows in Mexico City, Toronto,
Kyoto. Paris, and New York. His work has been featured at VIII La Havana
Biennial and Paris Photo 2003, Triennal Poligrafica de San Juan de Puerto
Rico among others international shows. Lives in México City and New
York. |
SPECIAL: SHORT DOCUMENTARY ON FAMOUS ARTISTS:
ART 21: Gabriel Orozco | PBS Series | 2002 | 25 minutes |
|
Gabriel Orozco was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico in
1962 and studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arte Plasticas in Mexico City,
and at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain. An avid traveler,
Gabriel Orozco uses the urban landscape and the everyday objects found
within it to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination
of the viewer. Orozco’s interest in complex geometry and mapping find
expression in works like the patterned human skull of "Black Kites",
the curvilinear logic of "Oval Billiard Table", and the extended
playing field of the chessboard in "Horses Running Endlessly".
He considers philosophical problems, such as the concept of infinity,
and evokes them in humble moments, as in the photograph "Pinched
Ball", which depicts a deflated soccer ball filled with water. Matching
his passion for political engagement with the poetry of chance encounters,
Orozco’s photographs, sculptures, and installations propose a distinctive
model for the ways in which artists can affect the world with their work.
Orozco was featured at Documenta XI (2002), where his sensuous terra-cotta
works explored the elegance and logic of traditional ceramics—a pointed
commentary on Mexican craft and its place in a ‘high art’ gallery space.
Orozco has shown his work at distinguished venues including the Whitney
Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Venice Biennale. A major
retrospective of Orozco’s work was assembled at the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles in 2000, and traveled to the Museo Internacional Rufino
Tamayo, Mexico City, and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterey,
Mexico. Gabriel Orozco lives and works in New York, Paris, and Mexico
City. |
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