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Takeshi Murata: Get Your Ass to Mars

2 May, 2011 by

Takeshi Murata // Art and The Future // 2011 // Pigment print 32.5 x 50 inches // Edition of 3 with 2 APs

Takeshi Murata: Get Your Ass to Mars
April 29 – June 11, 2011
Ratio 3 (website)
1447 Stevenson Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, USA (map)

Ratio 3 is pleased to present Get Your Ass to Mars, new work by Takeshi Murata, on view from April 29 to June 11, 2011.

Takeshi Murata // Cyborg // 2011 // Pigment print // 28 x 42 inches // Edition of 3 with 2 APs

Takeshi Murata // Expanded Cinema // 2011 // Pigment print // 27.43 x 42 inches // Edition of 3 with 2 APs

Takeshi Murata // Golden Banana // 2011 // Pigment print // 30.45 x 42 inches // Edition of 3 with 2 APs

Takeshi Murata // Gumbone and Coke // 2011 // Pigment print // 23.2 x 32 inches // Edition of 3 with 2 APs

Takeshi Murata // Jazz Funeral // 2011 // Pigment print // 23.2 x 32 inches // Edition of 3 with 2 APs

Takeshi Murata // The Heretic // 2011 // Pigment print // 27.3 x 42 inches // edition of 3 with 2 APs

Takeshi Murata // Salon Kitty // 2011 // Pigment print // 27.3 x 42 inches // Edition of 3 with 2 APs

Takeshi Murata The Sisterhood // 2011 // Pigment print // 23.2 x 32 inches // Edition of 3 with 2 APs

Honestly, I guess I’m either credulous or oblivious with realist computer art these days: I was trusting these were photographs taken at the exhibit IRL, one of my initial reactions being, “Does Takeshi have to cut fresh oranges everyday for the ‘Art and Future’ piece?” (irl?) In real life or not, this is impressive, alluring work, and for those in San Francisco — or California — you should make yer merry way to SF and visit Ratio 3 for Takeshi Murata’s “Get Your Ass to Mars” exhibit, which shows April 29 – June 11, 2011. The exhibit gleans its title from a line of movie dialogue, spoken by Arnold Schwartzenager, in Total Recall (1990), directed by Paul Verhoeven, a personal favorite.

Fun fact: Total Recall is such a favorite that I acted a scene from it in my Acting for Camera course in film school. James Franco was in that class as well, for he is enrolled in septendecim schools simultaneously.

More on the exhibit:

For this exhibition, Murata will present a new series of prints using imagery rendered entirely on the computer. As in his previous work, Murata uses objects that already exist in the world, playing with their inherent narratives and associations. Murata’s still lifes are composed of arranged objects such as VHS cassette tapes, fruit, skulls, cracked iPhones, musical instruments, and beer bottles. He places these objects in a virtual space that appears eerily real, accentuating their strange relationships with each other as they rest in a timeless abstract space. With these prints, Murata moves in the opposite direction of time-based video, emphasizing stillness, tension and pictorial illusion.

The gallery will also present the West Coast debut of “I, Popeye,” which premiered in 2010 in the exhibition ‘Free’ at the New Museum, New York. By animating Popeye in three dimensions, Murata’s personal interpretation of Popeye casts a dark yet humorous shadow on the iconic cartoon character. As in his previous videos, Murata’s deft control of the image draws the viewer into moments of both wonder and confusion.

Takeshi Murata was born in 1974 in Chicago, IL. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 with a B.F.A. in Film/Video/Animation. He has had previous solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC , gallery.sora, Tokyo and The Reliance (The Approach), London. His work has been included in exhibitions at the New Museum, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, Sikemma Jenkins & Co., New York, and Gladstone Gallery, New York. Murata currently lives and works in Saugerties, New York. This is his third solo exhibition with Ratio 3.

GALLERY HOURS: WEDNESDAY – SATURDAY; 11am – 6pm, and by appointment.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION/IMAGES CONTACT:
МICНAЕL GUIDЕТТI @ 415.821.3371 / gallery@ratio3.org / http://www.ratio3.org

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Space Program: MARS, or War Huh Yeah What Is It Good For Absolutely Nothing Say It Again, 5/1/2011

29 April, 2011 by

Crossroads by Bruce Conner (36:00, 16mm, 1976)

SPACE PROGRAM presents
“MARS, or War Huh Yeah What Is It Good For Absolutely Nothing Say It Again”

Sunday the 1st of May at 7:30pm
at Thalia Hall, 1807 S Allport, Chicago, IL (map)
$5 suggested donation
this space is unheated, so bring warm clothes, sleeping bags, blankets, etc
curated by Ben Russell

**this space is unheated, so bring warm clothes, sleeping bags, blankets, etc

“ Oh, rust-surfaced sphere, with your receding polar ice caps and optical illusion canals!  If not for your half-mass, your eccentric orbit, and your global dust storms, we would call you sister or cousin; but it was your fiery red-lit temperament and your thin atmosphere that led the Romans to name you after their God of War, and we at SPACE PROGRAM shall do the same.  We shall land our newest craft upon the peak of your Olympus Mons, and from that vantage point (highest in the solar system) we shall survey the entire galaxy stretched out before us.  Unlike the 2/3rds of failed Mars voyages that left before us, we shall traverse your Valles Marineris with the understanding that the power of Mars as the power of War is a power best used to secure the peace.  Our childhood wargames (Geissler/Sann), our damaged soldiers (Single Spark Film Collective), our flicker destruction (Sharits), our media paralysis (Smith), and our transcendent explosions (Conner) are herewith submitted as evidence.  With a question on our lips we shall raise our flag upon your soil, its single dollar/Euro sign fluttering in the solar wind: Oh, Mars – if it costs $309,000 per kilogram to land upon your basalt surface, what (pray tell) is the average cost of peace? ” — BR

FEATURING:
Fuck the War by Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann (4:00, video, 2007)
Winter Soldier by Single Spark Film Collective (20:00, 16mm, 1971)
T, O, U, C, H, I, N, G by Paul Sharits (12:00, 16mm, 1968)
Frozen War by John Smith (11:00, video, 2002)
Friendly Fire by Thorsten Fleisch (7:30, 16mm, 2003)
Crossroads by Bruce Conner (36:00, 16mm on video, 1976)
TRT 90:00

***
MARS PROGRAMME DETAILS
Fuck the War by Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann (4:00, video, 2007)
The film is, on the one hand, a con­tem­po­rary Lord of the Flies, which evokes the ongo­ing sense­less­ness of vio­lence and war, bring­ing the mes­sage home by allow­ing Ger­man (rather than Iraqi or Sierra Leonese) chil­dren to explore the giddy chaos of mil­i­tary power. At the same time, it speaks to the innate instincts and prim­i­tive impulses that remain only shal­lowly buried beneath our civ­i­lized surfaces.

Winter Soldier by Single Spark Film Collective (20:00, 16mm, 1971)
Vietnam vets give testimony at the Winter Soldier tribunals. Vet after vet talks about what he personally experienced in Vietnam, what he was made to do as a soldier in an imperialist army. Revealed by nightmarish firsthand account are the atrocities committed against the Vietnamese people.

T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G. by Paul Sharits (1969)

T, O, U, C, H, I, N, G by Paul Sharits (12:00, 16mm, 1968)
“Merges violence with purity.” – P. Adams Sitney

Frozen War by John Smith (11:00, video, 2002)
A disorientating experience while attempting to watch the TV news in an Irish hotel room triggers a spontaneous response to the bombing of Afghanistan.

Friendly Fire by Thorsten Fleisch (7:30, 16mm, 2003)
… Friendly Fire (2003) literally burned what you could see, and it was the light of the fire, the projector’s beam, that played out in stunning violence onscreen. With so much attention dedicated to the preservation of film, FriendlyFire proposed a cathartic alternative: ruined figures of melted celluloid and crackling ash. in death film comes alive, more vital, reborn by the very forces that destroy it. (Genevieve Yue ‘Senses of Cinema’)

Crossroads by Bruce Conner (1976)

Crossroads by Bruce Conner (36:00, 16mm, 1976)
The 1945 atomic-bomb explosion at Bikini Atoll becomes a thing of terrible beauty and haunting visual poetry when shown in extreme slow motion, shown from 27 different angles, and accompanied by avant-garde Western classical music composed for electric organ by Terry Riley.
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Space Program: Venus, aka Lover’s Rock, Sunday, 4/24/11

22 April, 2011 by

All Through the Night (2008) by Michael Robinson

SPACE PROGRAM presents
“Venus, aka Lover’s Rock — A Name That Serves As Exclamation For Us All”

Sunday the 24th of April at 7:30pm
at Thalia Hall, 1807 S Allport, Chicago, IL (map)
$5 suggested donation
this space is unheated, so bring warm clothes, sleeping bags, blankets, etc
curated by Mary Helena Clark & Ben Russell

“ After our perilous maiden voyage to Mercury, SPACE PROGRAM‘s co-pilot/curator Mary Helena Clark cordially invites you to crash-land your spacecraft onto the terrestrial planet Venus, that inhospitable rock with its reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, that glowing orb your great-great-great-great-great-grandparents so wisely named after the Roman goddess of Love and Beauty.  Today’s Venus finds its mirror in that 90s rave-haunt-cum-cinema-space called Thalia Hall, a space transformed again and again through eight moving images of longing and musical transcendence: a veritable cinema mixtape featuring tracks by Cyndi Lauper, The Shangri-las, Hoagy Lands, The Kinks, Jonathan Halper, Glass Crash and the dance beats of England’s finest 90s club music.

Lovers Rock!  This party is for you and you and you and, as such, Alex Hubbard is there to welcome you at the door of your new CINEPOLIS.  You’ll find Michael Robinson just inside, asking Venus the self-same question ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT: “What is beauty?”  Chick Strand’s ELASTICITY and Laida Lertxundi’s MY TEARS ARE DRY shout answers from the living room with meditations on longing, euphoria and ecstasy.  Later on, Lertxundi escapes outside for some fresh air, wanders into the volcanic horizon and stakes claim to a desert outpost in FOOTNOTES TO THE HOUSE OF LOVE — after all, there’s no rainfall on Venus. Back inside, we share a PUCE MOMENT or two with Kenneth Anger — all glitter and glamour and greyhound, an early indicator of just how British club-and-rave this party is going to get (courtesy of Mark Leckey’s FIORUCCI MADE ME HARDCORE). The music rises, you dance and dance and get caught up in that Crystal Lite high of Shana Moulton’s WHISPERING PINES 8 until finally the dense carbon dioxide atmosphere makes your head throb and you run into a corner to empty yourself out entirely.  Through bleary-eyes you think to yourself, “The surface of Venus sort of looks like Hell” and as you vomit brightness underneath so many toxic clouds, you realize that this planet really is a metaphor for love as well.”

Featuring: Cinepolis by Alex Hubbard (1:55, video, 2007), All Through the Night by Michael Robinson (4:20, video, 2008), Elasticity by Chick Strand (22:00, 16mm, 1975), My Tears Are Dry by Laida Lertxundi (4:00, 16mm, 2009), Footnotes to the House of Love by Laida Lertxundi (13:00, 16mm, 2007), Puce Momentby Kenneth Anger (6:30, 16mm, 1949), Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore by Mark Leckey (15:00, video, 1999), Whispering Pines 8 by Shana Moulton (7:34, video, 2006)

TRT 75:00
curated by Mary Helena Clark

VENUS PROGRAMME DETAILS
Cinepolis by Alex Hubbard (1:55, video, 2007)
Brooklyn-based artist Alex Hubbard’s videos are face paced performances shot in a single take from above. In Cinepolis a flurry of activity occurs under the camera of objects assembled, manipulated and ultimately destroyed.

All Through the Night by Michael Robinson (4:20, video, 2008)
A charred visitation with an icy language of control: “there is no room for love”. Splinters of Nordic fairy tales and ecological disaster films are ground down into a prism of contradictions in this hopeful container for hopelessness.

Elasticity by Chick Strand (22:00, 16mm, 1975)
“Impressionistic surrealism in three acts. The approach is literary experimental with optical effects. There are three mental states that are interesting: amnesia, euphoria and ecstasy. Amnesia is not knowing who you are and wanting desperately to know. I call this the White Night. Euphoria is not knowing who you are and not caring. This is the Dream of Meditation. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who you are and still not caring. I call this the Memory of the Future.” — CS

My Tears Are Dry by Laida Lertxundi (4:00, 16mm, 2009)
“A film in the three parts of a dialectic. Hoagy Land’s song is played and interrupted as guitar makes sound, two women, a bed, an armchair, and the beautiful outside. After Bruce Baillie’s All My Life. The lyrics of the song reference the eternal sunshine of California and its promises.” — LL

Footnotes to the House of Love by Laida Lertxundi (13:00, 16mm, 2007)
A series of shots in a California desert landscape in which there is a play between on frame and off frame, sound and image. There is an effort to create the space of a story, without a story, by the use of real time/diegetic sound. Love is felt as a force that determines the arrangement of the figures in the landscape. Music: Leslie Gore, Ari Up, The Kinks, The Shangri-Las, Henry Flynt, Laura Steenberge and The Crystals.

Puce Moment by Kenneth Anger (6:30, 16mm, 1949)
“A lavishly colored evocation of the Hollywood now gone, as shown through an afternoon in the milieu of a 1920s film star.” — KA

“Puce Moment is a fragment from an abandoned film project entitled Puce Woman. The soundtrack used here is the second one; the first was the overture to Verdi’s I Villi. The film reflects Anger’s concerns with the myths and decline of Hollywood, as well as with the ritual of dressing, with the movement from the interior to the exterior, and with color and sound synchronization …”
— Marilyn Singer, The American Federation of Arts

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore by Alex Hubbard

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore by Mark Leckey (15:00, video, 1999)
“Described by one commentator as the best thing they’d ever seen in a gallery, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore is an extended paean to the unadulterated bliss of nocturnal abandon. A documentary of sorts, Leckey’s video chronicles the rites of passage experienced by successive generations of British (sub)urban youth.”
— Matthew Higgs, ArtForum

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore uses found and original footage of discos and raves across Britain during the 70s, 80s and 90s. Details of clothing, technology, music and other cultural references surface briefly like uncanny folklore as the film explores a culture of collective leisure and consumption.

Whispering Pines 8 by Shana Moulton (7:34, video, 2006)
Moulton again performs as her alter-ego Cynthia in the latest episode of the Whispering Pine series. Fueled by the sugar-free drink Crystal Light, Cynthia methodically fills a vase with alchemical home decorating items. Once her project is completed, Cynthia is again left to dwell in her thoughts. Suddenly a ladder grows out of the vase. Cynthia climbs the ladder and, through a trap door, enters an ecstatic rave complete with a techno remix of the Crystal Light commercial music.
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Seven Question Interview with Matt McCormick, Portland-based Filmmaker and Artist

20 April, 2011 by

Matt McCormick filmmaker and artist Matt McCormick filmmaker and artist Matt McCormick filmmaker and artist

Matt McCormick is an ardent filmmaker and artist who resides in Portland, Oregon. He is an eminent maker in the avant-garde and independent sphere of cinema — voted one of the best filmmakers of the 21st century, according to a poll conducted by the Film Society of the Lincoln Center — Matt found early success with his well-known short The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal (2002, narrated by Miranda July), which was named in  ‘Top 10 / Best of 2002’ lists in both The Village Voice and Art Forum magazine.

Matt collaborates with notable artists; Matt makes music videos for recognized bands: Broken Bells, The Shins, Miranda July, Sleater-Kinney, The Postal Service, YACHT, Al Burian, Eluvium, Patton Oswalt, and Calvin Johnson, to name a few.

Matt McCormick has an aptitude for successfully distributing his films, whether it be D.I.Y. and starting his own distribution label (Peripheral Produce) and founding the PDX Film Festival, or simply just making great work and having it exhibit in a theatre, gallery, or festival.

“Matt has had three films screen at the Sundance Film Festival, and has had work screened or exhibited at MoMA, The Serpentine Gallery, The Oslo Museum of Modern Art, the Reykjavik Art Museum, The Seattle Art Museum, and in 2007 he was selected to participate in both the Moscow Biennial and Art Basil.  He has received awards including Best Short Film from the San Francisco International Film Fest, Best Experimental from the New York Underground Film Fest, and Best Narrative from the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Matt’s debut feature film Some Days are Better Than Others premiered at SXSW and was invited to screen in the New Directors / New Films series presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.  Starring Carrie Brownstein and James Mercer, the film was acquired by Palisades Tartan and will be released theatrically in the spring of 2011.”

 

(1) During your early days of filmmaking, what were the challenges, and how did you surmount? What are the onerous aspects of the filmmaker’s journey?

I get the sense that the challenges never really cease. Even when I talk to my super successful filmmaker friends, I am always surprised to hear how difficult things can be. For me, the early challenges were as simple as getting access to equipment and finding venues that would screen my work. From there, the challenges largely became more internal — wanting to grow as an artist and make work that felt like a progression, or simply arranging your life so that the demands of filmmaking are not impeded on by other lifestyle choices. But I think the challenges are almost always there, from being frustrated because you want to make something, but lack the resources, to having made something, but being disappointed with how it turned out or was received. And then there is the whole “how am I going to make a living?” to boot. I think as a filmmaker, you just have to deal with it, and understand that there are challenges around every corner.

(more…)

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April 17, 2011: SPACE PROGRAM presents: Mercury, or One-Half a Life Spent in Darkness is One-Half a Life Spent Facing the Sun

15 April, 2011 by


SPACE PROGRAM presents
“Mercury, or One-Half a Life Spent in Darkness is One-Half a Life Spent Facing the Sun”
Curated by Ben Russell

This Sunday!
April 17, 2011 | 7:30pm
at Thalia Hall
1807 S Allport, Chicago, IL, 60608 (map)
$5 suggested donation

Messenger Mercury is retrograde until April 23, but with this SPACE PROGRAM screening series, Mercury turns direct on Sunday, April 17th, 2011. Guided by the afflatus of the planetary teachers, Space Program projects indelible cinema in the historic, Pilsen-based Thalia Hall — both NASA employees and non-NASA employees are invited — but please note that this space is unheated, so bring warm clothes, sleeping bags, blankets, beaver pelts, caribou furs, and other warm goods. Considering the typical 40°–80° Chicago-flux of weather this time of year, it is advised that you bring extra beaver pelts and warm materials.

Synopsis of the Mercury Programme: “In honor of its eccentric orbit, its 176-day day, its large iron core, its tidal bulges and Beethoven Crater and its ‘gently rolling, hilly plains,’ your navigators at SPACE PROGRAM hereby propose an audiovisual third fly-by of the smallest galactic sphere: MERCURY.  The innermost planet of our Solar System, Mercury is metaphorically volatile, changeable, fickle and flighty.  It is a slow rotation with a sharp edge; one that occupies the two poles of our human psyche – Mercury is radical darkness, sorrow and despair; Mercury is blinding radiance, heat and wonderment.  Mercury is youth.  It is the cusp of adulthood, the terrors of development, that bittersweet joy of (not) knowing enough.  Viewed from our telescope, Mercury is Eva Marie Rødbro’s constellation of Texan teenagers, all infrared desire and insect and nipple pierce and imminent danger — the anxiety of that next rotation is deep, soul-shaking.  When we focus again, we see Mercury in the overwhelming sweetness and sorrow of Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Marks’ Streetwise (1984) — a document of a 1980s gang of Seattle street kids living in abandoned spaces (echoes of Thalia Hall), with the sort of heart-baring openness that can only come from living far too close to the sun … Where there is light, there is darkness.”

Below is a letter from the curator, Ben Russell:

Fellow Travelers,

On behalf of your friends at Mission Control (Pilsen), I am proud to announce the launch of SPACE PROGRAM* – a screening series in four parts that will temporarily re-colonize a world heretofore lost to Silence-and-Darkness in the name of Light-and-Sound.  Presented in the shadowy maw of Pilsen’s historic Thalia Hall under the guidance of artist/astronaut Ben Russell, SPACE PROGRAM is a satellite alternative to dominant media practices, a time-image map for those new constellations rapidly forming in your heads.  From April 17th onwards, each of the initial four SPACE PROGRAM screenings are named after and thematically curated in relation to one of the planets of our solar system.  Come, discover new worlds with us!  More specifically:

April 17th, 2011: MERCURY (see details below)
April 24th, 2011: VENUS (details TBA)
May 1st, 2011: MARS (details TBA)
May 8th, 2011: JUPITER (details TBA)

Space Is the Place,

Ben Russell

MERCURY PROGRAMME DETAILS

Featuring:
I Touched Her Legs by Eva Marie Rødbro (15:00, video, 2010)
Streetwise by Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Marks (91:00, 16mm, 1984)
TRT 106:00

I Touched Her Legs by Eva Marie Rødbro (15:00, video, 2010)
These Texan youth are the descendants of David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’, and they are both invincible and as fragile as a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching car. The Danish artist Eva Marie Rødbro’s sound-and-image montage is an extraordinary experience – a deeply poetic anthropological study of the self-destructive rites of passage of teenage life. This is the fragility of youth, caught shattering.  Everything is simultaneously animal and human, domestic and ethereal – that kid backflipping off his couch is an astronaut, untethered in space; those forgotten Jesus hymns are portals to St.Elsewhere, true.  If this video is a document then it’s also a vision – not just about what one looks at, but how one sees and hears the world.

Streetwise by Martin Bell (91:00, 16mm, 1984)
“The first time I saw this film, when I was a child, I felt like running away and living under a bridge, someplace or other. It’s an extremely beautiful film, which captures a time and a place that no longer exists in this way.” — Harmony Korine

Martin Bell’s unforgettable vérité documentary was shot on the streets of Seattle in the mid-1980s, and follows a group of homeless teenage kids aged between 13 and 19, who live off ‘container-raiding’, stealing and hustling. Rat, the dumpster diver, Tiny, the teenage prostitute, Shellie, the baby-faced blonde, DeWayne, the hustler, all old beyond their years.  They talk as if they were port workers, but behind the tough façade lie the vulnerable, small beings that have chosen the freedom of the street instead of the broken homes they come from. A raw masterpiece, and a kind of documentary precursor to Larry Clark’s Kids (1995), which Harmony Korine himself wrote the screenplay for as a teenager.  This is a film that is rarely screened, one that you’ll never forget.

===========================================================================

STREETWISE courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

SPACE PROGRAM is made possible by a grant from Propeller Fund and through material support from the The Foundation for Emerging Artistic Talent (E.A.T.).

Launched in May 2010, Propeller Fund is administered jointly by Gallery 400, UIC and threewalls. Initial support for the program is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts as part of its initiative to promote informal and independently organized visual arts activities across the United States.

The Foundation for Emerging Artistic Talent (E.A.T.) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promote the arts by providing exhibition opportunities and educational resources for emerging artists in the Chicago-land community. E.A.T.’s goal is to enrich the neighborhood of Pilsen through inspired artistic productions showcased in Thalia Hall’s 800-seat theater and gallery space. E.A.T’s dynamic programs will cultivate a supportive artistic network where emerging artists can be empowered to share their voice.

More:
www.dimeshow.com

Thalia Hall

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The Complete Films of Fred Camper: Program Two

14 April, 2011 by

White Light Cinema Presents
The Complete Films of Fred Camper: Program Two
Fred Camper’s SN
Saturday, April 16, 2011 – 8:00pm
The Nightingale | 1084 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL (M A P)

“White Light Cinema is extremely pleased to present these very rare public screenings of the complete films of Fred Camper. Camper has been a thoughtful and articulate writer on film for over forty years (much of his writing is available on his website) and, more recently, has been producing an astonishing body of digital artworks. His earlier filmmaking practice, however, is little known. Long out of distribution (some never in distribution), his short 16mm and Super-8mm films have not been publicly screened for decades. And this presentation of his stunning feature-length Super-8mm film SN is only its third-ever public showing. These films may not be screened again for many years, due to their irreplaceability.”
PROGRAM DETAILS:

Program Two:
Fred Camper’s SN
Saturday, April 16, 2011 – 8:00pm
SN (1984, c. 110 minutes, super-8, silent)

“SN was born out of an intense personal despair, and a desire to depict a failure of the self, coincident with my discovery of super-8 as a medium completely different from 16mm, well suited to a kind of analog for the written diary. Its images’ natural lack of illusionistic presence and authority contributes to the failure theme. The original plan for the film would have required perhaps twenty years of full time work and a great deal of money, leading to a very long film only a small part of which would have been screened each time, selections made with a controlled use of random numbers. What I show now is in ten sections, and in the eighth, on three short reels, a tiny piece of the original plan survives: sixteen shorts serve as the source for this section, and which three are screened and the order in which they are screened at each showing is determined randomly. I have no final prints of any of SN; most sections are edited workprint or edited original, and are thus not exactly as they were intended to look. Still, I believe in it as a film. In part a portrait of Manhattan’s constricted spaces, and more generally of the way humans occupy space, it also presents the failed journey of a self to organize, or become present in, the world. The film has only been screened publicly twice before, and will likely only be screened rarely in its original format in the future.” (Fred Camper)

Fred Camper has been writing and publishing on cinema since the late 1960s, and on art since the late 1980s. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, and presented film programs throughout the world. For the last six years, he has mainly concentrated on making his own art, mostly photo based digital prints; cinema is one key inspiration. His Web site is www.fredcamper.com.

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Admission: $7.00-10.00 sliding scale

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More: Fredcamper.com

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3/31/11 at 7:00pm > Ben Russell: The Artist’s Talk As A Disappearing Act (With Live Video Feed) at threewalls, Chicago, IL, USA

29 March, 2011 by

Ben Russell
The Artist’s Talk As A Disappearing Act (With Live Video Feed)
3/31/11 at 7:00pm
Threewalls, Chicago, IL, USA
119 North Peoria #2C, Chicago, IL 60607 (map)
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-5pm

For those of you in/around Chicago this week, Ben Russell will be giving an artist’s talk/performance about his current solo show at threewalls on Thursday at 7:00pm.  It is a delicious exhibit of BR’s mystic acuity. Superluminal; punk-rock; enchanting; ton-o-fun.

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The Artist’s Talk As A Disappearing Act (With Live Video Feed)
In which the artist performs a televised lecture regarding the seven works currently on display in his solo exhibition, Uh-Oh It’s Magic. Possible topics to be discussed include: working under the influence, phenomenological states, animism, optics and subjectivity, levitation, cultural relativism, and rainbows. The notion of “losing oneself in one’s work” will be demonstrated materially during the course of the lecture and subsequent Q&A.

***
In case you haven’t yet seen the show, it’ll be up until the 23rd of April — here is what some kind souls have said about it so far (in both image and word):

  1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/threewallsgallery/sets/72157626176089321/show/
  2. http://www.artslant.com/chi/articles/picklist#p22299
  3. http://blog.art21.org/2011/03/18/ben-russell-at-threewalls/

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The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity (2007), by Brian Springer, at Conversations at the Edge, Chicago, this Thursday, March 17, 2011

16 March, 2011 by

Image: The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity, Brian Springer, 2007

“Brian Springer presents his latest work The Disappointment: Or, The Force of Credulity (2007) at Conversations at the Edge this Thursday, March 17, 2011.

Followed by a Q&A with the artist and Brian Holmes.

‘An unexpected masterpiece.’ — Grady Hendrix, New York Sun

Best known for his scathing news media exposé Spin (1995), Brian Springer’s latest film is a labyrinthine, semi-autobiographical documentary about the search for four disparate treasures buried on his family’s farm in Missouri. These include gold coins left behind by a 16th Century Spanish explorer; silver from the Civil War; the legendary lost diary of anarchist Kate Austin, who lived on the farm in the 1890s; and a mysterious limestone sculpture of dubious origin. Springer interweaves the stories surrounding these treasures with those of his family to spin a tale of spirit possession, Napalm, Indian massacres, early American opera, fanatical obsessions, 200 tons of dirt, and the way mothers try to protect their families from wounds that never heal.

At its core, The Disappointment meditates on the ways history is passed along, altered, and sometimes lost through archeological findings.  The screening will be followed by a discussion with the artist and writer Brian Holmes.”

2007, Brian Springer, USA, Beta SP video, 70 min plus discussion.

BRIAN SPRINGER (b. 1959, Kansas) studied video at the State University of New York at Buffalo and received his MFA in Art from the University of California Santa Barbara. While in Buffalo, Springer worked with a group of artists to create Squeaky Wheel, a nationally respected grassroots media arts center. Springer’s work has been shown at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Germany, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Whitney Museum (NYC), the Institute for Contemporary Art (London), and the Centre Pompidou (Paris), and has been broadcast nationally in the UK. He currently lives in Ohio, where he works in the public schools through the Ohio Arts Council’s arts residency program.

Co-presented by Video Data Bank, in collaboration with Conversations at the Edge, a program of the Film, Video, New Media and Animation Department at SAIC.

SCREENING DETAILS
Thursday, March 17, 2011, 6:00 PM
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State Street
Chicago, IL
312.846.2600
www.conversationsattheedge.org

More:
The Disappointment on VDB.org

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Posted in avant-garde, documentary / ethnography, event
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Ben Russell: Uh-Oh It’s Magic: March 11-April 23, at Threewalls, Chicago

10 March, 2011 by

BEN RUSSELL: UH-OH IT'S MAGIC

March 11th- April 23rd, 2011
three-walls.org
119 North Peoria #2C, Chicago, IL 60607 (map)
Opening reception: Friday, March 11th, 6-9pm
Artist talk: Thursday, March 31st, 7pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-5pm

CHICAGO: For his SOLO exhibition Uh-Oh It’s Magic, artist Ben Russell gathers together seven instances of sound and image that speak to the varying possibilities of belief and mysticism within a global construct. Taking its title from the choral refrain of the Cars’ song Magic (1984), Uh-Oh It’s Magic points towards the persistence of a culturally Western hope/belief in the existence of Magic: a belief-in-belief that employs logic to dismantle difference-as-superstition as quickly as it drops its jaw in the presence of the technologically explicable. From the myth of Icarus to the divination rites of Malian animists, from Mexican cotton candy makers to Vietnamese martial artists, and from Icelandic drowning pools to Abbie Hoffmans’ 1967 levitation of the Pentagon, this exhibition is realized across a multitude of forms – 16mm film loops, auto-repeat records, found photographs, multi-projector installations, prisms, mirrors, heat lamps, desiccants and a transformed non-space that bathes viewers in a delirious chroma-key paint job, effectively making the gallery everywhere and anywhere at once.

In the her essay for the exhibition, Erika Balsom says: “In the art of Ben Russell, the cinema’s paradoxical status as both disinterested document and active producer of magic emerges as a fundamental preoccupation. Moving into the gallery space after an established career in filmmaking has allowed Russell to make use of an expanded array of strategies and media to explore issues he has long addressed: Do we—and should we—believe in what we see? When does the moving image seek to deceive us and when does it promise revelation? Russell imagines a global cartography of sites and sights that challenge rationality. Placing the experience of travel at the center of his practice, the artist charts culturally varying approaches to the otherworldly with the ethnographic tradition never far out of sight.”

Ben Russell Portrait #1

Ben Russell is a media artist and curator whose films, installations, and performances have been presented 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 Chicago bathtubs to Viennese boats. He has had solo screenings and exhibtions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Museum of Modern Art. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship and 2010 FIPRESCI award recipient, Ben began the Magic Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island, is co-director of the artist-run space BEN RUSSELL in Chicago, and he currently teaches in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Founded in 2003, threewalls’ is dedicated to increasing Chicago’s cultural capital by cultivating contemporary art practice and discourse. With a focus on the practices of local artists and administrators or visiting artists interested in regional history and culture, we aim to create a locus of exchange between local, national and international contemporary art communities that builds Chicago’s reputation as an important site for creative research and production.

threewalls operates three programs: six exhibitions per year that support local artists through SOLO and group exhibitions; a series of public programs that explore current ideas in art and culture (The Public Culture Lecture Series, threewallsSALONS and a biannual symposium on grass-roots and community organized cultural administration) and a residency that invites artists from around the world to engage in regionally site-specific research or projects. threewalls is also joint administrator of The Propeller Fund with Gallery 400 at The University of Illinois at Chicago.

threewalls is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; by a CityArts Program I grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs; The Chicago Community Trust; The Cliff Dwellers Foundation for the Arts; ArtsWork Fund for Organizational Development; The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation; The Alphawood Foundation; The MacArthur Fund for Arts & Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation; 3Arts Chicago; and major support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. threewalls is sponsored by Pernod Absinthe.

More

Ben Russell on Vimeo

 

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Posted in art, avant-garde, event, experimental film
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Stan Brakhage Black Leader, Anticipation of the Night (1959), via Phil Solomon, & Courtesy of Mark Toscano, Academy Film Archive

1 March, 2011 by
brakhage-black-leader-anticipation-of-the-night

Black Leader from Anticipation of the Night (1959), Stan Brakhage, courtesy of Mark Toscano, Academy Film Archive

Found via Phil Solomon’s Musings; part of the Brakhage Restoration Project. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Archive is restoring the complete oeuvre of Stan Brakhage. How delicious. The beauty of Brakhage. Here is one of many treats Phil Solomon shares on his blog.

From Phil Solomon’s Musings (original post here):

The animated scratched titles on the original black leader of Brakhage’s seminal work, Anticipation of the Night, backlit over a light box at the Academy Archive.

Courtesy of Mark Toscano, who is overseeing the restoration, bless him.

Black will be restored to the Night. Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Rust Never Sleeps…

Here are some additional film stills from Stan Brakhage’s Anticipation of the Night (1959), via Fred Camper.


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Posted in avant-garde, experimental film, film stills and frame scans
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Happy St. Valentines Day by Jeanne Liotta

14 February, 2011 by

A perfect little film loop to post for St. Valentine’s Day: Jeanne Liotta’s Happy St. Valentines Day has “Valentine’s Day” in the title. How lovely.

Synopsis: A couple of bipacked loops in the 16mm projector and everybody’s happy!

Visit Jeanne Liotta’s website here.

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