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BEN RUSSELL: NURSES: Nov 6 – Dec 11, 2010, Chicago, Il

1 November, 2010 by 
 
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1716 S Morgan #2F Chicago, IL 60608
NOVEMBER 6, 2010 – DECEMBER 11, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday 6-9 pm, November 6th, 2010
Private viewings by appointment*
*The performance by Andy Positive and His Dissonant Riders will begin at 8:00pm during the opening reception. 
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Come to Pilsen and get nursed at the BR gallery, November 6, 2010 – December 11, 2010. The fun continues.

ABOUT THE SHOW

“Now that we’ve got all of that meta-BEN RUSSELL one-year anniversary action out of the way, it’s time to move onto the real order of business – we’re talking NURSES (of course), and what better way to honor the memory all of those post-Halloween Sexy Nurse / Sexy Florence Nightingale costumes than with a group art show that will care for you in your moment of ill health?  We’ve seen you sniffling on the train, sneezing at the zoo, and staying in bed on Election Day – we saw you hit your head with your bass guitar while performing in a Nirvana cover band last night, and we know that the 8-year old in you is still in need of sustenance.

This almost-always recession-cusp-of-the-everyday is apparently unrelenting, and most of can’t afford Japanese Robonurses to carry our stricken selves from bed to bed to bed.  It’s in times like this that the soothing, comforting, and occasionally lactating powers of art can be called upon to heal us - BEN RUSSELL : NURSES stands as proof that artists are the new clinicians, that apartment spaces are their temporary free clinics…

And so: when you find yourself multiplied and contorted and devouring your own flesh (DONNER), let us dress your wounds.  When you have been beaten upon and pounded into like the skins of so many heavy metal drum heads (POSITIVE), let us put a salve upon your bruises.  BEN RUSSELL : NURSES is art for the body – let us be your healthcare professional!

Like the memory-image of battlefield matrons conjured up through the smell of fresh oil paint (HOFFMAN) or a jellyfish-shaped monument to bodily fluids (FAIN) or the hand of God descending upon your weary frame while a Madonna song echoes through those dark nights (CIOCCI), BEN RUSSELL : NURSES is art for the soul - make an appointment now and avail yourself of our metaphoric health care setting!”

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

CHRISTA DONNER uses a variety of drawing-based media and small-press projects to examine the human body and our relationships to it through physical sensation and imagination. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Museum Bellerive (Zurich, Switzerland), BankART NYK (Yokohama, Japan), Centro Columbo Americano (Medellin, Columbia), Kravets-Wehby (New York, NY), and POST (Los Angeles, CA).

BEN FAIN is best known for his large-scale public performances and parades.  He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 and is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Most recently Ben (with Uncle Merril Ferris, an expert on the Mayan calendar), transformed the Miami Lotus House Thrift Store truck into a parade float/mediation center based on an ancient South Indian practice and lead small groups in short meditations focused on the power of community.

PETER HOFFMAN is a Chicago based artist who primarily works with oil paint on canvas.  He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, and studied at the Marchutz School of Painting in Aix-en-Provence, France in 2006.  Hoffman has exhibited in numerous Chicago venues including Heaven Gallery, Green Lantern Gallery, Harold Washington College, Old Gold, mini-dutch, Hyde Park Art Center, and has been featured in multiple national and international group exhibitions.

ANDY POSITIVE AND HIS DISSONANT RIDERS “are from mind’s eye from Mosinee and western Massachusetts.  Andy with some help from the Beard, from western Massachusetts, works in the public field explaining corporate procedures and Andy is a history collector of the blues (the Blue Riders).  We play in order for unity, not to be hard really but more because I don’t get do this very often ” – Andy Positive

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ABOUT THE SPACE

BEN RUSSELL is an art space in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.  Co-curated by artists Brandon Alvendia and Ben Russell and situated around the front two rooms in the apartment of its namesake, BEN RUSSELL began presenting a series of month-long 5-person shows on Memorial Day Weekend in the year 2009.  Participating artists are invited to produce and exhibit work that is in accordance with the title/theme of each show, the name of which will be derived entirely from the 10 letters in the words “ben russell.”  Future shows may include BEN RUSSELL : LENS, BEN RUSSELL : REBELS, and BEN RUSSELL : US.  In keeping with the structural conceits of the French Oulipo language group and the spatial and material limits of what is effectively a rented apartment, BEN RUSSELL maintains a strict set of restrictions for all exhibiting artists by which:

- One artist shall produce a wall-mounted work scaled at a minimum of three quarters of the thirteen by ten foot wall.
- One artist shall produce a wall-mounted work at a maximum of one half of the opposing wall space between the two adjacent doors.
- One artist shall produce a time-based work to be presented via a CRT flat screen monitor (and associated components) with Dolby 5.1 audio in the adjacent screening room.
- One artist shall produce work to be installed in the all-weather sculpture garden.
- One artist shall produce work to be performed for the duration of 15-30 minutes during the opening.

BEN RUSSELL features a rotating roster of Chicago-based and non-Chicago-based artists and will be open for viewings one night a month and by appointment, as needed.

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Let Each One Go Where He May (2009), Ben Russell, 19 Sept 2010 at Cinema Borealis, Chicago

19 September, 2010 by
Let Each One Go Where He May, Ben Russell, 2009

Let Each One Go Where He May, Ben Russell, 2009

Let Each One Go Where He May

Presented by the MCA in association with The Nightingale
Sunday, September 19, 8 pm, Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee Ave.), $10 suggested donation, Ben Russell in person

Synopsis: Set in Surinam, Russell’s latest investigation of ethnography and representation is simultaneously beautiful, political, and formally complicated. Shot on 16mm Steadicam in thirteen long takes, the film follows two Saramaccan brothers as they trace the path their ancestors took to escape Dutch enslavement 300 years earlier. The film revisits the ecstatic qualities seen in Russell’s short TRYPPS films (which focus on varying notions of psychedelia and trance); the constant forward motion of LET EACH ONE is meditative and leisurely (the other, quieter pole of psychedelic experience). The brothers travel on foot, by bus, and by boat–the camera at once an observer of and a participant in the arduous journey. The film is also a telling document of Surinam’s shifting landscape, as the brothers pass through a crowded city, lush jungles, a gold mine, and rural villages. It provides a startling and nearly tangible experience of a world seldom seen on avant-garde screens, a long otherworldly walk with plenty of room to consider the notion of “other.” — Christy LeMaster
Visit Ben Russell’s website: http://dimeshow.com
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Ben Russell's Trypps Series, 1–7, MCA, September 18, 2010

17 September, 2010 by
Trypps#7 (Badlands) (10:00, Super 16mm on HD, color, sound, 2010)

Trypps#7 (Badlands) (10:00, Super 16mm on HD, color, sound, 2010)

Trypps 1-7: Seven Films by Ben Russell

Saturday, September 18, 8 pm, MCA Theater, $8, $6 MCA members
Black and White Trypps Number One (6:30, 16mm, b/w, silent, 2005)
Black and White Trypps Number Two (9:00, 16mm, b/w, silent, 2006)
Black and White Trypps Number Three (12:00, 35mm, color, SR, 2007)
Black and White Trypps Number Four (11:00, 16mm, b/w, sound, 2008)
Trypps #5 (Dubai) (3:00, 16mm, color, silent, 2008)
Trypps#6 (Malobi) (12:00, 16mm, color, sound, 2009)
Trypps#7 (Badlands) (10:00, Super 16mm on HD, color, sound, 2010)
TOTAL RUNNING TIME 65:00 minutes

“Using a fabricated Old English word as its guiding principle, this ongoing series of (mostly) 16mm films is conceptually organized around the possible meanings that its title elicits – physical voyages, psychedelic journeys, and a phenomenological experience of the world. Begun in 2005 in a somewhat vain attempt to hold cinema up as a mirror to the live and fully embodied reception of the crazy noise music scene in Providence, Rhode Island, the TRYPPS films quickly expanded their formal and critical language to include the various poles of action painting, avant-garde cinema, portraiture, stand-up comedy, global capitalism, and trance-dance a lá Jean Rouch. While the form of these works varies radically from one to the next, when taken as a whole they can be seen to enunciate what their maker calls “psychedelic ethnography” – a practice whose aim is a knowledge of the Self/self, a movement towards understanding in which the trip is both the means and the end.” – Ben Russell

Visit Ben Russell’s website: http://dimeshow.com

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7 Question Interview with Ben Russell, Chicago-based Artist

15 September, 2010 by

an image of ben russell, chicago-based filmmaker and artist

Ben Russell is a Chicago-based filmmaker, artist, art instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, curator, and a great keynote speaker. Perhaps he may be considered a terminologist, for he seemingly has coined the term/genre “psychedelic ethnography,” judging by his writings and recent inspiring lecture at the MCA.

Mr. Russell’s recent three-hour ethnography Let Each One Go Where He May (2009) won a FIPRESCI award at the 2010 International Film Festival Rotterdam. It is a pioneering film in the ethnographic sphere of cinema: an experimental ethnographic film “shot almost entirely with a 16mm Steadicam rig in thirteen extended shots of nearly ten minutes each.”

In the past, Ben developed stimulating relationship with east-coast-Providence-Baltimore-area noise/punk/underground music scene, whence Black Dice was a hardcore band, a period whence he documented the live-event of a Lightning Bolt concert, slow-motion live-action action that is Mr. Russell’s first documentary/ethnographic film, Black and White Trypps Number Three.

In this interview, Ben talks about how he made an underwater remake of the 1991 cinematic classic, Boyz n the Hood.

Trypps #5 (Dubai), (3 min, 2008, color, silent)

Trypps #5 (Dubai), (3 min, 16mm, color, silent, 2008)

(1) HEADS AND TAILS (as a metaphor for your filmmaking career): what are your words on: the heads/leader (your start), where you are now, and your tails (however you interpret tails).

HEADS:

I ran away from home when I was six or seven because my parents wouldn’t let me watch Superman on TV; Aliens (1986) was my first R-Rated movie; I had nightmares for weeks from overhearing the sountrack to The Shining (1980).  I grew up in the suburbs of Southern California where I got to watch five hours of television a week and would spend my weekends in triple features at the Mission Viejo Mall.  I remember watching everything I could, liking all of it.  I played Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981) and sometimes Dune in my backyard, made out with a girl named Kim during the credits of Neverending Story 2, made an underwater video remake of Boyz N Tha Hood at summer camp.  I don’t remember watching foreign films or documentaries, or at least I didn’t search ‘em out – MTV [i.e. "I want my MTV"] and Max Headroom (1987–1988) and TWIN PEAKS were the bits of media that really blew my mind. “Welcome to the Jungle” totally freaked me out – that image of Axl Rose screaming in an electric chair = proof of image-power.

I went to college to make art and be a marine biologist.  I made emotionally fraught photographs of my first girlfriend, lived in Australia for a year and learned about Flaherty, ethnography, Foucault, and conceptual art.  I studied with an anthropologist whose research was on Easter Island, I went to Papua New Guinea for 50 minutes, and some time later I returned to Providence, USA, where I made videos under Gregg Bordowitz’s watch and three 16mm films under Leslie Thornton’s quiet stare.  Public art, falling asleep during Dead Man (1994), wheatposting, video installation with bark chips, BADLANDS projected in the Fort Thunder parking lot, Wend Kuuni (1992) and cinema-time, Black Dice as a hardcore band.  Time passed and I traded Providence for Suriname – two years in the Peace Corps, the only movies I saw in the Paramaribo theater were out-of-focus (Saving Private Ryan, 1998) or burning in the gate (70s GERMAN PORN).  Those theaters later became churches, then casinos.  I lived in a jungle village, learned an obscure language, wrote a letter a day on a missionary’s typewriter, shot three rolls of super-8 and decided to be a poet.

(more…)

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UBS 12 x 12 Artist Talk: Ben Russell

14 September, 2010 by

Ben Russell and a 16mm Projector

The Artist’s Talk as Illustrated by a Selection of Moving Images

MCA Theater, FREE

220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611

I haven’t seen Children’s Magical Death (1974), but I have seen Asch and Changnon’s Magical Death, and that’s a fantastic film, and Ben Russell is fantastic, therefore tonight’s program at the MCA will be fantastic. The program is tonight and is not to be missed. Programme information posted below. Originally posted by the MCA here.

As part of his UBS 12 x 12 artist’s talk, Ben Russell presents films from his past curated programs in order to expand on themes that lie within his newest work, Trypps #7 (Badlands). “From early cinema to psychedelic mind-melt, ethnographic study to hand-processed portrait, and occult attraction to aquatic flicker film, this is a media map of analog influence that locates curatorial practice as a critical component to art-making today.” — Ben Russell

The Red Spectre by Ferdinand Zecca (7:00, 16mm, 1903)
A dazzling hand-colored black and white film from the Pathé studios at the turn of the century. In a strange grotto deep in the bowels of the earth a coffin uprights itself, dances, and opens to reveal a demonic magician with skeletal face, horns and cape. He wraps two women (who appear to be in a trance) in fabric, levitates them, and causes them to burst into flames and disappear… – Ben Russell

Invocation of My Demon Brother by Kenneth Anger (11:00, 16mm, 1969)
A mind-bending collage of sonic terror and subversion and fast-paced ritual ambiance founded in the union of the circle and the swastika, a swirling power source of solar energy. Mick Jagger contributes a suitably eerie soundtrack with a newly acquired synthesizer. — Ben Russell

Children’s Magical Death by Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon (7:00, 16mm, 1974)
Pretending to be shamans, a group of young Yanamano boys imitates their fathers, blowing ashes into each other’s noses and chanting to the hekura spirits. — Ben Russell

Marsa Abu Galawa by Gerard Holthuis (13:00, 35mm, 2004)
An impression of the underwater world in the Red Sea. The film is a bombardment of images and features the music Abdel Basset Hamouda, an Egyptian performer. The structure of the film is based on the so-called “flicker films” in which the unconscious experience of the images is much more important than the actual images. — Ben Russell

This Is My Land by Ben Rivers (14:00, 16mm, 2006)
A portrait of Jake Williams, who lives alone within miles of forest in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Jake always has many jobs on at any one time, finds a use for everything, is an expert mandolin player, and has compost heaps going back many years. He has a different sense of time to most people in the 21st Century, which is explicitly expressed in his idea for creating hedges by putting up bird feeders. — Ben Russell

My Name is Oona by Gunvor Nelson (9:00, 16mm, 1969)
“But the revelation of the program is Gunvor Nelson, true poetess of the visual cinema. MY NAME IS OONA captures in haunting, intensely lyrical images fragments of the coming to consciousness of a child girl. A series of extremely brief flashes of her moving through night-lit space or woods in sensuous negative, separated by rapid fades into blackness, burst upon us like a fairy-tale princess, with a late sun only partially outlining her and the animal in silvery filigree against the encroaching darkness; one of the most perfect recent examples of poetic cinema. Throughout the entire film, the girl, compulsively and as if in awe, repeats her name, until it becomes a magic incantation of self-realization.” — Amos Vogel, the Village Voice

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This week: Ben Russell Week

12 September, 2010 by

Hi dudes! This week is so totally Ben Russell. It’s very mondo. With so many upcoming Ben Russell events, it’s like only mondo appropriate. Shred the magenta!

There’s like the galleria: (multiple events at the MCA)

Its like so bitchen cuz like everybodys like
Super-super nice…
Its like so bitchen…

And there’s other events: (UBS 12 x 12 Artist Talk: Ben Russell)

Stay tuned for more Ben Russell. We’ll keep you posted. Super soon!

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Trypps #5 (2008) by Ben Russell (a sign of happiness)

26 July, 2010 by

Trypps #5 (Dubai) from Ben Russell. | (3:00, 16mm, color, silent, 2008)

Happiness.

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Experimental Film Achievements of the 21st Century: Avant-Garde Poll: Film Society of the Lincoln Center

23 May, 2010 by

January 2010: The Film Society of the Lincoln Film Center conducts an avant-garde film and video poll:

FSLFC’s Preface: In the past decade, the making and showing of experimental film worldwide has gone from strength to strength, so much so that it can be categorically said that avant-garde cinema is as vital now as it has ever been. This addendum to our Jan/Feb end-of-decade wrap-up serves to acknowledge just some of the experimental film achievements of the 21st century’s first 10 years. The rankings on the three lists below were obtained through the tabulation of the number of mentions a given film or filmmaker received in poll responses from a 46-strong group of critics, programmers, and teachers.

Poll participants: Acquarello, Steve Anker, Thomas Beard, Ariella Ben-Dov, Amy Beste, Robin Blaetz, Nicole Brenez, Autumn Campbell, Fred Camper, Abigail Child, David Dinnell, Patrick Friel, David Gatten, Jacqueline Goss, Ed Halter, Alexander Horwath, Kristin M. Jones, Chris Kennedy, Nellie Killian, Lewis Klahr, Irina Leimbacher, Scott MacDonald, Matt McCormick, Mark McElhatten, Kevin McGarry, Don McMahon, Olaf Möller, Oona Mosna, Pablo de Ocampo, Susan Oxtoby, Andréa Picard, Tony Pipolo, Steve Polta, J.R. Rigsby, Jeremy Rossen, Lynne Sachs, Keith Sanborn, Michael Sicinski, Josh Siegel, P. Adams Sitney, Gavin Smith, Phil Solomon, Scott Stark, Chris Stults, Jim Supanick, Genevieve Yue

THE RESULTS

At Sea (2007) by Peter Hutton

BEST AVANT-GARDE FILMS & VIDEO 2000-2009

1. At Sea Peter Hutton, U.S., 2007 (18)
2. Pitcher of Colored Light Robert Beavers, U.S./Switz., 2007 (16)
3. ( ) Morgan Fisher, U.S., 2003 (15)
tie Ah Liberty! Ben Rivers, U.K., 2008 (15)
 tie Observando el Cielo Jeanne Liotta, U.S., 2007 (15)
 tie Star Spangled to Death Ken Jacobs, U.S., 1956-2004 (15)
7. Ten Skies James Benning, U.S., 2004 (14)
8. The Fourth Watch Janie Geiser, U.S., 2000 (13)
 tie The Heart of the World Guy Maddin, Canada, 2000 (13)
 tie RR James Benning, U.S., 2007 (13)
11. Black and White Trypps Number Three Ben Russell, U.S., 2007 (12)
tie The Decay of Fiction Pat O’Neill, U.S., 2002 (12)
tie The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him Stan Brakhage, U.S., 2002 (12)
tie An Injury to One Travis Wilkerson, U.S., 2002 (12)
tie Kolkata Mark LaPore, US/India, 2005 (12)
tie 13 Lakes James Benning, U.S., 2004 (12)
17. The General Returns from One Place to Another Michael Robinson, U.S., 2006 (11)
tie Song and Solitude Nathaniel Dorsky, U.S., 2006 (11)
19. False Aging Lewis Klahr, U.S., 2008 (10)
tie The Glass System Mark LaPore, U.S., 2000 (10)

(more…)

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Ben Russell: Black and White Trypps Number Four

30 November, 2009 by

(10:30, 16mm, B/W, sound, 2008 )

Divisible stand up comedy from beyond the grave, adjust your set, rabbits ears tuned to the Bardo Plane.” – Mark McElhatten, Rotterdam International Film Festival

Using a 35mm strip of motion picture slug featuring the recently deceased American comedian Richard Pryor, this extended Rorschach assault on the eyes moves out of a flickering chaos created by incompatible film gauges into a punchline involving historically incompatible racial stereotypes.

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Video Clip: Let Each One Go Where He May by Ben Russell

30 November, 2009 by

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

(135:00, 16mm, color, sound, 2009)

Let Each One Go Where He May is the first feature-length film by Chicago-based experimental-filmmaker Ben Russell. The film is a two hour and 15 minute long documentary that thoroughly examines the journey of two unidentified African brothers, as they trek on land and through water, to retrace the voyage their ancestors mapped, three hundred years ago, during their escape from Dutch enslavement.

Thus far, the film has been a success, with the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival hosting its world premiere, and in recent news, the Rotterdam International Film Festival announced Let Each One Go Where He May as one of three selections in competition for the 2010 VPRO Tiger Awards, a competition for feature-length debut filmmakers. Russell’s film will be in competition with Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Mundane History (Thailand) and Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio’s To the Sea (Mexico). Rotterdam has yet to release its entire 2010 festival roster and is expected to release the entire 2010 festival schedule in the coming weeks.

Russell shot Let Each almost entirely with a 16mm Steadicam rig in thirteen extended tracking shots. See for yourself in the clip above.

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O'er the Land at the New York Film Festival

29 October, 2009 by

oer-the-land-stratman Johnny Lavant of The Auteurs recently attended the 2009 New York Film Festival. Thus far, he has posted four comprehensive reviews of the NYFF’s Views from the Avant-Garde program. His first post trashed avant-garde film genre entirely; I thought it would end on a pessimistic note, however, his second and third posts reveal that Johnny does have a heart for the avant-garde when he’s watching films by Ben Russell, David Gatten, and Deborah Stratman.

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