Screening

© All images are courtesy and copyright of the artists

Talking Me
Metrah Pashaee, DV, color, sound, 3:44 min, 2012
Talking Me is a cinematic Dadaist collage comprised of appropriations from online videos. By subtly manipulating preexisting pieces and choreographing these images to a distorted soundtrack, the ultimate effect is a dialogue between rhythm, movement, and language phonetics. One can think of this work as a moving image run-on sentence.

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Metrah Pashaee is an experimental multi-media artist. Her passion for the academic combines with the creative in her transdisciplinary approach to moving image studies. She graduated in 2012 from the University of Central Florida with a BA in Cinema Studies and a minor in Art History. Currently, she is applying to MFA programs in Film/Video.

 

Persian Pickles   
Jodie Mack, 16mm, color, sound, 3 min, 2012
Fractal phonics accompany a delicate study of psychedelic paisley patterns.

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Jodie Mack is an independent moving-image practitioner who received her MFA in film, video, and new media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and currently teaches animation at Dartmouth College. Combining the formal techniques and structures of abstract/absolute animation with those of cinematic genres, her handmade films use collage to explore the relationship between graphic cinema and storytelling, the tension between form and meaning. Mack’s 16mm films have screened at a variety of venues including the Anthology Film Archives, Images Festival, Los Angeles Filmforum, Onion City Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Black Maria Film Festival, and the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. 

 

God Bless De-territorialized America (endo-colonization in the age of techno-fetishism)
Josh Bricker, single channel video, color, sound, 10:43 min, 2012
Ideologically this piece borrows heavily from the three quotes below, and suggests that the spirit of our times is one of technological fundamentalism built upon a post 9-11 surge of nationalism which has opened the door to the militarization of the social body and urban landscape. 
“Having reached a level of unchallengeability, the U.S. military machine set upon the task of what Paul Virilio recognized early as “endo-colonization” or the internal translation of the population-even the body-into an appendage of the military machine.” – Roger Stahl
“under peaceful conditions a warlike man sets upon himself.” – Nietzsche
“… on one side is mystical fundamentalism”, which “calls for a holy war, while on the side of the allies, we see a sort of technical fundamentalism, a call to pure war”… “against the underdeveloped miscreants.”– Virilio  

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Josh Bricker is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Los Angeles, CA. At eighteen he served in the U.S. Air Force, guarding nuclear missiles as a member of a Security Forces unit. He recently graduated from Parsons in New York, receiving an MFA in studio art.

 

Athena Originoo (Scopped + Chrewed)
Katie Cercone, digital video, color, sound, 6:57 min, 2012
A ferocious and implacable fighter, Athena the Warrior Goddess is the daughter of Zeus, who during Athena’s gestation deceived his pregnant wife with cunning words against the warnings of Mother Earth and Father Sky and assimilated Athena into his own body. On Athena’s birthday she leaped from the head of Zeus, already adult, dressed with her armor. Athena Originoo (Scopped + Chrewed) is a Don Trip cover of the Drake hit ‘I’m On One’ performed by Athena Originoo, a suburban-bred pregnant hermaphrodite pie high in the rapper scry of an Africanizing griot gorge. This work recalls the early 90s transfunctionalization of Hip Hop that saw corporate America aggressively coopt and market the culture to white adolescents of the artist’s generation through randomly applying its signs and codes to items like snack foods, Barbie Dolls and breakfast cereal. Fuck you, Europe, I ain’t sprung from no man’s head. This is ancestor worship of an incipient warrior nature. And yo, I said wigga, not **gga. — KC

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Katie Cercone was born 1984 in Santa Rosa, CA. She has shown her Hip Hop Feminist performative video sculpture throughout the United States and abroad. She is also a yoga instructor, adjunct faculty at the School of Visual Art and has published critical writing in Bitch Magazine, REVOLT Magazine, Utne Reader, PLAYspace Mag, Women’s Art Journal and N.Paradoxa. Cercone is a founding member of the queer transnational feminist collective Go! Push Pops.  

 

From the “Minimentals” series by Denise Iris , 2007-2012:
Dragonfly Glasses, video, color, sound, 39 sec., 2007
Increase the Joy, video, color, sound, 25 sec., 2007

Minimentals is an ongoing series of tiny films for personal screens. Through intense observation and unexpected connections, these cinematic haikus transform ordinary moments into whimsical reveries that blur the line between inner and outer, real and imagined worlds. In the process, they invite us to rediscover a layer of experience, which is often overlooked in the frantic pace of contemporary life. The original project consisted of 52 films released weekly over one year; since then it has become an ongoing series. Produced with consumer tools, minimentals are an attempt to establish a creative practice that doesn’t rely on the cumbersome apparatus of traditional film production. — DI

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Denise Iris makes films that transform everyday situations into heightened moments and imaginary worlds filled with wonder. Unique hybrids that blur the lines between fiction, documentary, and poetic forms, they range from 1 min. cinematic haikus for personal screens to 1 hr. theatrical works. Iris’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, on PBS, and at many festivals internationally, winning the Critics’ Prize at the Dakino International Film Festival and a Silver Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival. They are in Harvard University’s permanent collection. Denise attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and holds an MFA in Film from Columbia University. She has received grants from the Alfred P. Sloan                                                              

 

Beatrice
Cory Kram, digital video, color, sound, 3:58 min, 2012
The memories, nightmares, and addictions of two selves merge to form a chaotic reality. A psychedelic collage composed of found and live footage.

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Cory Kram was born and raised in Southern New Jersey. She works as a studio assistant for Kate Kaman and Joel Erland in Philadelphia. Cory enjoys long train rides and suburban exploration. 

 

Natural Woman 
Rachelle Beaudoin, digital video, color, sound, 2:14 min, 2012
Using a small tree as a pole, I attempt a Pole Fitness workout in the privacy of the forest. — RB

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Rachelle Beaudoin is an artist who uses video, wearables, and performance to explore feminine iconography and identity within popular culture. She attended the College of the Holy Cross where she studied Studio Art and played ice hockey. She holds a Master’s degree in Digital+Media from Rhode Island School of Design. In 2007 Rachelle was named the recipient of an Award of Excellence from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited at Intimacy: Across Digital and Visceral Performance Goldsmiths London UK, the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi Finland and in Low Lives 3, international exhibition of live performance-based works transmitted via the internet and projected in real time at multiple venues. She often works collaboratively with Jeanne Jo on textiles and new media projects. They served as artists-in-residence at the Super G Experiential Residency Program in 2011. Rachelle will be a resident at Anderson Ranch this spring. 

 

The Trouble With Haints
Kevvy Metal, video, color & b/w, sound, 2:30 min, 2011
Edited Fleetwood Mac videos exploring singer Stevie Nicks in light and dark spaces.

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Kevvy Metal is a filmmaker born in Western New York.  He studied in Boston, MA and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  He runs a summer screening series in Boston called Kevvy Metal Presents, and is co-founder of a forthcoming VHS publication called Monobrow VHS.

 

Noms De Pays
Devon Johnson, super 8mm transferred to HD video, color, sound, 3 1/2 minutes, 2012
I embrace the indiscriminant decay of that relentless conqueror: time, which lays waste to the physical world, as well as to our memories of places.  The harder we try to fight it, the more distorted our memory becomes; we only remember the last time we remembered (something that perhaps never was).  I am not saddened by the fabricated nature of memory because every time I look to the past I create a new story in my mind.  I can only hope that this tale will get better with time. Each shard of memory has the potential to bring up countless narratives, yet unknown.  Where they begin hardly matters—it is where they can make the mind go.  Time is the ultimate leveler, something from which nothing ever escapes.  I offer up this vision, a memory of a memory, its origins unknown. — DJ

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Devon Johnson (b. 1984) is an artist based in Washington, D.C., working primarily in lens-based media.  His work examines how our understanding of place is altered by the passage of time, the failure of memory, and the influences of external texts. Johnson earned his MFA in photography at George Mason University, and his BFA in photography at Virginia Commonwealth University.  He teaches photography at George Mason University.

 

Fermata (Dive)  
Brian Patrick Franklin, single channel video, color, 2 min, 2009
Professional sporting events are places of intense spectacle. Athletes rise to celebrity status as they execute stunning displays of skill to the explosive adulation of audiences waiting in anticipation. Once the spectacle has been realized, spectators return to their state of anticipation and the cycle continues.
The Fermata series seeks to disrupt this sine wave model of tension and release, extending the precious few seconds of stillness that exist before the sudden exertion of energy. These moments are meticulously looped, breaking up the familiar model experience and trapping the viewer in an alternate timeline offering only the swelling of anticipation. There is a new ambiguous relationship formed between athlete and viewer as the comfortable roles are stripped away.

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Brian Patrick Franklin received an MFA from Pennsylvania State University and is currently an assistant professor of expanded media in the School of Art at Illinois State University. His interdisciplinary work has been shown in venues ranging from the World Science Festival to impromptu takeovers of public space in the United States and Europe. As a member of TiF, an experiment in online culture, music, performance art, video games, and human nature, he has traveled across the United States performing in youth centers, bars, and living rooms. His experimental audio work has been performed and played at numerous venues including the Soundcrawl festival in Nashville, TN and the BEAM music festival in Uxbridge, England.

 

shit happens in vegas  
Michael Szpakowski, digital video, color, sound, 3:47 min, 2012
One of a series of videos made to accompany a year long performative sound project “12 remixes” in which I entered a remix competition under an alias every month for a year. This particular video is composed of a journey through Las Vegas by Google street view and is accompanied by my remix of “What Happens in Vegas” by Chuckie ft. Gregor Salto. — MS

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Michael Szpakowski is an artist, composer & writer. His music has been performed across the UK, in Russia & the USA. He has also exhibited work in galleries in the UK, mainland Europe & the USA. His short films have been shown throughout the world. Szpakowski is a joint editor of the online video resource DVblog.

Performance

Chimera
Joel Schlemowitz, 16mm, color, live sound, 6 min 2012

Illusions made manifest through light and shadow.

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Joel Schlemowitz is an experimental filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Screenings of his films have included the Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival. His work has received awards from the Chicago Underground Film Festival, The Dallas Video Festival, and elsewhere. Website: www.joelschlemowitz.com