Monday June 6, 7:30pm
YES: Amanda Katz / Ted Kennedy
artists in person
Still from “Something about which nothing can be said” by Ted Kennedy, 2015, HD single-channel video, 14 minutes
Image courtesy of the artist
Microscope is pleased to present a screening of new works in film and video by Brooklyn based artists and filmmakers Amanda Katz and Ted Kennedy as part of our YES series on emerging artists.
The works by Katz and Kennedy exhibit very different approaches to film as a “document” – the first more traditionally structured using original footage and narration to create a portrait of a subject in relation to place and time, and the latter reworking scripted found television material to present the fiction in the context of the wider real time experience.
Amanda Katz’s latest videos underline the significance of film as a memory device, recording everyday moments and life stories that usually go unrecognized including that of the owner of the last remaining flower shop in a former Queens flower district that was disrupted by the building of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) in the 1940s, and of the mother of a friend who is reminiscing about her life as a writer and parent in her “4 bed 4 1/2 bath” house that she has just listed for sale.
Ted Kennedy’s works in the program, in contrast, involve the manipulation and recontextualization of rare found TV film, video and audio outtakes and other footage including from “Law and Order: SVU”, a prison documentary, and 1960s black and white on-the-scene news, exposing the apparatuses of and what lies beyond the televised.
These works featuring images “shot from real life” ultimately expose reality as a complex territory in which multiple layers of fiction or artificial elements are entwined – and may or not be detected by the camera or eye.
Katz and Kennedy will be in attendance for a Q&A following the screening.
general admission $7
students w/ ID $5
Program:
“4 Bed, 4 1/2 Bath”
by Amanda Katz, HD video, 2016, 9 minutes
Sudden divorce spurs a newly single Marjorie to sell her family home of 35 years. We move through, room by room, in this newly made intermediate zone. It is at once ripe with decades of memories and artificially staged for prospective buyers. Made in collaboration with Claudia Zamora.
“Entrances”
by Amanda Katz, Super 8mm, 2015, 7 minutes
Two un-edited Super-8 rolls. A consideration of a city’s porous peripheries.
“As You Pass By”
by Amanda Katz and Georg Anthony Svatek, HD video, 2014, 10 minutes 30 seconds
A dual portrait of a florist named John and the highway that surrounds his small shop in Queens. We turn to John and learn about a history that takes seconds to speed by and is easily overlooked.
Pittsburgh 8/5/68
by Ted Kennedy, HD video, 2013, 2 minutes 30 seconds
Pittsburgh 8/5/68 is part of a series of films based on the original 16mm camera rolls from a Pittsbugh TV news station during 1968/69.
“Worm Wood”
by Ted Kennedy, HD video, 2013, 9 minutes 45 seconds
Video tapes from Chernobyl / vinyl from Necedah.
“Something about which nothing can be said”
by Ted Kennedy, HD video, 2015, 14 minutes
A document of the making of a television crime drama.
“The Long View” (2016)
by Ted Kennedy, HD video, 2016, 6 minutes
The Long View combines footage from a psychologist’s home just after their death, CG models of living environments and audio from a documentary about a death row folk hero.
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Amanda Katz is a filmmaker drawing upon documentary, experimental, and performative modes to explore the intersection of the public and private in urban and suburban environments. Her latest film As You Pass By made in collaboration with filmmaker Georg Anthony Svatek received grants from the New York State Council On The Arts and from The Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. Katz is an Adjunct Lecturer of Media Studies at Hunter College, and she also teaches 16mm filmmaking at the Mono No Aware workshops. Additionally, she proudly serves on the board for the avant-garde distribution organization The Film-Makers’ Cooperative and staffs at the annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. Katz’s work has been shown among others at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, DOCNYC, Encuentros del Otro Cine Festival Internacional, Artists’ Television Access, The Haverhill Experimental Film Festival, UnionDocs, The Picture Show, and Microscope Gallery. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Ted Kennedy is a filmmaker and programmer. Originally from Michigan, he is now based in New York and is currently an MFA candidate at Bard College. His video and installation work has been exhibited at BAM (Brooklyn), Heliopolis (Brooklyn), Media City Film Festival (Windsor, Canada), Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn), Flex: The Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival, the Portland Experimental Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival (Chicago), Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Iowa City Documentary Film Festival, and the “Art of the Rea”l film series at Lincoln Center, among other venues. In 2011, he co-founded the Studies and Observation Film Series, presenting creative non-fiction and experimental films in Ann Arbor. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Union Docs and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and recently co-programmed the Flaherty NYC 2014 Fall Series. Kennedy lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Still from “4 Bed, 4 1/2 Bath”, by Amanda Katz, 2016, HD single-channel video, 9 minutes
Image courtesy of the artist
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Microscope Gallery Events Series 2016 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).
With the underwriting support of the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation.
