Saturday July 1, 7:30pm
YES: Katherin McInnis / Hyla Skopitz
artists in person!
Still from “Children of Lir” (by Katherin McInnis, 2016) – Image courtesy of the artist
Microscope is very pleased to welcome Katherin McInnis and Hyla Skopitz to the gallery for a screening evening as part of our emerging artist series YES. The program – which includes several New York premieres – features works that recontextualize still photography, original or appropriated, within the medium of moving image with an emphasis on its use as a historical documentation and mnemonic tool.
Hyla Skopitz’s works in the program present analog photography, often as it’s being developed, exposing the photographic process and the physical existence of the image, such as in “Nostalgia (after Hollis Frampton)” and “George Eastman”. In other works, the artist inventively intertwines still and moving images culled from her personal life through focus adjustments and superimposition techniques, employing video as a “means for processing loss”.
Using publicly available and archive photographs, Katherin McInnis reveals the ability of images to shape one’s impression of a historical event, touching on topics including the Wall Street financial collapse, debunked optical theories, the moon landing, and coding in aviary communications. Moments of history emerge in flicker, offering the viewer a glimpse at reality through the magic lens of cinema. The evening includes the premiere of her latest video work “The Children of Lir”.
Both McInnis and Skopitz will be in attendance and available for a Q&A following the screening.
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Working in video and new media, Katherin McInnis combines documentary concerns with experimental techniques. Her projects have been featured in festivals, including the Toronto Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and New York Film Festival, as well as in museums and galleries, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Pompidou Center, and nGbK Berlin. McInnis holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BA from Swarthmore College. Originally from Texas, she lives in Queens, NY and teaches at CUNY.
Hyla Skopitz is an artist working in video and photography. In her works, she often examines photography through the lens of video, referencing the history of the medium in relationship to nostalgia and memory. She is a 2016 recipient of the BRIC Media Arts Fellowship and holds an MFA from Bard College – International Center of Photography. Skopitz lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
General admission $8
Members and students w/ ID $6
Program:
(Nostalgia) after Hollis Frampton
by Hyla Skopitz, three-channel HD video, 2016, 14 minutes 46 seconds
(Nostalgia) after Hollis Frampton is a homage to Hollis Frampton’s experimental film from the 1970s when he abandoned still photography for moving images. He filmed static shots of his photographs burning on a hot plate, turning to ash. In this video, exposed photographic paper is filmed swaying in trays of developer bath in the darkroom as the latent image is realized. The images, which I had shot as a young photography student, slowly emerge tinted red by dim “safe” lights. With the click of the pull chain, they are fully revealed by the overhead light for a moment until this “white” light turns them black, the image almost completely erased.
Contact
by Hyla Skopitz, single-channel HD video, 2015, 1 minute 3 seconds
Contact was made after a friend’s sudden death. In it, a contact sheet comes into focus through dust and scratches for a brief moment as a kettle climaxes into a whistle and the image is again obscured.
Mar 1988
by Hyla Skopitz, single-channel HD video, 2017, 5 minutes 55 seconds
Mar 1988 is comprised of Super 8 footage from home movies along with cell phone videos and photographs from my Instagram feed (@goodbyla) layered behind an analogue slide taped to a computer monitor. My father had created slide shows of historical and religious sites to share with his students and colleagues. The only slide I saved from his carousels was this one, an image showing an airplane wing, clouds, and mountains framed by the curved window.
1:30 (George Eastman)
by Hyla Skopitz, single-channel HD video, 2010, 1 minute 44 seconds
1:30 (George Eastman) is structured by its duration, the time it takes for a Polaroid to develop. The mansion is located in my hometown Rochester, NY and was built by George Eastman, the founder of Kodak. It was converted into a museum which historicizes the medium through its collection, tracing the evolution of photography as a technology and scientific tool to becoming a mode of personal expression and a fine art. It also houses one of the most important film archives in the country. The video continually references photography, the photographer Ken Josephson and the Pictorialist movement in particular, as well as cinematic tropes such as the jump cut, reverse action, and time lapse.
Snakes & Ladders
by Katherin McInnis, single-channel video, 2011, 3 minutes 30 seconds
Snakes and Ladders references both the story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the 1929 stock market crash in a new era of financial crisis and celebrity fascination.
Aviary
by Katherin McInnis, single-channel HD video, 2013, 5 minutes 10 seconds
Pigeons (or doves) are filthy and useful, secret and ubiquitous, passenger and carrier. A metaphor for communication as weapon and war casualty.
Hat Trick
by Katherin McInnis, single-channel 2k video, 2014, 4 minutes 15 seconds
Original Soundtrack by Matthew Leonard
Hat Trick is a collage film that uses the moon landing (and hoax theories) to examine the role of wonder, luck, and inexplicability in science. The film combines documentation from NASA training programs, on-set stills from the “technically accurate” cult film “Destination the Moon”, and other images from the sets of pre-digital filmmaking. In the age of assumed airbrushing, craft, skill, and luck are forgotten parts of illusions (or exploration).
The Two Sights
by Katherin McInnis, single-channel 2k video, 2015, 4 minutes
“The Two Sights is a witty, hypnotic riff on an eleventh-century theory of optics that influenced da Vinci and Galileo” – Tony Pipolo, Artforum
Children of Lir
by Katherin McInnis, single-channel HD video, sound, 2016, 5 minutes
Made entirely from still photographs from the Life Magazine archives, Children of Lir combines an Irish tale of children set adrift as swans and the lead poisoning of water in Flint and other American communities.
Still from “Mar 1988” (by Hyla Skopitz, 2017) – Image courtesy of the artist
