+ TAPE MEASURE FILM / LOOPED 16MM PROJECTION & INSTALLATION WITH OPTICAL SOUND / MARY STARK (MANCHESTER, UNITED KINGDOM)
TAPE MEASURE FILM is a 16mm black and white film loop with optical sound, hand made through a camera-less process in the dark room. The filmstrip functions as a tape measure of 60 inches/152 cm, but becomes a moving image when projected, with the inch marks creating optical sound. Tape Measure Film rejects the durational measurement of the frame line, instead emphasising film as spatial material.
Organizer:
Mary Stark is an artist, filmmaker and photographer based at Rogue Studios in Manchester, UK. She is studying a practice as research PhD investigating how the materiality of film might be further emphasised through exploring the relationship between film and textiles. Her practice is led by hands on exploration of analogue film as a sculptural material. She is interested in the physical photographic nature of film, as a measurement of time and space, and an ephemeral projection of light and sound. With an interdisciplinary background in textiles, the moving image and photography, her work has developed into sculptural objects, photographic prints, installation and performance.
+ RGB FAN / ALTERED LIGHT PROJECTION INSTALLATION / MIKE FLEMING (ALFRED, NEW YORK)
A theater spotlight shines on an industrial fan that has been altered to have three highly reflective fan blades- one red, one green, and one blue. The blades spin so fast that they blur together and produce a hypnotic ring of white light projected on the adjacent wall. The somewhat choppy light is reminiscent of a cinematic frame rate, and induces strange optical phenomena and sensations. Photographing the piece with a high shutter speed produces a frozen rainbow of colors, illustrating what is known as the additive color process, in which red, green, and blue are added together to create a broad array of new colors.
Organizer:
Mike Fleming received his Bachelor of Science degree in Photography in 2003 from Drexel University in Philadelphia. He became extremely active in the Philadelphia arts community- curating and staging events and performances at influential galleries and venues throughout the city, and later working as a photographer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was also a member of several touring bands, giving Fleming, camera in hand, a unique perspective on the cultural landscape. Transitioning to a multidisciplinary approach, Fleming now focuses on sculpture, installation, and performance works. His work has been shown in Italy, Russia, China, Poland, England, Belgium, Australia, Canada, Malta and the US. He currently resides in Alfred, NY where he is pursuing an MFA in Sculpture at Alfred University.
SXO is a two person audio-visual project using analog still and motion picture projections scored to a live soundtrack. The projection collage is an exploration of intimacy and adventure while living in New York City for some of the year and traveling the rest of it. Lovers, friends, landscapes taken from a car or freight train, the images mesh together with the audio as spontaneously as they are experienced.
Organizers:
Chris Berntsen is a Brooklyn-based photographer. His work focuses on close personal relationships within punk, queer and skateboarding communities as well as reflexive documentation of his travels across the United States. Using slide film and motion picture film he creates slideshows and light based installations.
Nick Klein is a Brooklyn-based noise and electronics musician who recently moved from his hometown of Miami, Florida. Currently, Nick performs under his own name as a solo electronics and noise project.
+ 52 DIED / 16MM SINGLE PROJECTION & LIVE READING / ELISEO ORTIZ (MONTERREY, MEXICO)
In August 25, 2011 a criminal gang set a casino in fire in the city of Monterrey, Mexico. Fifty-two people were trapped inside and died; asphyxiated. News was broadcasted intensively for months and a thorough investigation followed. The only evidence presented was the video footage captured by a surveillance camera. Televisa – which is the biggest television network in Mexico – produced a text based on the video (read live in this performance) that aimed to reconstruct the events. Televisa, pretending to act as an official authority, provided a verdict of what “really” happened. The event was quickly dismissed by the media and became less important in a context of everyday violence. In 2013, the site remains the same, the tragedy is still alive, and the burned building is a reminder of the many deaths related to the absurdity of the Mexican drug war and the cynical pretension of burying history underneath the enunciation of legality. 52 DIED is a portrait of the forgotten site where the event happened.
Organizer:
Eliseo Ortiz is a time-based media artist from Monterrey, Mexico. His work has been shown in film festivals and other art venues in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, France and the United States. He produced and curated the International Exhibition of Experimental Video and Film from 2009 to 2011 in Saltillo, Mexico. He is living, producing, and pursuing an MFA at the Department of Media Study in SUNY University at Buffalo.
The Futurist movement, established by Marinetti in 1909, advocated a passion for technology and for fascism. Its direct influence was slight, but its twin obsessions defined the cultural life of pre-WWII Europe. The newly rediscovered films of Eugen Schüfftan, created in the 1920s, reveal the lingering Futurist currents in Weimar Germany. Schüfftan, the cinematographer and special effects artist for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927), developed a complex technique of optical printing. His radically experimental films envision a curious world of machine-time and machine-space.
“REDISCOVERING GERMAN FUTURISM 1920-1929″, a lecture-performance-screening by Kurt Ralske and Miriam Atkin, boldly rewrites history. By presenting new and creative interpretations of the cultural flows of the past, it inquires into our present-day perspectives on technology and power. Schüfftan’s “Der Tod des Faust” (1927) will be accompanied by a live musical score by Daniel Carter (saxophone) and Kurt Ralske (cornet).
Organizers:
Kurt Ralske’s films and installations propose a productive dialogue with long-dormant forces of the past: equal parts critical inquiry and seance. He is Associate Professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the departments of Film, Video, and Sound.
Miriam Atkin is a New York-based poet and critic. She is a PhD candidate in Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, and teaches at Lehman College in the Bronx.
Daniel Carter is a noted free jazz saxophonist. He has recorded with William Parker, Thurston Moore, Matthew Shipp, and Yo La Tengo, among others.
MESHES explores the functionality of the Super 8mm camera. Through the use of the film speed, light and a body in motion, mundane actions become surreal. Deepening the exploration of the film equipment as well as the chance relationship of a body moving in space, we are attempting to create an environment that saturates the space with a visceral understanding of the medium.
Organizers:
Laura Bartczak is a dance artist originally from Colorado, now based in Brooklyn. She has been performing and presenting work throughout NYC for the past 4 years through organizations such as AUNTS, Movement Research, BIPAF, Danspase Project, TAB, The Woods Cooperative, and with artists including Lindsey Drury, Hadar Ahuvia, Mark Demolar, Paige Fredlund, and Kaia Gilje, among others. Laura is currently working with Katelyn Hales and loves taking pictures.
Despite current wanderlust, Paige Fredlund lives in Bed-Stuy where she enjoys processes in dance and performance art. She has known and worked alongside Laura Bartczak for eight years. Other collaborators include Kaia Gilje, Lorene Bouboushian, Lindsey Drury, Brian McCorkle and Esther Neff. She is grateful for the Woods Cooperative where she can rent studio space. One day she hopes to write a children’s book.
Mark Demolar is a musician and filmmaker based in Brooklyn.
PULL/DRIFT is a live collaboration between filmmaker, Margaret Rorison and musician, Josh Millrod. Rorison has documented a special dance performance choreographed by Clarissa Gregory and performed by The Effervescent Collective on September 8, 2013 in Patapsco State Park, in Baltimore, Maryland. The 16mm footage has been hand edited by Rorison to create a new imaginary narrative. Millrod has created a live soundtrack to accompany the film. This performance is the fourth collaboration between the two artists.
Organizers:
Josh Millrod is an electro-acoustic trumpet player and composer from Brooklyn, NY. Josh is a member of Grasshopper and Hex Breaker Quartet and has releases on NNA, Digitalis and SicSic. Over the past decade, Josh has performed throughout North America, Europe and North Africa.
Margaret Rorison combines language, photography, film and sound to create installations, projections & performances. She often discovers her ideas through extensive walks amid rural and urban landscapes. Rorison’s work has been screened at various festivals and venues in North America and Europe. She is the co-founder and curator for a roaming experimental film series, Sight Unseen. She also is a member of The Red Room Collective.
ZEPHYR is a Toronto-based performance art duo consisting of filmmaker Sylvain Chaussée and composer Adrian Cook. Through this collaboration they have been exploring the relationship between their mediums. Sound and image, rhythm and movement, colour and tone, cause and effect, are all combined seamlessly within the live performance. Chaussée’s imagery is created through extensive manipulation of 16mm film, involving processing, printing, and projecting. Through composition and ample improvisation, Cook builds sonic atmospheres by carefully layering loops consisting of varying harmonic and rhythmic patterns. Initially a dialogue is created between the two mediums, in which repetition becomes a crucial element contributing to the alteration of the senses. Loops provide the basis for their performances, upon which they develop a synchronous relationship between building and deconstructing the cinematic experience.
Organizers:
Sylvain Chaussée is a filmmaker and photographer born in France and based in Toronto, Canada. He studied film at Concordia University with experimental filmmakers Richard Kerr and Francois Miron. Chaussée’s work focuses on the materiality of his medium, which is realized through extensive processing and printing techniques. As a film technician at Niagara Custom Lab he strives for an alternative approach towards filmmaking. In performance, loops provide the basis for his imagery, through which the repetition of movement, colour, and texture are integral to the experience of the work. Chaussée is inspired by the physical nature of film, which permits limitless opportunities for manipulation and transformation.
Adrian Gordon Cook is a composer, performer and multi-instrumentalist based in Toronto, Canada. He studied music at York University, where he focused on composition, electronic media and music history. Largely inspired by early minimalist composers, such as La Monte Young, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, Cook’s work takes shape within large temporal boundaries, utilizing drones, repetition, prolonged chordal movements and static harmony. In live performance Cook layers series of loops which are manipulated in various ways, sculpting larger sonic atmospheres from seemingly simple musical ideas.
+ DJ SETS / SAL PRINCIPATO, LIQUID LIQUID - (AFTER PARTY) & ALEX MALLIS, DJ STEWEY DECIMAL (INTER-PROGRAM)
Sal Principato is the vocalist for Liquid Liquid, the New York City post-punk, post-disco band, originally active from 1980 to 1983. Since reforming in 2008, the band has played a select number of shows including opening for the LCD Soundsystem farewell show at Madison Square Garden. Sal produces remixes and often tours as a DJ.
Brooklyn-based filmmaker, Alex Mallis, has screened work at IFF Boston, Hot Docs, DOCNYC, and the New Orleans Film Festival. His short SPOILS, a documentary about dumpster diving, won the audience award at the 2013 Northside Film Festival. Saturday night, he will spin vinyl as DJ Stewey Decimal. Do you like red, sparkly shoes? Of course you do. Stewey Decimal is the yellow brick road of deejays.
