We’re a generation of thieves, pastiche artists, and Dr Frankensteins, cutting and borrowing from the digital wasteland as well as the stickiest parts of nature. What is conjured in the alchemy of reproduction? And what falls by the wayside? This season’s GAZE is a journey into the aesthetics and pleasures of copying, remapping, and new weird genres. Join us for a transmutation of the digital soul, a journey into something rich and strange (those are pearls that were his eyes!) Hold on to your mimeographs.
Featuring:
Voyagers, by Penny Lane
Remote, by Jesse McLean
Self Portrait as a Youtube Tutorial, by Kate Rhoads
Coming Soon, by Amy Ruhl
Softest Core, by Amy Ruhl
Naive Melody / Unda Pressure, Gemma Syme
Perfect Plastic, by Meredith Sward
How to Graft the Tree of Knowledge, by Meraz Tzur
callehan:feder book, by Talia Feder
And This Forest Will Be a Desert, by C & A Projects
and more:
Program:
C + A Projects – and this forest will be a desert
Glittering plastics, a toy polar bear and the beauty inherent in the things we’re conditioned to be afraid of. The imagery is of a plastic landscape; a translucent, sparkling pile of trash inhabited by a plastic polar bear (the poster-animal for campaigns against global warming – both a cute, picturesque animal and a fearsome, dangerous beast). Text appears over the images- three different mythologies, three different fires – the stories are simplified versions of the battles and fire of Ragnarök, an account of a recent forest fire caused by changing weather patterns & Muhammad’s ascent through the heavens to Firdaus.
Each layer reiterates the mythologizing of change, the fear of a new era and the beauty in the things of those changes, in destruction and in fire.
Kate Rhoades – Self-Portrait as a YouTube Tutorial
Pasted together from YouTube tutorials such as “How to prepare for a disaster” and “How to masturbate,” this is a look at the artist through the instructions of strangers from the internet.
Penny Lane – The Voyagers
In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space. Together and alone, they will travel until the end of the universe. Each spacecraft carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, “[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife Annie Druyan. The record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. In the summer of 2010, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler.
Amy Ruhl – Coming Soon
Structured like a movie trailer for “the future,” COMING SOON is a collage of digitally manipulated 1980s advertisements and promotional videos promising consumers a new and improved technological existence. Using material culled from Youtube collections tagged as “Retro-Futurist,” the artist incorporates the pixelation, artifacting, and irregular playback speed—common by-products of the digitization process—into the video’s overall aesthetic in order to expatiate upon cultural expectations of continual progress, and the eventual disavowal of these expectations at the historical moment when they prove unfulfilled or “outdated.” This theme is bolstered by a soundtrack (also composed of manipulated samples from advertisements) with a tonal trajectory of initial exuberance and anticipation to darkness and finally irony.
Amy Ruhl – Softest Core
Time re-mapped and image-manipulated sequence from David Skynner’s Wuthering Heights (1998) with stock orgasm sound.
Gemma Syme – Unda Pressure (Naiive Melody)
“In Gemma Syme’s Naive Melody (Under Pressure) the screen is split into two, the artist, headphones on singing along with the David Bowie and Freddy Mercury parts of Under Pressure respectively before her webcam. The song’s hooky charm has always been the rhythmic musical containment of the singers’ overwrought and overdramatic stylings. They warble emotionally loaded phrases until they become abstracted blubber. In Syme’s ordinary, shaky voice the operatic takes on far more real, ordinary emotional implications. As if she might be a student on the verge of a pre-exam crash… painfully poignant to watch.” -John Hurrell
Unda Pressure supplied by the artist with the assistance of CIRCUIT
Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand www.circuit.org.nz.
Meredith Sward – Perfect Plastic
Perfect Plastic looks at the pressures that cosmetic plastic surgery culture has placed on our bodies. Through interviews, found footage, and performance, the film exposes how plastic bodies are disabled by invasive procedures in an attempt to feel acceptance by Western society.
Merav Tzur – How to Graft the Tree of Knowledge
Ever wonder how to graft the Tree of Knowledge? This informative and insightful video from the Sarah Gray Research Headquarters shows you the proper technique and species to use to create your own!
Jesse McLean – Remote
In the collage video Remote, dream logic invokes a presence that drifts through physical and temporal barriers.
There is a presence lingering in the dark woods, just under the surface of a placid lake and at the end of dreary basement corridor. It’s not easy to locate because it’s outside but also inside. It doesn’t just crawl in on your wires because it’s not a thing. It’s a shocking eruption of electrical energy.
Talia Feder – callehan:feder book
In response to photographer Harry Callahan’s depiction of urbanity, a timeline of images and text puts the personal into the anonymous. Superimposed line drawings and animated objects at a city pace.
GAZE is a film series dedicated to screening independent film and video made by women. GAZE promotes women’s artistic expression and creates dialogue related to the influence of this powerful medium.