Author: Fara

SPRINKLE/STEPHENS’ WATER MAKES US WET 

With a poetic blend of curiosity, humor, sensuality, and concern (and narration by Sandy Stone!), this feature work, in its Bay Area theatrical premiere, chronicles the pleasures and politics of H2O from an ecosexual perspective. We travel with Annie, a former sex worker, Beth, a professor, and their dog Butch in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit, as they explore the larger role of water in all of our lives. Ecosexuality shifts the metaphor Earth asMother to Earth as Lover, creating a more empathetic and reciprocal relationship with the natural world. Along the way, Annie and Beth interact with a diverse range of folks–scholars, biologists, treatment-plant workers, and even performance artists—finally climaxing in a shocking event that reaffirms the power of water, life, and love.*$9 

Presented by 3rdi

The Escapists is about three immigrant best friends who chase their dreams and disappoint their families. Helmed by a predominantly womxn of color crew and told through the lens of three millennial womxn of color, the web series covers the tumultuous journey of growing into oneself despite societal pressure.

Sf Cinematheque in association with
Headlands Center for the Arts present, Peter Burr in person

Admission: $10 General/$5 Cinematheque Members and Headlands Center for the Arts Members
Advance tickets available here

A mix of intricate patterns that vibrate, flicker, and hypnotize. Viewing Burr’s work feels like entering into a dark, digital cave. —Alex Ginsberg, Electric Objects

I make infinite dungeons. —Peter Burr

Working extensively with computer animation and the tools of the video game industry, the digital works of Peter Burr present infinitely sprawling landscapes and environments which vacillate between abstraction and figuration and describe dystopian narratives of endless questing. Recent work explores the video game trope of the endlessly mutating, self-constructing labyrinth. Visiting from Brooklyn as an Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, Burr appears in person to expound on his process and radical synthetic aesthetic and to present a retrospective of works 2012–2017, including a work-in-progress preview of his latest immersive environmental video Dirtscraper.

Burr’s art conjures the future—projection screens picturing high density structures that resemble malls populated by people who move in slow motion; text by video game designer Porpentine that describes opinionless cultures; undulating black and white patterns designed to mesmerize the viewer. Unlike movies, though, which tend to center around heroes and villains, there’s no morality attached to this environment. It’s not good, or bad. It just is. (Paddy Johnson, Art F City)

FILMS TO SCREEN:
Alone with the Moon (2012): Burr creates a slow, liminal illusion in black-and-white, switching perspectives and matrices and crescendoing in time with Christopher Doulgeris’s portentously pulsating soundtrack.

Special Effect (2014): Channeling Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), this film’s fractured and spiraling narrative is traversed through a hypnotizing blend of live action and various digital animation styles.

Green | Red (2014): Burr conjures a shape-shifting world where the sidewalks are endless, the radio is playing electric, and the night sky is broken open by a cataclysm of shuddering stars.

The Mess (2016): This film follows the perspective of a solitary woman who descends into an abandoned subterranean ‘arcology.’ She is tasked with cleaning up the mess that has spawned from this feral structure, becoming lost in the process.

Pattern Language (2017): Architect Christopher Alexander’s design theories are applied towards a generative video game labyrinth, resulting in this rhythmic animation made of rippling, skipping, and strobing arrays of light infused with programmatic digital pixelation.