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Since 1974 Small Press Traffic (SPT) has been at the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area innovative writing scene, bringing together independent readers, writers, and presses through publications, conferences, talks, and our influential reading series. Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center promotes and supports writers from all over the globe—particularly those who push the limits of how we speak and think about the world. Kindly and graciously housed at the California College of the Arts, we remain autonomous and thus depend upon outside funding for our operating expenses.

ATA & Gaze present and evening with Kerry Laitala and Voicehandler.

Kerry Laitala will present two works from her Princess Grace Foundation funded City Luminous Series celebrating the lighting pioneers that gathered a century ago at the fabulous Jewel City, a 635-acre monument to impermanence constructed, and soon after, demolished in San Francisco’s Marina district. These include The City Luminous: Spectacle of Light, which received an audience choice award at the 2015 Crossroads Film Festival presented by SF Cinematheque, and The City Luminous: Electric Salome, for which Laitala filmed Jenny Stulberg  performing a dance in tribute to the resplendent Loie Fuller. Both of these performances will feature live sound from Oakland’s experimental music duo extraordinaire Voicehandler, made up of Jacob Felix Heule and Danishta Rivero.

In addition, Laitala will screen the slightly salacious The Kali of Technology, a brief eye-scorcher named for the multi-armed Hindu deity of destruction, power and time. Lastly, 3D manifestations will propel the audience into the screen and beyond the as their retinas get pushed and pulled through the taffy maker of prismatic chromadepth. These works include: Afterimage: A Flicker of Life, sound collaboration Between Kerry Laitala and Wobbly, Terra Incognita and Nine Lives Measured in Mercury with original sound by Neal Johnson, and the rarely-screened Chromatic Revelry.

Kerry Laitala is a media archaeologist who uses analog, digital, and hybrid forms to present traces of forgotten technologies from the distant and recent past. Laitala’s work resides at the crossroads of science, art, history, and her uncanny approach to evolving systems of belief through installation, photography, para-cinema, performance, kinetic sculpture, and single-channel forms. She teaches film at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her installation Visible Spectres of the Spooks Parade will open at the Exploratorium on October 1st, 2015.

Program:

The City Luminous: Electric Salome (16 Minutes) Live sound by Voicehandler

The City Luminous: Spectacle of Light (11 minutes) Live sound by Voicehandler

Kali of Technology (4 minutes) 16mm, dual projector

Chromadepth works: Chromatic Revelries- 7 Minutes

Afterimage: A Flicker of Life-11 Minutes, sound collaboration Between K. Laitala and Wobbly

Terra Incognita- sound by Neal Johnson-10 minutes

Nine Lives Measured in Mercury, sound by Neal Johnson-10 minutes

Plus other surprises

TRT: 1 hour 2 minutes

Through an off-beat mixture of myth, biography, docu-fable, collage and fantasy, I WILL BE CALLED LUCIFER is an exploded narrative which converges the many lives of Lucifer with the now-mythic story of filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s troubled production LUCIFER RISING. Featuring a cast of characters portrayed by their personal fantasies, (including Faust as Jimmy Page and a portrayal of Charles Manson by his big-screen hero Dennis Hopper,) the stories of Anger’s doomed production are paralleled by stories of the archetypal scapegoat, Azazel, as he crosses centuries and changes identities, inhabiting some of our most ostracized cultural figures. Robert Oppenheimer, the Femme Fatale, Dante’s Satan, Marilyn Monroe and others surface under Azazel in an experimental film which explores the consequences of seeking truth in archetypal narratives. Directed by Anthony Buchanan (in person), 80 min.

Anthony Buchanan is a filmmaker and internationally-published scholar of underground and experimental film. His films investigate–and interrogate–simulated narratives and myths embedded within objects, spaces, popular culture, literature and various media. Buchanan has taught at Santa Fe University and guest-lectured at CU Boulder and has freelance-lectured on topics such as the “History of the Occult in World Cinema” and “Paracinema in Performance,” and his essays on found footage and deconstructionist experimental film have been published in Abraxas Journal and Otherzine. He has shown work in numerous New Mexico and Colorado venues and spearheaded the Denver-based microcinema Cinema Contra. In addition, he has freelanced as a film and new media critic for the Santa Fe Reporter and the Santa Fe New Mexican.