CATE Starts Feb 9
Posted on | January 18, 2012 | No Comments
CATE returns to the big screen on February 9! Join us for the second half of our ten-year anniversary bash. We’re bringing in ten artists and curators over ten weeks, including Tirtza Even, Basma Alsharif, Steve Anker, Abina Manning, Laure Prouvost, Tomonari Nishikawa, Sara Ludy, Brent Green, Yvonne Rainer, and James Benning!
Visit our Current Season and keep checking back for more info!
Basma al-Sharif, We Began By Measuring Distance (2009). Courtesy the artist.
Back in Feb 2012!
Posted on | November 30, 2011 | No Comments
CATE’s Fall 2011 season closed November 17 with the films of Amar Kanwar. Thanks for coming out and thank you to all of our guests — Chris Sullivan, Matthew Buckingham, Laura Parnes, Bill Brown, Lee Anne Schmitt, Steina Vasulka, Rebecca Meyers, Luke Fowler, Gregory Markopoulos, Nicolas Provost, and Amar Kanwar.
Our Spring 2012 season will start in February — stay tuned for schedule details!
- Image from things we want to see (Rebecca Meyers, 2004). Courtesy the artist.
THE FILMS OF AMAR KANWAR
Posted on | November 12, 2011 | No Comments
Thursday, November 17, 6:00 pm | Amar Kanwar in person!
- Image from THE SMILE (Amar Kanwar, 2007). Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
Amar Kanwar’s films and installations offer incisive and meditative explorations of the political, social, economic, and ecological conditions of the Indian subcontinent. They are also formally inventive, synthesizing documentary, travelogue, and essay forms to re-imagine subjects from sexual violence to the political situation in Burma. This evening, Kanwar presents and discusses a range of films from across his vast oeuvre, including new and works-in-progress, selections from the 19-channel installation The Torn First Pages (2004-08), and his widely-esteemed 1997 short, A Season Outside (1997). The film established Kanwar, according to critic Jerry Saltz in the Village Voice, as an artist whose works “escape their own pedantic weight and exist in a lyrical realm where politics, poetry, passion, and form meld.” Amar Kanwar, 1997-2011, India, various formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
Co-presented by SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program, the Department of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies, and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Asian Art.
RELATED EVENT:
Artist Lecture
Wednesday, November 16, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Visit Visiting Artists Program for details.
AMAR KANWAR (b. 1964, New Delhi, India) is an artist and filmmaker living and working in New Delhi, India. Recent solo exhibitions have been at the Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, NY; Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany; and the Stedilijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has participated in Documenta 11 and Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany and is also the recipient of the 1st Edvard Munch Award for Contemporary Art, Norway and an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, USA. His films are also shown at film festivals where he has received awards like the Golden Gate Award, San Francisco International Film Festival; the Golden Conch, Mumbai International Film Festival; and the Jury’s Award, Film South Asia, Nepal.
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Amar Kanwar’s work at Marian Goodman Gallery
NICOLAS PROVOST: LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH
Posted on | November 6, 2011 | No Comments
Thursday, November 10, 6:00 pm | Nicolas Provost in person!
- Image from LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH (Nicolas Provost, 2009). Courtesy the artist and the Video Data Bank.
With digital prowess and deft editing, Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost transforms clichéd Hollywood scenes into something altogether more alluring, mysterious, and occasionally, more grotesque. Long Live the New Flesh (2009) takes this notion to extremes, melting the pixels of canonical horror films (The Shining, The Exorcist, and others) into new forms, effectively creating new kinds of monsters. Gravity (2007) considers the trope of romance fulfilled in a strobe-like succession of seemingly endless Hollywood kissing scenes. Provost based two of his latest works, Stardust and Storyteller (both 2010), in Las Vegas, imbuing banal shots of life on the strip and inside its casinos with a sense of the uncanny. On the whole, Provost’s art attests to the malleability of the cinematic images that remain ingrained in our memory, but also just out of reach. Nicolas Provost, 2007-2010, Belgium, multiple formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
Co-presented by the Video Data Bank.
NICOLAS PROVOST (b. 1969, Ronse, Belgium) is a filmmaker and visual artist working in Brussels, Belgium. His work has been broadcast, screened and exhibited worldwide on visual art platforms and film festivals, and has earned a long list of awards and screenings at prestigious festivals including The Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah; The San Francisco International, Film Festival, San Francisco, CA; Cinevegas, Henderson, NV; The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; The Viennale, Vienna, Austria; and The Locarno Film Festival, Locarno, Switzerland. Solo exhibitions include The Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg, France; De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; C-Space Gallery, Beijing, China; The International Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland; Solar Galeria de Arte Cinematica, Vila do Conde, Portugal. Provost’s first feature The Invader, a thriller about an anti-heroic immigrant and his struggle for economic and emotional survival in the new world, will premiere at the 2011 Venice Film Festival.
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Dazed Digital interview with Nicolas Provost
GREGORY MARKOPOULOS: ENIAIOS II
Posted on | October 30, 2011 | No Comments
Thursday, November 3, 6:00 pm | Archival print!
Introduced by film historian Bruce Jenkins and followed by audience Q&A with Jenkins and avant-garde film scholar P. Adams Sitney (who will join us via Skype).
- Image from ENIAIOS II (Gregory Markopoulos, 1949-1991). Courtesy the Temenos Archive and the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna.
Remembered as the “supreme erotic poet” of the American avant-garde, Gregory Markopoulos spent decades creating his monumental film Eniaios, an eighty-hour composition of twenty-two cycles. Eniaios (meaning “unity” or “uniqueness”) was originally conceived for screening at Temenos, Markopolous’s open-air theater in the hills overlooking Lyssaraia, Greece. Silent yet sensuous, the film journeys through a host of imagery, including pulses of white light, passages of black, fragments of earlier works, and images of sacred places. Markopoulos died before Eniaios could be printed and his partner, filmmaker Robert Beavers, has spent the last two decades restoring the work. Only six of the twenty-two film orders have been printed thus far. Tonight’s screening of Eniaios II — the second cycle in the piece and an epic film in its own right — affords a rare opportunity to view Markopoulos’s magnum opus in the making. Gregory Markopoulos, 1949-1991, Greece/USA, 16mm, 125 min plus discussion.
Eniaios VI – VIII will premiere June 29 – July 1, 2012 at the Temenos in Lyssarea (Arcadia) Greece. For more info, visit: www.the-temenos.org.
GREGORY MARKOPOULOS (1928-1992) was born in Toledo, Ohio to Greek immigrant parents. He attended Film School at USC in the 1940s and became a key figure in the New American Cinema movement with others like Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, and Stan Brakhage. A critic and teacher, Markopoulos founded the filmmaking program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1965. He and his partner Robert Beavers emigrated to Europe in 1967 after which he removed all of his films from circulation, refused interviews, and insisted that a chapter about him be deleted from the second edition of Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney’s seminal study of American avant-garde cinema. In the later part of his life, he focused almost entirely on the production of Eniaios.
LUKE FOWLER: A GRAMMAR FOR LISTENING
Posted on | October 23, 2011 | No Comments
Thursday, October 27, 6:00 pm | Luke Fowler in person!
- Image from ANNA (TENEMENT FILMS) (Luke Fowler, 2009). Courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd.
How one sees the world and how one hears it are the indelible questions underlying Luke Fowler’s startling, vibrant films. The award-winning Glasgow-based artist often collaborates with musicians and sound artists, drawing upon the histories of field recording, experimental music, and portraiture. Fowler’s early films shed light on such infamous experimental musicians as Cornelius Cardew (of the London-based Scratch Orchestra) and Xentos “Fray Bentos” Jones (of the post-punk The Homosexuals). More recently, his collaborations with Richard Youngs, Lee Patterson, Eric La Casa, and Toshiya Tsunoda have resulted in a series of audio-visual tone poems of domestic interiors, urban geography, and rural environments. This evening, Fowler presents a collection of these works, including his Tenement Films (3 Minute Wonders) series (2009), and selections from his three-part 2009 A Grammar for Listening cycle, among others. Luke Fowler, 2007-09, Scotland, 16mm and video, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
Co-presented with the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center, which will present a second program of Fowler’s films on Friday, October 28.
Luke Fowler (b. 1978, Glasgow, Scotland) is an artist, filmmaker and composer based in Glasgow. His work pushes the limits of documentary, while also exploring the social significance of sound. Fowler has exhibited internationally and within the United States, with solo shows at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, NY; X-Initiative, New York, NY; The Modern Institute, Glasgow, UK; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland; Extra City, Antwerp, Belgium; Villa Concordia, Bamberg, Germany and White Columns, New York, NY. His work has also been included in group shows at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Monterrey, Mexico; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK; New Museum, New York, NY; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY, and Tate Modern, London, England. He was the recipient of the Derek Jarman Award in 2009.
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Luke Fowler at the Film Studies Center, University of Chicago
Life in Film: Luke Fowler in Frieze Magazine
REBECCA MEYERS: BLUE MANTLE
Posted on | October 15, 2011 | No Comments
Thursday, October 20, 6:00 pm | Rebecca Meyers in person!
- Image from blue mantle (Rebecca Meyers, 2010). Courtesy the artist.
In her nimble, intimately-observed films, Cambridge-based filmmaker Rebecca Meyers illuminates the uncanny and exquisite in the everyday. lions and tigers and bears (2006) seeks out urban wildlife–from spiders and pigeons to bronze lions and chrome-plated jaguars; night side (2008) captures a wintry twilight of street lamp halos and solitary animals. Shot along the Massachusetts coast, Meyers’ latest film is a haunting ode to the sea. Combining historical accounts of ocean travel and disaster with images of its vast, roiling expanse, blue mantle (2010) meditates on humanity’s attempts to conquer the deep and reflects on its role as a metaphor and passageway to the unknown. This evening, Meyers presents these and a selection of earlier works, including glow in the dark (2002) and things we want to see (2004). Rebecca Meyers, 2002- 2010, USA, 16mm, ca. 65 min plus discussion.
REBECCA MEYERS (b. 1976, New York City) is a filmmaker and programmer living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her films have screened internationally at festivals and in curated exhibitions such as Media City, Windsor, ON, Canada, and Detroit, MI; Images Festival, Toronto, Canada; New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde, New York, NY; Festival Les Inattendus, Lyon, France; the London International Film Festival, London, England; “Bringing to Light” at the San Francisco Cinematheque, San Francisco, CA; and “White Shadows: Stories and Polar Visions” at the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy. For three years she served as Co-Programmer of Chicago’s Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival and has curated film programs for the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Massachusetts College of Art Film Society, Brooklyn’s Light Industry and the Harvard Film Archive, where she acted as Archive Coordinator. She is currently Director of Film Programs at ArtsEmerson at Emerson College and Associate Director of Studio7Arts in Cambridge. Rebecca holds an MFA from the University of Iowa in Film/Video Production.
STEINA!
Posted on | October 9, 2011 | No Comments
Thursday, October 13, 6:00 pm | Steina Vasulka in person! Live performance!
- Image from Violin Power (Steina, 1974-78). Courtesy the artist.
A major figure in the histories of video and electronic art, Steina Vasulka has continually expanded the possibilities of multimedia with her groundbreaking innovations. Trained as a classical violinist in Iceland, Steina turned to video after moving to New York City in the mid-1960s. Her distinctly musical experiments with the electronic signal, including her real-time performances and development of early video synthesizers, reverberate throughout historical and contemporary art practice. Steina’s recent projects continue this pioneering approach, as her dynamic environments of digitally manipulated visual and acoustic landscapes have been installed around the world. This evening, Steina presents a collection of both classic early pieces and newer works, discusses her interest in electronic media, and performs a stirring, not-to-be-missed interpretation of her seminal performance piece, Violin Power (1974-78/1992 – present). Steina Vasulka, 1970-2011, USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
STEINA VASULKA (b. 1940, Reykjavik, Iceland) is a major figure in the history of electronic and media art. She emigrated to the United States in 1965 after marrying Woody Vasulka. Together, they have significantly contributed to the aesthetic, theoretical, and institutional framework for electronic art, founding The Kitchen with Andreas Mannik in 1971, contributing to the development of the video art program at the Whitney Museum in the early 1970s, collaborating with Geoffry Schier to build one of the first real-time, computer-controlled video processors, and developing an open source, online archive from their personal papers at vasulka.org. Steina is the recipient of numerous awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Art Fellowship, an American Film Institute Maya Deren Award, and the Siemens Media Art Prize in Germany. Her work has been screened, installed or performed at festivals and arts institutions in the U.S. and internationally, including at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; The Kitchen, New York, NY; the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Media Festival S’Hertogenbosch, Netherlands; and the L’immagine Electronica Festival, Italy. She currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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LANDSCAPE AS ARCHIVE
Posted on | October 2, 2011 | No Comments
Thursday, October 6, 6:00 pm | Filmmakers Bill Brown and Lee Anne Schmitt in person!
- Image from Bowers Cave (Lee Lynch and Lee Anne Schmitt, 2010). Image courtesy the artists.
In recent years, a number of artists have turned to the landscape itself–using everything from iPhone apps to walking tours–to examine the ways in which ideas, events, and cultures are recorded in the terrain. Curated by filmmaker and SAIC professor Thomas Comerford (Indian Boundary Line, 2010), this evening’s program investigates the notion of landscape as archive. Bill Brown’s distinctively narrated travelogue, Mountain State (2003), views historical markers across West Virginia (as well as the ghosts that haunt them) as indices of US westward expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lee Lynch’s and Lee Anne Schmitt’s Bower’s Cave (2010) explores the implications of the geographic proximity of a California landfill to a cave once containing Native American cultural objects. Sarah J. Christman’s Dear Bill Gates (2006) addresses not only how the mining industry has reshaped the landscape of Pennsylvania, but also how mines serve as literal archives for the cultural ephemera collected by the film’s namesake. Multiple directors, 2003-2010, USA, 16mm, ca. 60 min plus discussion.
BILL BROWN (b. 1969, Cleveland, OH) is a “nomadic” filmmaker, photographer, and author. He has produced films on the United States–Mexico border, North Dakota missile silos, the Trans-Canada Highway, among other places. His work has been exhibited throughout the world. He’s also the author of the travel zine Dream Whip and the book Saugus to the Sea (2001).
LEE ANNE SCHMITT (b. 1971, Cleveland, OH) is a writer and director of essay films and performances, work that exists in the juncture between fiction and documentary. Her film and video work has screened internationally, at venues that include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; SF MOMA, San Francisco, CA; The Cinema du Reel at the George Pompidou Center, Paris, France; Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY; and the Pacific Film Archives, San Francisco, CA. She is currently on faculty at CalArts.
LEE LYNCH (b.1980, Redding, CA) is an award winning filmmaker and conceptual artist whose feature length narrative and documentary films have shown nationally at such festivals as Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah; Tribeca Film Festival, New York, NY; AFI Fest, Los Angeles, CA; Full Frame Film Festival, Durham, NC; and more. He has shown internationally at The International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Vienna Film Festival, Vienna, Austria; and the Marseille Documentary Film Festival, Marsaeille, France. He received his BFA from the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts, and his MFA from the University of Southern California.
SARAH J. CHRISTMAN (b. 1978, Philadelphia, PA) makes non-fiction films that examine the intersection between people, technology and the natural world. Her work has screened internationally, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MI; and the San Francisco International Film Festival, San Francisco, CA, where “Dear Bill Gates” earned the New Visions Award. She is an Assistant Professor in the Film Department at Brooklyn College.
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LAURA PARNES’S BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Posted on | September 25, 2011 | No Comments
Thursday, September 29, 6:00 pm | Laura Parnes in person!
- Image from Blood and Guts in High School (Laura Parnes, 2004-06). Courtesy the artist.
Laura Parnes’s bracingly inventive, stylized films and videos operate at the intersection of narrative film and video art. This evening, Parnes will present her acclaimed feature, Blood and Guts in High School (2004-06). Distilled from Kathy Acker’s subversive feminist novel of the same title, the film interweaves events surrounding the book’s publication — the Jonestown Massacre, Three Mile Island, the rise of Reagan Republicanism and the Moral Majority — with interludes from the short, violent life of its pre-teen protagonist, Janie Smith. Parnes will also screen episodes from her new web series, County Down (ongoing). Building on the darkly comic spirit of Blood and Guts, County Down is set in a lavish gated community where parents suddenly prey upon their children. Co-presented by the Video Data Bank. Laura Parnes, 2004-11, USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min plus discussion.
Artist LAURA PARNES (b. 1968, Buffalo, New York) has screened and exhibited her work widely in the US and internationally, including Light Industry, New York, NY; Kunsthalle Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; the Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand; the Institute for Contemporary Art /P.S. 1 Museum, New York, NY; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Galizia, Vigo, Spain; Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Lake Worth, FL; the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; and on PBS and Spanish Television. Her work has been featured in solo shows at Alma Enterprises, London; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles; Participant Inc, New York, NY; Deitch Projects, New York, NY; and in a two-person screening at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. She is currently a Faculty Lecturer in the graduate department at Yale University School.
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