. Conversations at the Edge (CATE)

Mysterial Power: Recent Video by Lana Lin

Thursday, October 9, 2003, 8:15pm Lana Lin in person! Translations of all types are the subject of video artist Lana Lin’s recent work. No Power to Push Up The Sky (2001) is structured around an interview with Chinese student activist Chai Ling in the turbulent days before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre; Lin asked fifteen […]

April 18 – Dawn Chan and Mary Flanagan: On Power and Play in Virtual Worlds

Dawn Chan and Mary Flanagan in person Critics Dawn Chan and Mary Flanagan, winners of the 2018 Thoma Foundation Arts Writing Awards in Digital Art, engage in a wide-ranging conversation about the social and political dynamics embedded in virtual reality, games, digital art, and software design. Considering the work of Rachel Rossin, Ramsey Nasser, Jenova […]

When Art Reveals Unspeakable Social Reality: Recalling Anna

This week for our SAIC student writing series Natalia De Orellana grapples with Massimo Sarchielli and Alberto Grifi’s Anna. She finds herself invested in the directors’ ethics, yet rebuffed by their use of their camera. “We preferred,” explained Grifi, “a movie about reality rather than undertaking the struggle to create a slightly less revolting reality.” Anna | Thursday, April 2nd | Introduced […]

Spring 2019 Sneak Peek

The start of our Spring 2019 semester is just around the corner! We have a terrific season lined up, including visits by media artists Jodie Mack, Naeem Mohaiemen, presented in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago, Laida Lertxundi, Morgan Fisher, Evan Meaney, presented in collaboration with the Video Data Bank, and Tabita Rezaire. We’ll also […]

On Lorna Mills

Tomorrow Lorna Mills will join us for a screening and discussion with artists featured in Ways of Something, a four-part update of John Berger’s BBC documentary Ways of Seeing!  I’m excited to welcome SAIC undergraduate Paula Pinho Martins Nacif to blog about Mills and her work. Nacif perceptively analyzes Mills’s ambitious series as a whole and sheds light on […]

On Le Révélateur

I am delighted to welcome Natalia de Orellana back to the Conversations at the Edge blog (see her previous contributions here and here).  This week, she writes about Le Révélateur and the ways their audiovisual performances work on the senses. In the audiovisual performances of Le Révélateur, sound and image are not in competition but […]

On Mati Diop

For the final installment of our SAIC student writing series, Natalia De Orellana examines the boundaries between documentary and fiction in Mati Diop’s A Thousand Suns. She suggests that Diop creates a world where imagination and reality intermingle. Even as tougher immigration laws are proposed by European leaders–jeopardizing the long-gone fantasy of free movement–immigration has remained one of the principal worldwide […]

On John Smith…

It seems apt this week that Chicago is experiencing such a torrent of rather British-like weather, as we prepare to welcome the legendary John Smith to Conversations at the Edge (CATE). This week is a very special event due to the fact Smith was the first artist to present at CATE in 2001. We are […]

THE WAY SOUTH

Thursday, October 29, 6pm | SAIC Professor Daniel Eisenberg in person! Image: Johan van der Keuken, “The Way South” (1981). Image courtesy of Idéale Audience International. Prolific Dutch documentarian, author, and photographer Johan van der Keuken produced 55 films and nine books over the course of his career. Influenced by Dutch realist photographers, existential and […]