. Conversations at the Edge (CATE)

On Melika Bass

This week, we are excited to present Devotional Animals, a screening of recent and evolving work by Chicago filmmaker (and SAIC faculty) Melika Bass. Taking an expansive and episodic approach to her films, Bass composes abstract narratives that unfold slowly to explore complicated characters, relationships, and themes. To accompany the program, we are excerpting an essay by Karsten Lund […]

On Stacey Steers

This week, we are excited to welcome back graduate student Julia Sharpe to write for us! Sharpe’s essay looks at Stacey Steers’ surreal films, which explore the inner-lives of women, meditating on fraught relationships, motherhood, medicine, and death. Whispering, dropping, digging, buzzing… A page peels back and a rose rapidly blooms and decays; the forest […]

On Nathaniel Dorsky

We are thrilled to welcome graduate student George Olken to write for us this week. In his essay, Olken reflects on the work of Nathaniel Dorsky, whose films explore the relationship between cinema and the unknowable.  Nathaniel Dorsky captures silent images of the world, subtle shifts, beauty. His tools are deceptively simple: a 16mm camera […]

On Against Ethnography

We are excited to present Against Ethnography, a program of contemporary videos from Latin America which charts the limits of communication between indigenous and non-indigenous worlds. Curated by film scholar Federico Windhausen, this program was originally put together as part of a larger series for the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival titled El Pueblo: Searching for Contemporary Latin America. To […]

On Rikurō Miyai

We are excited to kick off our spring 2017 season this week with a rare expanded film performance by Japanese underground filmmaker Rikurō Miyai! Expanded cinema describes a form of practice that emerged in the 1960s involving the film projector being used as a performative instrument. Existing between film, performance and installation art, it questioned […]

On Jacolby Satterwhite

We are excited to welcome graduate student Caroline McCraw to write for us this week. In her essay, McCraw discusses Satterwhite’s body of work, which combines dance, 3D animation, and the family archive. Jacolby Satterwhite is a New York-based artist from Columbia, SC, whose multidisciplinary work explores identity and personal history through video, performance, animation, drawing, […]

On Paul Kos

This week, we welcome back George Price of Video Data Bank to write for us. In his essay, Price discusses the work of video and conceptual artist, Paul Kos, a key figure in the West Coast whose career spans nearly 50 years. I am delighted to welcome conceptual artist and educator Paul Kos to Conversations at […]

On Nicolás Pereda

We are excited to welcome graduate student Mev Luna to write for us this week. In their essay, Luna reflects on the work of Mexican filmmaker Nicolás Pereda whose films intertwine documentary and narrative to portray everyday life in Mexico. Nicolas Pereda is a Mexican filmmaker whose films are known for their enigmatic sensibility, minimal […]

On Sara Magenheimer

We are delighted to welcome George William Price of Video Data Bank to write for us. In his essay, Price reflects on the work of this week’s Conversations at the Edge artist, Sara Magenheimer. I am delighted to welcome interdisciplinary artist Sara Magenheimer to Conversations at the Edge this week as part of Video Data […]

On Jenny Perlin

This week, we are excited to welcome graduate student, Julia Sharpe, to write for us! In her essay, Sharpe reflects on Jenny Perlin’s The Perlin Papers, an unsettling exploration of the United States’ culture of paranoia during the Cold War.  Jenny Perlin’s The Perlin Papers is an archive at Columbia University of declassified FBI documents on […]

« go back — keep looking »