2024 Program
Light Matter is Curated by James Hansen
Program 1 - Jodie Mack: Matter Matters to Ultraviolet
Special Presentation
Friday Nov. 1st, 5 PM
Matter Matters: Growing is Grieving
Short Films by Jodie Mack
Animators are gardeners. The very definition of animation illuminates the medium’s capacity to bring things to life. These films use plants and other natural materials to center the animation as a site through which to consider grief, constant change, and transformation: a site that resists taxonomical classification and the rigidity of natural history in favor of illuminating the ineffable.
Exhibition Opening: Jodie Mack, "Ultraviolet"
Friday Nov. 1st, 6-8 PM
Jodie Mack’s Ultraviolet is the culmination of a body of work (collage, 16mm and digital animation, and pre-cinematic optical toys) that glows under blacklight, emanating from a fascination with natural and synthetic applications of UV light. Mack’s Ultraviolet encounters the subjects of mourning and the unseen. Falling somewhere between psychedelic posters and neon stained glass windows, each quilt mourns a loved one who dealt with addiction before their death. Made during a time of unfathomable loss (2020-24), the flat quilts and screens seek impossible comfort. From fluorescent rocks in Franklin, New Jersey to the glow décor of aesthetics of Party City, Ultraviolet unites Mack’s previous work in posters and textiles with her ongoing sublimation of art and craft.The patterning of collages echo the [de]formation of habit, central to the experience of addiction, not just to substance but labor itself. The repetition of the circular discs (phenakistoscopes) and looping animations relapse on repeat. Unearthed from a basement, the still works are made from materials (scrap Masonite; painted neon poster board stenciled with heating grates; salad spinners; pieces of lace; plant trays; inherited tools) that cite domesticity and, in turn, provide the basis for “animation”: a bringing to life. Intricately unifying the foundational, cinematic elements of light, color, and motion, the moving images are exuberant yet mournful in pace, animating life and also grief. Their color profiles mismatch the initial subjects, establishing a nuanced relationship between glow-in-the-dark, neon, and fluorescent entities within analog and computational photography, printmaking, and digital imagery. A collision of the real and replica, illuminated by blacklight, Ultraviolet reveals the vast unseen complexities of the human experience, what is invisible to the sun.
Program 2 - Flash!
64 Minutes
Saturday November 2nd, 12:00 PM
Cloud Film
Tristen Ives, United States, 2024, 10 minutes, 16mm
New York Premiere
Cloud film is an entirely handmade 10-minute long rayogram film that has been optically printed to fluctuate between 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24 fps. Some clouds stay for a while, while others are fleeting. cloud film calls attention to form as it is completely handmade, frame by frame, by the filmmaker starting with creating cloud-like sculptures. rayogramming, optically printing, and hand processing. content advisory: flicker, strobing effect
Consider
Ж, Brazil, 2024, 3 minutes
North American Premiere
bombs like fireworks, the artifice of televised war in a soft, black sky, perforations of light in the film’s velvet for any serious reflection the sidereal CONSIDER in memory of the fallen in Gaza, the stars.
Poem for Three Voices
Lananh Chu, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
The film weaves “Poem for Three Voices” by Bhanu Kapil and dropped frames of a VHS tape of “New York: A Documentary Film” by Ric Burns to comment on the tape’s decaying state and somatic experience of living in New York.
Echo Camp Needle Point
Linnea Nugent, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
New York Premiere
One two three four.
Silence IV
Anna Grigorian, Armenia, 2024, 2 minutes
USA Premiere
"Silence IV" (Լռության կաթիլային) is a two-minute video-bite shot entirely on cellphone. The video was created in April 2023, during the nine-month blockade of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Between the alarming and scary news coming from home and the calm reality of every-day life abroad, Anna Grigorian tries to make sense of the two realities through art. Playing with lights on interior surfaces the artist is working through the conflicts between her immediate surroundings and split identity (immigration, immediate surrounding, internal space).
A Sense of Nothing
Francisco Rojas, Chile, 2024, 4 minutes
New York Premiere
A film motivated by nothing (but daily life and (my) vision). It represents nothing, it signifies nothing. There’s no hidden meaning, no defined subject, no predetermined objective. Inside and outside. Just angles, textures and flashes of color. A whole different empire of vision, impossible to put into words. “Nothing” as anything outside common visual knowledge, anything that defies the logic of naming the world; a possibility for a new way of thinking; of dealing with our visual world.
Two Sides of the Tortoise
Oscar Illingworth, Ecuador, 2024, 12 minutes
New York Premiere
An explorer from the past (or present) arrives in the Galapagos Islands for the first time to have a tactile encounter with rocks and tortoises. In the darkness of the volcanic tunnels the beasts transfigure freely. Giant tortoises hold the mystery of the universe in the scars on their backs, and to their misfortune they are also a coveted food for hungry sailors who prowl the Pacific Ocean aimlessly.
Untitled (A Study in Refraction)
Michael Maraden, United States, 2024, 7 miniutes
New York Premiere
Untitled (A Study in Refraction) explores form, color, and motion in a dark space. Shot on an iPhone11 using multicolor string lights and different household glassware. Soundtrack by Ben Opie & Adam Kantz. Recorded live at Sync'd 8 on March 4, 2023 at The Irma Freeman Center for Imagination in Pittsburgh, PA.
Moth Glitch
Eryk Salvaggio, USA, 2024, 3 minutes
North American Premiere
An homage to Stan Brakhage's "Mothlight" (1963) and cybernetic computer art, made with errors produced by deliberately breaking contemporary 'generative AI' video tools.
OilMoonNight
Anna Zemlianski, Germany, 2024, 5.5 minutes
A revenge fantasy. A corrupted & glitched daydream. A futile endeavor to cope with visions of terror... Sunflower Fields Forever! Scenes were cut from various films by necrorealist filmmaker Yevgeni Yufit into a new narrative influenced by the pain unleashed by russia's recent invasion of Ukraine. This new cut was datamoshed with avidemux and printed with an inkjet printer. As the ink cartridges were allowed to run empty, the prints and colors became faulty, adding another layer of glitching. For some scenes the prints were manipulated even further by collaging, applying water to the ink or using sticky tape to tear off parts of the images.. The soundscape is made entirely with sounds found in the same films. Like the images, these sounds were collaged and manipulated as well.
Traces of the Unreal
Jeremy Newman, United States, 2023, 1 minute
World Premiere
This video was shot while digitizing an analogue film. As sunlight passed through the reel, reflections danced across the table. Video effects transform light into shapes and audio into soundscape.
PAULISPER BLUE CRASTINUS RED
Przemyslaw Sanecki, France, 2024, 8 minutes
World Premiere
First 2 minutes of the film: Black board with white title. A short control signal of 440 hz of square wave is heard. A blue screen with a slight grain appears. After a few seconds the first drum beat can be heard. The sound is abrupt but transient of a bass drum is more of 808 (even 606) than 909. At the same time, the colour changes tracing the volume. There is a sudden jump to red and a return to blue passing through different hues of both colours. Beat continues. The rhythm is irregular, its intervals resembling a Geiger counter reading, contradicting the intentions of whoever programmed it. At times, however, a kind of musicality is revealed. The tempo undulates, at times speeding up and slowing down, producing a stroboscopic effect. It breaks off and resumes, entering a kind of stupor from time to time. In the second minute it stabilises and is regular for several seconds. After this, however, it returns to its variations, which seem even more unrestrained. After two minutes, this process is interrupted by a black screen with an accompanying control signal. After which the screen turns blue again and…
Program 3 - "The Best Medium for a Project Is Usually the Wrong One"
77 Minutes
Infravision
Joris Guibert, France, 2024, 6 minutes
This film explores the "forms of the visible" as anthropologist Philippe Descola puts it. Images educate the eye to see the world. The invention of perspective led to the invention of landscape painting and the contemplation of the distant. The notion of nature emerged as a unified and external object. In contrast, an animist's vision (which considers that non-human things have a spirit and a social life) operates on different scales. A close-up view reveals relationships between things. This film questions perception. The optical tracking shot, whose focus varies incessantly, modulates the viewer's gaze, which catches certain shapes and struggles to grasp others, without ever managing to fix on a whole. The eye's path is deregulated, and the transition from macro to micro breaks the illusionist view and eliminates all perspective. No special effects are applied to the image : the plastic approach stems from the alteration of the video playback codec. The deteriorated video file fails - just like the deregulated eye - to render an illusionistic view. The explosion of color and the organic movements of pixels reveal a new possibility of looking.
Tape-stry
Rennie Taylor, Canada, 2023, 2 minutes
New York Premiere
Rip, cut, paste, repeat. "Tape-stry" is a short animation designed with Japanese washi tape being directly applied to 16mm film leader. Washi tape is a recent invention, created in the mid-2000s, and is known for its variety of colourful decorative designs, ease of use and having a sticky quality that leaves no residue. Inspired by the pattern films of Jodie Mack and Scott Fitzpatrick, this film layers numbers, cartoon cats and geometric shapes, and text. Artist Abby Brock created animated titles and an original flute soundtrack to accompany the film. The audio mirrors the layering and patterns of the washi tape through a stacked, non-melodic woodwind sound, while the fast-paced animation follows the abruptness of the visuals. "Tape-stry" is a playful manipulation of rice paper tape: rip, cut, paste, repeat.
ESP
Laura Kraning, USA, 2024, 3 minutes
A brutalist monument to the Empire State as manifested by a malfunctioning inkjet printer. Chroma and luminance are made audible as architectural and printed lines converge and dissolve into pattern and noise. Photographed in the Capitol City of Albany, New York.
Go Between
Chris Kennedy, Canada, 2024, 6.5 minutes
USA Premiere
Looking down at the Brisbane River--a play of masking and superimpositions.
Trees on Sand
Minhyeong Kil, South Korea, 2024, 6 minutes
North American Premiere
The shape of light that seeps through the trees and the texture of the sand that passes through them.
Cada Gesto
Valentina Alvarado Matos, Spain, 2024, 11 minutes
North American Premiere
The hand becomes the protagonist in a piece that traces, from a macro perspective, a city understood as a tactile scenario based on different artisan women. cada gesto is an audiovisual portrait that thinks on the city of Barcelona from the footprint and inner life of the workshops.
When the Plug is Pulled and the Set is Cold
Alex Broadwell, United States, 2024, 5.5 minutesWorld Premiere
Inspired by a Bill Viola essay which relates three different kinds of 'video black' to closing one's eyes, sleeping, and dying, this work thinks those states of darkness through rapidly failing and increasingly unsupported electronic equipment. Briefly remembered fantasy images, soft crackles of chromatic snow, and explosions of violent feedback form a death dream of analog video.
O/S
Max Hattler, Germany, 2024, 5 minutes
New York Premiere
Inspired by a Bill Viola essay which relates three different kinds of 'video black' to closing one's eyes, sleeping, and dying, this work thinks those states of darkness through rapidly failing and increasingly unsupported electronic equipment. Briefly remembered fantasy images, soft crackles of chromatic snow, and explosions of violent feedback form a death dream of analog video.
WILLIAMBABE
Tianjiao Wang, United States, 2024, 10.5 minutes
World Premiere
This film is a tribute to the influential artist and mentor, William Pope.L, following his passing on December 23, 2023. The narrative begins with a timelapse of a spathiphyllum plant, named WILLIAMBABE, purchased on the day of his death, symbolizing the quiet persistence of life and memory. The film transitions into a space shaped by two of Pope.L’s works, Cliff (2012) and Better (2013), evoking a haunting yet reflective atmosphere. Central to the film is the use of hand-drawn lettering, meticulously created in a darkroom. This process, a ritual of sorts, involves inscribing Pope.L’s words directly onto unexposed film strips, which are then used in the Bolex camera for shooting. This act of embedding his words within the very medium of the film transforms the project into a vessel for his essence. It’s a deliberate, almost sacred gesture that mirrors the way his presence continues to resonate through his art and teachings. The film invites viewers to reflect on how an artist’s spirit lingers in the spaces and lives they’ve touched, creating a lasting imprint.
It's Called Round Like a Head
Andrew Wood, United States, 2024, 7 minutes
North American Premiere
This film is a tribute to the influential artist and mentor, William Pope.L, following his passing on December 23, 2023. The narrative begins with a timelapse of a spathiphyllum plant, named WILLIAMBABE, purchased on the day of his death, symbolizing the quiet persistence of life and memory. The film transitions into a space shaped by two of Pope.L’s works, Cliff (2012) and Better (2013), evoking a haunting yet reflective atmosphere. Central to the film is the use of hand-drawn lettering, meticulously created in a darkroom. This process, a ritual of sorts, involves inscribing Pope.L’s words directly onto unexposed film strips, which are then used in the Bolex camera for shooting. This act of embedding his words within the very medium of the film transforms the project into a vessel for his essence. It’s a deliberate, almost sacred gesture that mirrors the way his presence continues to resonate through his art and teachings. The film invites viewers to reflect on how an artist’s spirit lingers in the spaces and lives they’ve touched, creating a lasting imprint.
Braided Sand
Tracy Szatan, United States, 2024, 17 minutes
New York Premiere
What if the rock could be a lens? And if it’s not a question of if, but when? Braided Sand engages the geologic materiality of imaging and communication technologies. There is no lens without sand, which itself is the result of millions of years of geologic activity. Filmed at a sand mine, a glass factory, and a nanotech laboratory, the film moves between observation and abstraction, juxtaposing human and geologic timescales, plunging the viewer into churning industrial environments to lay bare the weighty earthly bases of seemingly invisible and immaterial infrastructures.
Program 4 - When Was I
Saturday Nov. 2nd, 3:30 PM
Entre tu ojo y el mío
Sofia Tudela, Spain, 2024, 4 minutes
North American Premiere
"Entre tu ojo y el mío" is a film made during the years 2023-24 from the obsession with confusing my father’s face with that of his pet, Theo. For a while I was observing the relationship that both had, coming to think that the distance between one animal and the other was not so great.
Here are Some Images
Yannick Mosimann, Switzerland, 2024, 6 minutes
North American Premiere
“Here are some Images” is an short film exploring the interplay between internal and external images, using hand-processed 16mm footage and musings on perception and memory.
Happy Ending
Tiago Madaleno & Joana Patrão, Portugal, 2024, 6 minutes
North American Premiere
“Happy ending” is part of the ongoing project “Glossolalia”, which proposes the construction of a shared place through the subversion of the road-movies’ individualistic tradition. Taking as a motto a fiction about a couple who finds an idea of home in their car trips, the video explores a place of duration within the non-representable space beyond the resolution of a happy ending (a convention that marks the end of the dramatic interest of a story). Through repetition and loop, it plays with the archetype of the tunnel (space of passage and transformation), remaining in an intermediate state, between escapism and ecstasy, light and darkness, speed and continuity. Unforeseen elements such as reflections and optical effects, radio sounds and interferences, laughter and breathing, become symbols of being on a journey, where directions are influenced by improvisation and attention is tuned, permeable to the elastic time of a shared experience.
Things We Swallow
Carleen Maur, United States, 2024, 4 minutes
New York Premiere
One ticket to the Husband Store. Tongue tied no more. Gulp.
POND
Kate Solar, Canada, 2022, 3 minutes
USA Premiere
Digital footage of the river near the artist’s childhood home is laser-printed directly onto 16mm film, creating a shifting, liquified halftone; a kind of macro-film grain. Animals and figures emerge from this abstraction, then sink back into it. The memory of a specific landscape dissolves into the texture of time. It is impossible to return to. This digital-to-physical process exposes the paradoxes of celluloid film-making. Running the film through a projector decays the laser toner image even further. The imprecise, ultra-DIY printing process frequently bleeds onto the film’s optical sound strip. The harsh noise of the projector’s optical sound reader blends with the original field recordings. As the image is obscured, so is the soundtrack. In this bizarre dreamscape, cinematic conventions are overruled by the physical reality of the film medium.
The Year
Grace Mitchell, United States, 2024, 10 minutes
New York Premiere
A film where an alley acts as a calendar, charting the progression of a year. Mixed into the linearity is a rolodex of the everyday in no particular order.
An Inimitable Place Called Home
Jolene Mok, Hong Kong, 2023, 6 minutes
This work was created to reflect a constant wanderer’s overdue homecoming before yet another departure. The numerous possibilities of navigating Hong Kong are truly extraordinary. The film’s basic premise is to show Hong Kong’s unique cityscape visualised through land, sea, and air. For example, various mass transit vehicles traverse the city recurrently and are juxtaposed with free-flying sparrows living in their very own humble neighbourhoods. I am drawn to the poetry found in mundane, everyday scenes in Hong Kong. I wanted to magnify this uniqueness and beauty by using the analogue medium of black and white 16mm film. I hand-processed the film stock myself. The flaws that appeared during the film-handling process, such as the dust traces and scratch marks, are important assets that work with a beautiful poem by Hong Fu to present an orchestrated work to audiences.
Monolithic Tenderness
Kyle Petty, United States, 2024, 7 minutes
New York Premiere
A tessellating flicker film that seeks to undo the cold, impersonal architecture of the city by dousing it in organic and domestic forms. Featuring a collaged soundtrack of spam phone calls, pulsing synth chords, bagpipe drones, and a lullaby sung to my daughter while in-utero. FLICKER WARNING: This film contains stroboscopic imagery
Nomadism, Temporal Connection and New Feminine Longings
Maria Bilbao Herrera, Venezuela, 2024, 3.5 minutes
Caraqueña & nomad by nature, Maria has lived and worked in 9 cities in the last 20 years. Artist & organizer she merges creative expression, critical thought and self ♫ proposing participatory, collaborative/experimental experiences that incorporate performance video/sound.
Midsummer
Masha Vlasova, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
Midsummer is a cyanotype, sun-printed film. The film was conceived during Juhannus, the celebration of the longest day of the year in Finland, when the sun doesn’t set for 24 hours. The light of the sun is both material and collaborator in creating this film-poem.
Slideshow
Janie Geiser, United States, 2024, 8 minutes
World Premiere
Slideshow reveals moments in time in the lives of strangers. Strangers to me, but maybe not to each other. Found in a Berlin flea market in the 1990's, these slides originated in the DDR (East Germany):an embossed DDR decorates the top of many of the vivid plastic slide frames.
The slides' photographic images were made of ephemeral materials; the color of the images has shifted over time. However; the slides' vibrant plastic frames have retained their color. As objects, they
have a certain graphic power, especially when illuminated on a light table. They frame their content: families at home, friends sharing meals, outdoor gatherings, travel—familiar photographic subjects.
Scattered among the boxed-up slides were also a few educational slides highlighting working sites, like foundries, hospitals, schools. Additionally, there seem to be a few commercially produced images of soldiers, the border---these were in cardboard slide frames and may have been produced by West German companies.
Time and place are suggested---sometime before 1989, when the wall came down. Working with the slides, I came to feel that I knew some of the people. Many emerged across multiple slides. But I can only know their traces.
Half Light
Ryan Marino, United States, 2024, 10 minutes
Shot over a period of three years in a single interior space, this film explores sensory perception through the textural surface of expired film stock, light and layered images. Ephemeral moments meld into voids of grain.
Program 5 - Material Worlds
Saturday November 2nd, 5:15 PM
The Interior Frontier
Justin Rhody, United States, 2023, 20 minutes
New York Premiere
The Interior Frontier operates in a confused time-state of period dress and modern society, between fact and fiction; dealing with silence as sound, the invisible war of female life, tornado as existence, and the world's largest hand dug hole. Shot on 16mm and Super-8mm film, The Interior Frontier references and was created in the same small town in Kansas as Barbara Loden's final directorial work; a 16mm educational short titled The Frontier Experience (1975).
Assis (Seated)
Pierre Yves Clouin, France, 2024, 1 minute
New York Premiere
On the treetops.
Niagara
Michael Betancourt, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
Niagara pays homage to the Hudson River School landscape painting of the same title: swirling colors and shapes evoke the grandeur of its namesake waterfall. Produced while Artist in Residence at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, and made using Lumia, a Sandin Image Processor, and a BPMC HDK-01 digital glitch processor, the imagery evokes the flows and turbulence of falling water in motion. The continuous stream of the digital-electronic signal becomes a mirror for the flow of water and passage of light (Lumia) that is both the vehicle of presentation and the initial subject matter being transformed.
Reporting from the Ghost Cities of the Metaverse: Decentraland
sub net, the Internet, 2024, 5 minutes
A virtual detournement deconstructing the metaverse visually, aurally and philosophically.
Deep Time of Latent Space
Eric Souther, United States, 2024, 10 minutes
New York Premiere
Deep Time of Latent Space relates the strata of human activity within large language models as another layer of the Anthropocene, which places AI into the realm of geological thinking that spirals into deep time and broadcasts into the future. The AI narrator takes us through the most incomprehensible moments of our history starting with the big bang, creation of earth, and the start of life. It uses its generalized knowledge to resolve our grasp of these moments into data-visualized images. It does so with confidence and a little bit of attitude, however, it tends to hallucinate. These hallucinations shine a light on what is needed to create a more ethical and accurate AI. The Jefferson Project at Lake George uses specific and local data to understand the impact of human activity on fresh water, and how to mitigate those effects. A short interview with Dr. Jeremy Farrell shares how the Jefferson Project uses machine learning to create predictive models for understanding the patterns of past and reaching into the future to assist in preservation. A useful model for understanding the value of the local and self-generated databases. Lake George was also chosen as a site of deep time and for its art historical significance. At the birth of geology in the nineteenth century the emerging science was in vogue. Many painters from the Hudson River School including John Frederick Kensett, Thomas Cole, and other painters painted portraits of rocks at the lake's shores. This point of time marks a transformative shift away from the biblical 6,000-year age of the earth to the conception of deep time that spans billions of years. Its implications allow for long-term thinking today. Another component to help guide the future of AI.
Back to the Garden of Eden
Jan Schekauski, Kenya/Germany, 2023, 11 minutes
North American Premiere
Paradise is our earth. It is located in the midst of the impressive nature and rich biodiversity of Kenya. An experimental film tells the story of Adam and Eve's earthly return to paradise with the help of a small wooden garden house that falls from the sky. Inside are two urns containing the ashes of the two bodies of the couple, who loved each other unconditionally and lived happily together in Kenya for half a century until they died together.
To Discipline a Rock #2
Jiayi Chen, China, 2024, 1 minute
Unsplit double 8 film printed onto 16mm. Part of an on-going hand-process project that echos 17th century Chinese novels and the current political plights. Drifting from being controlled and out-of-control, from film negative to positive, from compositional clash and evasion, the film applies labor-intensive processes, questioning suppression choreographically. This work can be screened as a discrete cinematic work on 16mm, or as a 16mm loop installation.
Katpar
Shoya Group, Kazakhstan, 2024, 8 minutes
North American Premiere
"Katpar" is an alternative history of the material culture of the region between the Great Steppe and the Tien Shan mountain chain (Ural-Mongol fold belt, Hercynian and Caledonian regions). The viewers' attention is drawn to art and research materials collected in one album, showing fictional artefacts of material culture in its various manifestations - from a nail to large-scale production buildings and high-tech machines. All artefacts demonstrate the particular material forms (fold-qatpar) manifested in this region over centuries as a tension between local nature and culture.
Study for Three Streams (Silent Version)
Kyujae Park, South Korea, 2024, 5 minutes
North American Premiere
Study for Three Streams was filmed at Hongjecheon in Seoul, Mokgamcheon in Gwangmyeong, and Gulpocheon in Incheon. It captures the impressions of three streams in three different cities. Each of the three streams intersects and overlaps with images of the filmmaker’s own body.
Triple Loaders
Max Van Loan, United States, 2024, 4 minutes
Study for Three Streams was filmed at Hongjecheon in Seoul, Mokgamcheon in Gwangmyeong, and Gulpocheon in Incheon. It captures the impressions of three streams in three different cities. Each of the three streams intersects and overlaps with images of the filmmaker’s own body.
Semi-precious
Kara Hansen, Canada, 2024, 15 minutes
USA Premiere
Semi-Precious is a portrait of my mother, a retired holistic practitioner framed through her crystals, supplements, jewelry, healing instruments, and household adornments. Handwritten labels populate the exteriors of these objects to recall thier emotional or spiritual use and are a vital remedy to her memory loss. Geologic and mortal time become enmeshed through: weathered landscapes, wrinkled hands, vibrating exercise machines, sound representations of planets, resonant quartz crystals in clock faces, and the profile of the oldest earth rock identified, the moon.
Program 6 - The Gloria of Your Imagination
Saturday Nov. 2nd, 8 PM @Nevins Theater
The Gloria of Your Imagination
Jennifer Reeves, United States, 2024, 96 Minutes
Sixty years ago, a 30-year-old waitress and single mother, was persuaded to engage in psychotherapy sessions on film, with three of the most influential Theorist-Psychologists of the 20th century. Reeves newest dual-projection film breaks down and expands this widely viewed work “Three Approaches to Psychotherapy” with an intricate superimposed montage of scenes from Gloria’s unguarded sessions and numerous film artifacts of her lifetime: newsreels, home movies, commercials, a beauty pageant, cold war propaganda, and educational films from the 1930s-1970s. Sixty years ago, a 30-year-old waitress and single mother, was persuaded to engage in psychotherapy sessions on film, with three of the most influential Theorist-Psychologists of the 20th century. Reeves newest dual-projection film breaks down and expands the seminal film series Three Approaches to Psychotherapy with an intricate superimposed montage consisting of material from Gloria’s unguarded sessions and numerous film artifacts of her lifetime: newsreels, home movies, commercials, a beauty pageant, cold war propaganda, and educational films from the 1930s-1970s. The Gloria of your Imagination immerses audience members in an unabashed patriarchal, nationalistic era which many U.S. conservatives are working tirelessly to recreate. Social and legal limitations of that era, which formed Gloria and the struggles of her generation, remain unacknowledged in the sessions. While the therapists seem progressively non-judgmental about Gloria’s active sex life, there is no mention that contraceptives are actually illegal for her to take. Reeves’ original intertitle script fills in missing context and introduces Gloria’s greater life and self: from her Polish-Catholic upbringing to marriage straight from high school to an ever-evolving single parent on a spiritual journey, living by her own principles, until an untimely death at 46 years of age. By projecting films that Gloria could have seen in their original 16mm format, on top of portions from Gloria’s psychotherapy sessions, viewers absorb the culture of that era directly. Original 16mm shot by Reeves, and footage doctored with her signature Direct-on-film techniques, bring about viewers’ subjective experiences and visceral connections to Gloria’s inner experience. The “three Glorias” put on display by therapists with vastly divergent methods and conclusions, are displaced by the Glorias viewers experience, and perhaps by the courageous and determined individual imagined by the filmmaker.
Program 7 - Film / Media / Sound Performance
Sunday Nov. 3rd, 1:00 PM
Rebekkah Palov, The Planes Extended (Gold)
Live video editing and processing of video files in four sections. With audio accompaniment, real-time electro-acoustic improv performance. Video sources: handy-cam video. Audio sources: original mic recordings, pre-processed recordings, live audio and or sound synthesis.
K/S/R, "Already in Heaven"
World Premiere
The trio of Ben Kujawski, Abigail Smith, and Justin Rhody (all three co-founders of No Name Cinema), convene from their respective locales in Northern New Mexico and Upstate New York to conduct a multi-projector and live sound performance piece involving 16mm found footage, 35mm slides covered in living mold, prepared cassettes, violin, lapsteel, flute, electronics, accordion, guitar, and more. The trio has previously performed and given presentations at Other Cinema (San Francisco), Highlands University (Las Vegas), No Name Cinema (Santa Fe), Shapeshifters Cinema (Oakland), the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), and the firehouse (Joshua Tree). K/S/R has also released three albums of audio recordings on the self-distributed Physical media label, and their music was recently featured on the legendary Coast to Coast AM radio program.
Carrier Band
Carrier Band is Peer Bode (live text with Bode vocoder); Andrew Deutsch (live mixing, electronics) Rebekkah Palov (live digital sounds, programming and mixing). Carrier Band was formed in 1998 when Pauline Oliveros (1932 – 2016), Peer Bode and Andrew Deutsch performed three improvisations at Alfred University. Carrier Band has released seven CDs on Deep Listening and IEA publications. For the Light Matters Film Festival Carrier Band will perform an improvisation with video culled from Peer Bode’s video archive along with quotes written in the note books of pioneering electronic instrument developer Harald Bode. The the performance will weave electronic sounds produced by Rebekkah Palov using her unique self programed digital sound system, Andrew Deutsch’s micro-compositions, and Peer Bode’s vocoding of poetry and other texts.
Program 8: Bajo de superficie
December 6, Kino Palais, Buenos Aires
To Open a Window
Craig Scheihing, United States, 2024, 2 minutes
South American Premiere
a mirrored window makes a suggestion.
The Blob
Mahda Purmehdi & Cesar Herrejon, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
World Premiere
Birds looking anxiously at a threat beyond the frame, and then the threat arrives. Mixing a found footage educational film with sci-fi and horror traditions and hand-painted manipulation of the film stock, a familiar narrative is inverted, recontextualizing the fear of others through the anthropocentric eye.
The Parrot
Sofia Krasnopolsky, Argentina, 2023, 12 minutes
Over the course of a few summer days, Lucía is left in charge of a house in order to take care of a parrot. As she comes up with a small domestic routine, from the neighboring gardens come the sound of celebrations, a film and children pretending to be spies.
Digital Light Leak
Zoe Chronis, Iceland, 2024, 3 minutes
South American Premiere
A MiniDV exposure malfunction recorded at Dettifoss on April 26, 2024.
mmm
Chiemi Shimdada, United Kingdom/Japan, 2024, 7 minutes
South American Premiere
‘mmm’ is an eclectic collection of the clouds of Japanese cinema from the 1920s to the present. Drawing inspiration from the 35mm film materials of Japanese physicist and cloud expert Masanao Abe (1891-1966) and the apprehension of a possible cloudless sky scenario in the future as speculated in the work of scientist Tapio Schneider, ‘mmm’ looks at the formlessness as an essential actor in the history of cinema.
it's under the flesh were you are tender
Agnes Hayden, Spain, 2024, 3 minutes
South American Premiere
This film delves into the intrusion of the physical and material body, structured around three instructions: scour, submerge, submit. It represents a progression in the search within, driven by the need to pierce through the flesh and opacity of the body to uncover what resides inside, whether out of morbid curiosity or as a form of love. One can only love what one knows. Discovering that interior - bloody, organic, natural, dark, and secret - lays the foundations of self-love. With the aid of new medical technologies, it is now possible to delve into our most vulnerable interior. Small robotic pincers assist us in performing this act of love. ----- 'It is I who drag my fingernail across the flesh, capriciously, seeking to understand what dwells beyond. How many layers until I reach the bone. How much I would have to excavate to turn around and return to the starting point.'
Trace of my Body
Yue Hua, China, 2023, 3 minutes
South American Premiere
A film about the female gaze and self-acceptance. In spring 2023, a physical illness forced me to re-examine my relationship with my body. Scars, spots, skin, hair, and my unflattering voice, everything belongs to my body. Shoot and direct animation on 16mm film. Content warning: Nudity
Tan/Vatan
Homa Sarabi & Meenakshi Garodia, Iran/India, 2024, 8 miniutes
South American Premiere
Tan/Vatan 16 mm Film, Handmade Film Tan/Vatan -Body/Homeland- is a collaborative experimental film. It is a conversation between two women and their intimate experiences of love and life. The film embodies a symbolic form borrowed from the origin cultures of the artists, in India and Iran. Tan and Vatan are mutual words in Hindi and Persian language, sharing the same meaning and pronunciation. Artists utilize the language, the medium, and their bodies to connect and visualize their experiences while engaging with the mechanical and physical experience of 16mm and handmade film.
Parangole
Abinadi Meza, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
South American Premiere
A rainy morning in Rio de Janeiro; film as a membrane, a memory veil, imprinted by the body and the environment. The title is a reference to the performative cloaks/capes of the late Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, made of various materials including fabric, paper, and plastic. This cameraless film is a textural exploration of the environment that surrounds us in a given site.
Holographic Will
Mike Stoltz, United States, 2024, 6 minutes
South American Premiere
This film exists as a 16mm print and that is the preferred method of exhibition when possible. STROBE/FLICKER WARNING A domestic swirl filmed while the building was being sold. How much longer can we afford to stay? A kaleidoscopic portrait of destabilization during the struggle to stay in a rent-controlled apartment amidst an affordable housing crisis. Shot frame-by-frame, moving the camera between every image. Single frames move forward in time, creating after-image combinations without superimpositions. A phased drum machine soundtrack emphasizes the percussive quality of the image. (With gratitude to neighbors and the Los Angeles Tenants Union Northeast Local)
Arder en Deseo
Eszter Katalin & Camila Téllez, Chile, 2023, 4 minutes
World Premiere
"Arder en deseo" is the result of a Super8 cartridge shot in April 2023 in Santiago de Chile, materializing three different desires for three different images: The first scene depicts "Plaza Dignidad" from various angles, the starting point of the Estallido social (lit. "social outburst") on October 18th 2019, the second is a quote of Hippolyte Bayard’s photographic self-portrait posing as a drowned man from October 18th in 1840 and the third one shows two empty chairs in connection with the first scene of the empty monument. In using the “obsolete” medium of analog film "Arder en deseo" creates a temporal anachronism, a technological ellipsis, in which memory, oblivion and disappearance enter into poetical dialogue fifty years after the Chilean coup d'état.
The Deers
Emiliano Grassi, Uruguay, 2024, 11 minutes
Argentine Premiere
The military dictatorship in Uruguay remains in the memory of survivors and families. The wait for justice brings routine into a standstill. The faces come in diffuses ways. The image still remains.
Adrift Potentials
Leonardo Pirondi, Brazil, 2024, 12 minutes
Buenos Aires Premiere
This pseudo diary film is made of found materials from an unfinished 16mm film. 'Potenciais à Deriva' is a film started by a Brazilian artist under a pseudonym while living in exile in Los Angeles, California. Isolated shots and previously assembled scenes reveal an intention to create a mysterious film comprised of disembodied interviews, empty rooms, radio recordings, soccer games, and sudden apparitions of the filmmaker that slowly ruminates on Brazil's colonial past, North American Imperialism and the military dictatorship of the time in a paranoid and anxious manner. Be aware that the film's final version never came to exist. This version presented is my mere attempt to produce a film with these otherwise lost images.
Program 9: Ambiente Senoro
December 7, Buenos Aires
A Shifting Pattern
Isaac Sherman, United States, 2024, 6 minutes
South American Premiere
A collected geography of local flora; appearing, disappearing, reappearing, enmeshing. Afterimage becomes before-image, physiology and pathology at play. The will to walk aimlessly, rejuvenated, as stasis turns to movement and back again. *Please note* - The afterimage effect in this film is drastically improved when viewed in a very dark room. - This film contains some strobing images. Music: Nicole McCabe ..... saxophone Alex Babbitt .......... flute Isaac Sherman ...... synthesizers, composition Thank you: Mike Stoltz Alee Peoples Colin Brant Natalja Kent Farhad Ebrahimi
In Place of a Hollow Tree
Eislow Johnson, United States, 2024, 8 minutes
World Premiere
Migrating from the Amazon basin across northern Illinois, a flock of chimney swifts flutter without perching, using a natural form of radar to navigate. The pulse of infrasound from deep ocean waves vibrates the ground and emanates up, guiding the birds amid disrupted air. Open space heard becomes turbulent, resonant space. Various forms of tuning elicit a strained acoustic ecology between altitudes.
Kauai'o 'o'o
Samy Benammar, Canada, 2024, 4 minutes
South American Premiere
In 1987, the song of the kauaʻi ʻōʻō, a bird endemic to Hawaii, is recorded for the last time. Its song serves as the starting point for a visual exploration of the landscape and the winged creatures inhabiting it. Mostly shot on location, the film is a visual poem caught between the chaos of disappearance and the calm of an aerial melody that takes us on a journey through seasons and territories.
The Trace of the Box - Technicalized Good People
Moojin Brothers, South Korea, 2022, 7 minutes
Argentine Premiere
Moojin Brothers focuses on various beings that have eternal life with technicalized images. The plants and TV screens in Nam June Paik’s TV Garden (1974) maintain their current images without dying, rotting, or breaking down through the behind-the-scene maintenance and technological replacement. The chickens, virtually released in TV Garden by artists, are also isolated from other living species or external changes, and live forever free from evolution, reproduction, creation and decomposition. It seems to symbolize a future utopia in which the ecosystem is won over and maintained by technology. The chickens may be real like the plants in TV Garden or virtual images as the images on the TV screens. The only clear thing is that they are easily replaced by cloning technology or safely preserved with mechanical equipment. In this kind of world, humans remain as “good people” who do not need to consume chickens or cage them for breeding. By borrowing the voice of artificial intelligence in the video, the artists ask humans who accept a technicalized life without any resistance if such an immortal life is what they really want to manifest with technology.
Fear of Floating
Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy, Australia, 2024, 8 minutes
South American Premiere
Playful formalism at the coast. A film about two people shooting the same horizon and the staccato experience by which we piece together knowledge of place. Informed, but jumbled, the empirical, the guidebook, a scrap of interpretation board. A half remembered history class, a transliterated place name.
Brume of the Billows
Rodrigo Faustini, Brazil, 2024, 4 minutes
Argentine Premiere
Modulating attention between channels, like shifting through the radio, one can reveal messages in noise. This was the basis for Hedy Lamarr's "frequency hopping" technique, which now structures mobile networks and its siren songs. At the beach, transmissions fail, we hop waves, wander to sintonize, and accumulate dead time, asperged. Salt water blocks high frequency signals, found shells resonate.
Vibrant Matter
Pablo Marin, Argentina, 2024, 7 minutes
Human absence gives rise to a collection of spaces that make up an urban symphony of backdrops that become determining presences. A moving landscape centered on the surface of a fractured and empty reality, re-erected as a dark celebration of that which is usually kept in the shadows. Vibrant matter, a titled based on a possible definition of cinema, is the portrait of a world that spins without direction, between dream and desolation. “It is not enough to collect the remains of the shipwreck. We must install, in the midst of the ruins, the marks of obsession." -Maria Negroni
What Humans See as Blood, Jaguars See as Chicha
Luciana Decker, Bolivia, 2024, 29 minutes
Buenos Aires Premiere
An experimental ethnographic study of a region in the artist’s native Bolivia that was once the centre of the Tiwanaku civilization. The film operates across temporalities and explores the balance between human, animal, and natural worlds in this rural area close to La Paz. Decker’s embodied 16mm camera describes details of the hands of women at work, as they tend to the land and prepare celebratory food and votive objects. Ceramics and archaeological remains are filmed in a series of abstracted fragments whilst a musical performance on the city street is documented in an extended single take. New ecological frameworks are proposed as the work investigates the lived experience of communities now, alongside storytelling about deities, sacred objects, and spaces in the Andes.
TSI / Harland Snodgrass Gallery
October 30 - November 5
#47 Mountain Fort
Lorelei d'Andriole, 2 minutes
New York Premiere
A video translation of one of my action art scores for trans* becoming. The text featured in this animation is the text of the score and it is drawn over cytoscopic footage of my urethra and bladder. This video was originally produced to be shared as part of artist Chelsea Thompto's experimental AR project "Transcode Gallery." This version has not been screened publicly and features a new audio score. The score is part of my artist book, "Nightmares and Dreams on Progesterone: Action Art Scores for Trans Becoming," set to be published by Late Night Copies in 2024.
Heat Mark
Kacie Lees, United States, 2024, 12 minutes
World Premiere
Reversed infrared footage of a thermal body print on a hardwood floor. Bodies and Heat. Color and Light. It's toasty.
Moon Moth Bed
VLM, United States, 2023, 6 minutes
New York Premiere
Moon Moth Bed is a surreal, symbolic, and eco-feminist art-film about destruction, rebirth, and collaborative consciousness. Inspired by Dr. Donna Haraway's ecofeminist writings and panpsychic philosophy, this live-action, lens-based film investigates the idea that all matter is conscious and interconnected. Moon Moth Bed depicts real luna moths hatching from their cocoons amidst an ethereal video dreamworld set with bells, a miniature moon, and a small moth-scale bed. The film is cocooned in an atmospheric soundscape of rumbling thunderstorms, textured sounds, and twinkling temple bells. In Moon Moth Bed's culminating visual sequence, a deus-ex-machina device enters the film to conjure chaos. In response, the video dreamworld comes alive with sensual flows of honey to restore peace. The video concludes with circle-shaped imagery to symbolize rebirth and conjure hope. Moon Moth Bed was directed, edited, produced, sound-scored, and performed-by multimedia artist Virginia L. Montgomery alongside her hand-raised luna moth collaborators.
Bot3quim
s4ra, Portugal, 2023, 5 minutes
stage for intellectuals, artists & freethinkers 2 meet, a cultural institution that has become the sanctuary for creative expression & a symbol of resistance d̶u̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶o̶r̶t̶u̶g̶u̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶c̶t̶a̶t̶o̶r̶s̶h̶i̶p̶
Fragmented Signals 24
Matthew Pell, United Kingdom, 2024, 2 minutes
World Premiere
Fragmented Signals 24 explores the errors that occur during digital playback. The video captures the digital corruption on an electronic billboard in a public street. The soundtrack was created live in response to the images.
Exo Gestus
Yvette Granata, United States, 2024, 3 minutes
World Premiere
Exo Gestus is an ambient experimental video exploring the way that motion sensors incorrectly track my body. An amalgamation of the glitches that occur from tracking my movements as I dance, rather than correct it, I embrace the glitches of a body that cannot be captured. My Mocap suit is too big for me. It is designed for a bigger body than mine. My body is too small even for the smallest size. Because of this, my body size creates glitches in the mocap data tracks. I embrace the glitches and dance for the sensors. The sound is a recording of my feet dragging across the floor.
Expansion
Joanna Valkenburg, United States, 2024, 5 minutes
New York Premiere
Human absence gives rise to a collection of spaces that make up an urban symphony of backdrops that become determining presences. A moving landscape centered on the surface of a fractured and empty reality, re-erected as a dark celebration of that which is usually kept in the shadows. Vibrant matter, a titled based on a possible definition of cinema, is the portrait of a world that spins without direction, between dream and desolation. “It is not enough to collect the remains of the shipwreck. We must install, in the midst of the ruins, the marks of obsession." -Maria Negroni
Immersive Gallery
October 30 - November 5
Pyrotechnics
ONYOU OH, Korea, 2022, 11 minutes
New York Premiere
When the theater puts up fireworks by itself, an imaginary cinema rises from a woman's eyes as a vision.
"This is a total banger." -James Hansen
Simonsong
Valentin Sismann, France, 2024, 4 minutes
North American Premiere
Selection piece (Cycle Desktopsongs) Simonsong is a video piece, a musical system that exists only through a visual process, in this case a mockery of technological hegemony in the arts, and particularly in the world of contemporary music. In the most trivial representation of the digital tool, up to 16 384 "mousists" (plastic mouse interpreters) play virtuosos in the way of the child's game Simon. Desktopsongs is a cycle of video pieces questioning our relationship with technology. Each work, inspired by desktop movie practice, is a musical system dependent on a visual process. The cycle includes Screensong, questioning data collection related to privacy, Simonsong, questioning technological hegemony in the world of contemporary music, and Playpausesong, questioning mass media consumption.
Dreams from the Past
Bridget Coderc, United Kingdom, 2023, 7 minutes
North American Premiere
WARNING: WORK HAS BRIGHT FLASHES & COLOURS.
In the early morning hours, they come next to your bed and lean to your ear. A stranger's voice forces you to wake up: Do you remember what you dreamt last night? You lay frozen in fear, staring at the sunlight coming into the room through the heavy curtains. You had too much to dream last night, too much to dream. I find dreams so intriguing. Why do they reach lengths far beyond our consciousness? What is the reason for this vivid and surreal experience? Dreams have power. Especially reoccurring childhood nightmares. They speak to you, they scare you and they can make you avoid going to sleep. Dreams reveal secrets you are not aware of. What is hidden in your mind? Like a fairytale mirror, often reflecting the truth, dreams let you catch a glimpse into the unconscious world. Psychoanalysts are especially fascinated by the unsettling nature of dreams. Sigmund Freud thought that dreams are the ‘royal road to the unconscious’, revealing our deepest desires and fears. According to him, recurring nightmares provide a way of processing anxieties or difficult experiences. I have created ‘Dreams From The Past’ based on my recurring nightmare about mirrors I used to see in my childhood.
Chroma Culture
Sam Meech, United Kingdom, 2020, 8 minutes
USA Premiere
Chroma Culture is a video work that is literally grown. The process for growth combines optical video feedback, digital video processing and projection mapping to create an evolving organic phenomena that recalls the behavior of micro-organisms in a petri dish. Three discrete chromatic feedback systems (Red, Green, Blue) exist in the same space, fighting for territory. The work is seeded using coloured laser pens, encouraging each chromatic ‘culture’ to grow steadily. As each colour expands, it bumps up against another. This creates a constant flux as individual colour growth is amplified by the feedback system, yet inhibited by the other colours sharing the space. Winner of the A-Life 2020 Inspired Art Award, at the A-Life artificial Life conference in Montreal, 2020. This video is a recording of the core work, which can be adapted to a live / interactive installation, dependent on certain presentation conditions.
Part-Time Moon
San Kit Li, Hong Kong, 2021, 6 minutes
North American Premiere
Part-Time Moon documents a fantasy of an artificial moon that is created inside the artist’s studio. The film is initiated from glazing over on a filmmaking tool. Compared to the real moon, the part-time moon carries an anthropomorphic character: it moves, changes luminosity and color on its own. The camera chases after this organic moon from far to close. It dances, playing hide-and-seek with the camera. The film takes the apparatus usually behind the camera back to the front of the lens, producing a visual-driven narration which is out of the norm.