2023 Program
Light Matter is Curated by James Hansen
Immersive Gallery
November 3-5, 2023
Compre(hen)ssion of Artifacts
Damian Anache, Argentina, 2023, 6 minutes
North American Premiere
Recursive pixelization and self-referencing of data within a collage. This video repeats fragmented, distorted, and faded elements over and over again, while drifting towards abstract degradations and looped simulations, circling back on itself endlessly until exhaustion, insisting on saying what it already said in the first instance (much like this very sentence). Words, sounds, and textures merge and disintegrate into noise without an apparent pattern but very present nonetheless. The subject stretches, compresses, and expands, once again showing that the possibilities of technological replication can generate subpar prints, leaving a bad impression both on paper and in our minds.
dark forest // invincible summer
Jenn Grossman, USA, 2023, 10 minutes
World Installation Premiere
"Dark Forest//Invincible Summer is a video/sound collage and projected installation that deconstructs and reassembles sensory memory through media artifacts. It explores synesthesia and embodiment in the act of looking and listening. “Our cognitive awareness – conscious as well as unconscious – consists of multiple strands of signification, woven of shifting fragments of imagery, sensation and malleable memory. Works of sensory media are capable of echoing or reflecting or embodying these kinds of multiple simultaneous strands of signification." (Ernst Karel)
Same Old Santa
Justin Rhody, Abigail Smith, & Ben Kujawski, USA, 2023, 14 minutes
World Premiere
A collaborative piece for hand painted 16mm film, found footage, and live improvised sound by Justin Rhody, Abigail Smith, and Ben Kujawski. The soundtrack was recorded live at Shapeshifters Cinema in Oakland California, and the title of the piece was decided by Craig Baldwin before a live audience at Other Cinema the night before. Audio featured on K/S/R's ultra-full-length album "Desert Crawl", released by the PHYSICAL media imprint.
Thalassophobia
Kit Young, USA, 2022, 16 minutes
Thalassophobia: the persistent and intense fear of deep bodies of water such as the sea, oceans, pools, or lakes. Crossroads Film Festival 2022 San Francisco Cinematheque Gray Area, San Francisco TanukiSpiderCat- electric cello, pedals, modular audio synthesis, field recordings. Kit Young- video synthesis, video feedback, cinema verite samples. Thalassophobia is a live performance in which the artists interact across mediums to create a work of interdisciplinary improvisation.
grain cloud atmosphere
Martin Moolhuijsen, USA, 2023, 7 minutes
New York Premiere
Many grains make a cloud. many clouds form an atmosphere. 120 meters of handpainted 35mm film were digitized as single pictures and fed into a self developed editing software that shuffles the individual images according to certain parameters such as painterly technique and color. The film is the result of one hour of improvisation with that software. Grain cloud atmosphere explores the perception of time through the eye and through the ear.
Plasforms
Valentin Sismann, France, 2023, 5 minutes
World Installation Premiere
With an average of 0.602 packages a day, I pack, repack and unpack a cyclical pile of plastics. Made by Valentin Sismann, Plasforms is an exhibition/explosion of these garbages in their motion: a cycle of openings/closures gradually transforming them into concrete and filmic material.