Spring 2006 - Songs, Cycles and Stories

Songs and poems linked to the rhythms of nature, the earth and its peoples have been preserved and transmitted through oral traditions for millennia.  These stories celebrate and re-imagine the complexity and diversity of generations of human experiences of life on this planet.  The films and videos in Songs, Cycles and Stories extend this practice of finding beauty and magic in everyday life and also critically engage timeless knowledge, historical references and contemporary experiences of media culture.  There is a kind of political activism in these works of personal cinema that calls into question imposed cultural conformity while preserving knowledge and documenting experiences by travelers into other dimensions and worlds.  As story-tellers, these artists experiment with relationships between sound and image and combine fictional, appropriated and documentary techniques while exploring personal identity and self-discovery within a changing world. –Patrick Clancy

April 14, 2006

Five works by Leighton Pierce (USA), video

Wood, 2000, 8 min.
“Pierce constructs an exquisite lesson in seeing and hearing, heightening the seemingly trivial and mundane into an almost painfully beautiful Whitmanesque song to the ordinary, the everyday.” –Jon Jost

Water Seeking its Level, 2002, 5:30 min.
“Dad and daughter are at the water race of an abandoned monastery.  The scene pivots on her words, ‘Look Dad.’  He IS looking while he waits for the resolution of the moment – water through her fingers.” –Leighton Pierce

Fall (three parts), 2002, 13 min.
A struggle to hold on to the world, the various worlds we try to inhabit. –Leighton Pierce

Pink Socks, 2002, 4 min.
A brief documentary on the Piazza San Marco in Venice. –Leighton Pierc

Viscera, 2004, 11:05
“This flowing video explores absence and how it transforms and influences perception, memory and imagination.” –Leighton Pierce

HEAP, a series by Ellen Zweig (USA), video
HEAP is a collection of experimental video portraits of Westerners who have studied, invented, misunderstood and loved China. –Ellen Zweig

(tongue tongue stone) G. W. Leibnitz, 2002, 9:36 min.
“Leibnitz is said to have invented binary arithmetic because of a misunderstanding of the I-Ching.” –Ellen Zweig

(The Chinese Room) John Searle, 2001, 7:30 min.
“The philosopher, John Searle, wrote about a thought experiment called The Chinese Room.  He needed a foreign language to prove his point; he chose Chinese.” –Ellen Zweig

(unsolved) Robert van Gulik, 2003, 18:03 min.
“Referring to the Dutch diplomat van Gulik’s many interests, this video is a mystery story with no resolution… and an attempt to learn to be Chinese.” –Ellen Zweig

(flick flight flimsy) Ernest Fenollosa, 2005, 9:35 min.
“A poet and a sinologist talk about Ernest Fenollosa, whose essay, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry has been an inspiration to poets and an embarrassment to sinologists.” –Ellen Zweig

April 21, 2006

Two works by Helen Mirra (USA), video
The Ballad of Myra Furrow, 1994, 5:00 min.
A young person sings a sea shanty, a social critique of traditional gender roles. –Video Data Bank

I, Bear, 1995, 5:00 min.
A personal and highly poetic exploration of the construction of self. –Video Data Bank

Three films by Matt McCormick (USA)
Grounded, 2004, 4:30 min., 16mm film shown on video
An examination of size and weight through the culmination of heavy industry, urban wildlife, a Bolex, and a Casio SK-1.
–Matt McCormick

Towlines, 2004, 22 min., 16mm film shown on video
This film pays homage to the great workhorses of the maritime industry, the tugboats. –Matt McCormick

Going to the Ocean, 2001, 8 min., 16mm film
A textured mood swing and a trip to the beach.  An examination of seaworthy vessels? –Matt McCormick

Behold Goliath by Tom Kalin (USA), video
Two short excerpts from an ongoing feature film project based on the stories of writer and critic Alfred Chester.

Every Evening Freedom, 2002, 2:45 min.
A brief visual essay on work, freedom and the division of public and private lives. –Electronic Arts Intermix

Some Desperate Crime on my Head, 2003, 2:57 min.
Text from Chester’s The Foot provides the central concern for this work:  wigs, hats and public appearance. –Electronic Arts Intermix

The Star Eaters, Peggy Ahwesh (USA), 2003, 24 min., video
Telling her story in voiceover, a woman drifts through real and remembered relationships that speak to risk-taking and transgression. –Electronic Arts Intermix

Lake, Rebecca Dolan (USA), 2000, 2 min., video
The voice behind the camera seems to animate the water. –Rebecca Dolan

April 28, 2006

Peggy and Fred in Hell, Leslie Thornton (USA), 1984 – 2005, 92 min.
       Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue, 1984, 20 min., 16mm film
       Peggy and Fred in Kansas, 1987, 10 min., video
       Peggy and Fred and Pete, 1988, 20 min., video
       (Dung Smoke Enters the Palace),1989,16 min., simultaneous 16mm film and video
       Introduction to the So-Called Duck Factory, 1990, 7 min., video
       Have a Nice Day Alone, 2001, 7 min., video
       Paradise Crushed, 2003, 12 min., video

“Forever unfinished, Thornton’s magnum opus resembles nothing else known in the cinema avant-garde; two children, Peggy and Fred, in a setting that could have been invented by an elder, pessimistic brother of Samuel Beckett, talk, dance, sing and squabble with each other as they move through the history of the 20th century.” –Bill Krohn