THURSDAY • May 29 • 2007 • 7:30 PM
PROGRAM 01: NEW YORK CITY (part 1)


 

 

Men and Women | Natalie Frigo | 2006 | 3:00 min.

Men and Women is composed of movie footage showing subjects "watching" and " and "being watched" clips. Men and Women reveals how we learn to look at women as audience and out in the world.

Natalie Frigo, a video artist residing in Brooklyn, New York, received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since graduating, her work has appeared internationally in over twenty festivals, galleries and conferences.



Rebelión en la Pulperia | Rubén Guzmán | 2006 | 2:54 min.

Rebellion at the Local Store uses the technique of the tableaux vivants to reenact Rembrandt’s The Blinding of Samson (1636 Oil on canvas 206 x 276 cm). In this tableau, the characters in the painting re-present a contemporary, regional motif to the viewer. Although the end-action performed emulates the original painting, it is re-signified by the new context.

Rubén Guzmán. Born in 1959 (Argentinean-Canadian). Media Arts curator, programmer, professor and independent film and video artist. His work has been exhibited in shows and festivals around the world.



Swamp |
Megan Cump | 2001 | 3:00

Swamp, set in the haunting Florida everglades, depicts a woman immersed in murky water. Dreamlike and disorienting, this video is punctuated by eerie buzzing and ominous noises. The figure evokes tales of Ophelia, mermaids, and B-movie swamp creatures. She is forever emerging and submerging, suggesting mutability and transformation, yet locked in the morass of this transitional state.

Megan Cump has had a solo White Room exhibition at White Columns. She has exhibited at Islip Art Museum, Hudson Clearing, ARENA Gallery, dumbo arts center, and the Bronx Museum of Art, among other venues. Outside New York she’s exhibited at Berlin Kunst Projekt, Soap Factory, TBA Exhibition Space, Chicago Project Room, Southern Exposure, Diverse Works, and Rockford Art Museum. Cump has been awarded a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency at the Woolworth Building, two C.A.A.P. grants, and attended Skowhegan.

 


SPORTS: A 12 Part History
| Robert Greene | 2005 | 13:00

SPORTS is a 12 part "history" of the social-political role and influence that organized gaming has come to have in our culture. Mixing footage we shot of George W. Bush at the 2004 Army/Navy football game in Philadelphia, a demolition derby in Maryland just months after 9/11, wrestling in a small-town in Mexico, a Prospect Park contest between football players and birds, kids playing basketball before Sunday service in North Carolina, found footage, and TV coverage of the start of the current war in Iraq, SPORTS is an attempt to get at some truths about how political, perceptual, and personal realities have come to be shaped by the Big Game. RG

Robert Greene is a videomaker and editor based in New York. His documentaries and experimental works have played in film festivals across the country, including the 1998 Hi-Mom Film Festival in Chapel Hill, NC; the 2002 New York Expo; the 2003 and 2004 New York Underground Film Festival; 2003 Rooftop Films; and the 2004 Milwaukee Underground Film Festival. SPORTS played at the 2005 Chicago Underground Film Festival.




November 22, 1963
| Natalie Frigo | 2004 | 0:26

November 22, 1963, presents the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination with JFK removed from each frame. Experience of this event was/is almost exclusively through television; interestingly, the original footage was corrupted before it was released to the public. Manipulation of the footage changes not only our experience, but the assassination-in-itself is forever altered. If this version were shown in place of the “orginal” footage, our memory of this date would be tied to Jacqueline’s ride in Dallas, not JFK’s assassination.

Natalie Frigo is a video artist residing in Brooklyn. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute. More recently Frigo was a finalist for the Whitney Independent Study Program, and has exhibited in galleries and at film festivals throughout the United States. She removes prominent historical figures from footage by cropping the films or “erasing” the figures frame-by-frame. When a figure from past footage is eliminated, such as JFK from the Zapruder film, the mediation of historical experience is uncovered.


 

First Ladies | Natalie Frigo | 2004-2005 | 1:30

First Ladies utilizes news footage originally focused on Presidents of the United States, but turned to First Ladies. The constricted view of the camera is highlighted, with footage changed only by shifting the picture frame. The hegemonic narrative advanced by the media is transferred to form a new account of history. With the composition of the film altered slightly in one direction, First Ladies addresses unnoticed alternate histories once disregarded because of implicit cultural structures.

Natalie Frigo is a video artist residing in Brooklyn. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute. More recently Frigo was a finalist for the Whitney Independent Study Program, and has exhibited in galleries and at film festivals throughout the United States. She removes prominent historical figures from footage by cropping the films or “erasing” the figures frame-by-frame. When a figure from past footage is eliminated, such as JFK from the Zapruder film, the mediation of historical experience is uncovered.


Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly’s Trapped In The Closet Synched and Played Simultaneously | Michael Bell-Smith | 2005 | 4:38 min.

R. Kelly’s 12 part R&B epic mashed inward.

Michael Bell-Smith (East Corinth, ME, 1978) holds a BA in Semiotics from Brown University, Providence, RI. Selected exhibitions include: The Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland (screening) (2006); And/Or Gallery, Dallas, TX (two person) (2006); LISTE, the Young Art Fair, Basel (2006); Vilma Gold, London (2006); Foxy Production, New York (solo) (2006); BankART, Yokohama, Japan (2006); RX Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2006); Glassbox, Paris (2006); PROJEKT 0047, Berlin (2005); Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (2005); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (2005); Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, CA (2003); University of Washington Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media, Seattle, WA (2003); Eyebeam Gallery, New York (2002). His work has been featured in Time Out New York, The New York Times and Artnet.


Elysian Fields | Rashaad Newsome | 2005 | 2:23 min.

Elysian Fields, is a study of the moment of spiritual euphoria, or "Holy Ghost," as it is expressed in the Southern Baptist faith. The gestural archive of these instances in which worshipers are literally possessed by the spirit suggests that religion can create a means of escapism. The protagonists experience a moment of intensity when they are both inside and outside their body. This estrangement is further emphasizedby the accompanying gospel sung by the Barrett Sisters. Played backwards, it adds another layer of detachment to the already isolated motions of the worshipper and the separation from any kind of knowable context. This defamiliarization offers a way to reflect on the physical language that constitutes ritual in traditional models of organized religion.

Rashaad Newsome. Born in New Orleans, LA, lives and works in NYC. His work has been exhibited at K.U.E.L., Berlin, Germany; Glassbox Gallery, Paris, France; Rush Arts Gallery, NYC; Zero Station, Portland, Maine; Veletrzni Palace, Prague, Czech Republic; Fondation Cartier, Paris, France; Fiac, Paris, France; The Film Gallery, Paris, France; The Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA. He also has been the recipient of several awards including the Franklin Furnace Grant, l'Entreprise Culturelle AIR and
Harvestworks AIR.

 


Love Songs # 2 (War Songs): “Civil”
| Art Jones | 2006 | 3:30 min.

The first of two visual poems on the US, a county at war

 

Art Jones is a well-known video artist who is planting seeds at the Studio Museum of Harlem, School of Art Institute of Chicago, and others as professor, artist and lecturer. He knows what he’s talking about. His old skool cred is as a member of media activists Not Channel Zero and working with social commentators Public Enemy.




Love Songs # 2 (War Songs): “Desert For Real” | Art Jones | 2006 | 3:17 min.

The second of two visual poems on the US, a county at war.

 

Art Jones is a well-known video artist who is planting seeds at the Studio Museum of Harlem, School of Art Institute of Chicago, and others as professor, artist and lecturer. He knows what he’s talking about. His old skool cred is as a member of media activists Not Channel Zero and working with social commentators Public Enemy.




Candy Coated Humvee |
Drew Waters | 2005 | 1:00
Oh Dude |
Drew Waters | 2005 | 1:00

Through the creation of a single iconic repetitive image Candy Coated Humvee displays the intersection between official political spin and the realities of a failing war on terror. Eternal flames in an eternal war.
Oh Dude breaks with the heroic or benevolent war narrative that commonly frames images from Iraq as they are presented to a mainstream Television audience. In displaying a segment of footage deemed too explicit or ambiguous for the daily news narrative, a clearer perception arises, a closer view of the realities of technological warfare.

Drew Waters is an Australian digital and video installation artist residing in Brooklyn, NY. As well as creating works of art he is a freelance video editor at NBC Studios in New York



60 Explosions | Jennifer Matotek | 2004 | 1:20
In a world of many explosions, here are just 60.

Jennifer Matotek is an emerging curator, interdisciplinary artist, and videomaker whose work has been shown across North America in galleries and film and video festivals such as the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the New York Underground Film Festival, and Cinematexas.


untitled. (an animation suite) | John Richey | 2004 | 3:21

A collection of generic figures vacantly ‘practice’ choreographies of fear. Stark white bodies with slow and deliberate movements crouch and shield their heads, dive for cover, or roll across screen all against an ominous black void. Multiple figures collide/embrace a billowing white form. A simple and repetitive ‘I’m safe’ is implied in order to simultaneously question/re-enforce notions of safety and stability. A figure enters from the left, approaches a pile of something, slowly digs in, and deliberately buries his head inside.

John Richey is a cross-disciplinary artist who creates intimate works about the paradoxical situations of fear and control. He received a BFA from The University of Arizona in 2001 and a MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2004. His animations have been exhibited nationally and internationally and were mentioned in the “Best of 2004” issue of ARTFORUM International. Richey currently resides in Brooklyn, NY and is the Head Preparator at Greene Naftali Gallery.

 


SHORT DOCUMENTARY ON FAMOUS ARTISTS:
CHRISTO'S VALLEY CURTAIN | Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Ellen Hovde | 1974 | 28 minutes

Recipient of an Academy Award Nomination, CHRISTO'S VALLEY CURTAIN celebrates the dramatic hanging of a huge orange curtain between two Colorado mountains and the powerful effect it has on a community.

 

 

THURSDAY • June 7 • 2007 • 7:30 PM
PROGRAM 02: NEW YORK CITY (part 2)




SPECIAL: A LEGENDARY ARTISTS FILM:
Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go)
| Fischli/ Weiss | Switzerland 1987 | 30 min

A film about a precisely calculated chain reaction
Inside a warehouse, a precarious 70-100 feet long structure has been constructed using various items. When this is set in motion, a chain reaction ensues. Fire, water, law of gravity as well as chemistry determine the life-cycle of objects - of things. It brings about a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, improbability and precision.

 

FISCHLI / WEISS (US/CH) is a world famous duo conceptual artists


Black Pyramid | Bec Stupac | 2006 | 3:00 min.

A fantasy film with mystical creatures in trance, energy is seeping out of their bodies.

Bec Stupak is an artist living and working in New York City, and is also the founding member of Honeygun Labs, an experimental video project that after a few years blossomed into a collaborative effort that at any given time had several people creating and experimenting with different styles and techniques.

 

Learning Stalls: Lesson Plans | Torsten Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin | 2005 | 6:00 min.

Learning Stalls: Lesson Plans
Strange science: spoon-bending, psychic surgery, object formation, image synthesis.

Torsten Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin began their collaborations in the video and sculpture programs at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University, where they both received their BFAs, 1990 and 1992 respectively. Burns was born in 1968 and received his an MFA in video and performance from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993. Martin was born in 1969 and received an MFA in media and sculpture from The University of California, San Diego in 2000. Together, they have based their single channel videotapes, curations and current performance works on their research into diverse speculative fictions including reimagined educational practices, cryptozoological musical productions, and transhumanist sexuality recontructions. They have jointly participated in a residency at Eyebeam in New York City. In 2003, Electronic Arts Intermix commissioned their net art project, which can be found at www.eai.org/lessons.
Selected videotapes are distributed by VTAPE, Canada; Recontres Internationale, France; and Video Data Bank, USA. Videotapes have screened at venues including The Museum of Art and Design (NY), Scanners: The New York Video Festival, The New York Underground Film Festival, The Chicago Underground Film Festival, Cinematexas, Pacific Film Archive (CA), Aurora Picture Show (TX), Madrid Museum of Contemporary Art (Spain), Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art (FL), Recontres Internationale, (Paris/Berlin), and the 50th Edition of Oberhausen Short Film and Video Festival (Germany). They most recently presented their work in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California’s Transformations 3: Fiction Science conference.
Both artists also have exhibited and screened other collaborations and solo projects extensively in a variety of national and international venues. Burns is a visiting associate professor at KyungSung University in Pusan, South Korea. Martin is an assistant professor at UC Davis.

MEET THE MAKER: Torsten Zenas Burns is Guest Prof at Kyungsung University and will be present at the screening!!!

 

Lo-Fi Green Sigh | Kristin Lucas | 2004 | 2:20 min.Lo-Fi Green Sigh | Kristin Lucas | 2004 | 2:20 min.

Shot on location at Biosphere 2 and in the surrounding Arizona desert, Lo-Fi Green Sigh is a playful pastiche of science fiction movie conventions, scored to ominous electronic drones. Residents of an imagined society don makeshift space-suits and play badminton among the cacti, while Lucas scans the electromagnetic spectrum with a vegetable steamer. Lo-Fi Green Sigh merges B-movie science and science fiction, with echoes of Roswell, alien life, and extra-terrestrial feedback. Synopsis courtesy of EAI.

Kristin Lucas investigates visions of future from previous decades, the physical and psychological effects of an accumulation of rapid spread, flash-in-the-pan technology, and the impact of the digital medium on perceptions of time and space. Her video, performance, installation and internet works are distributed by EAI and Postmasters in New York. Lucas received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 1994 and her MFA from Stanford University in 2006.


Science’s Ten Most Beautiful Experiments: [#2 ) Galileo’s Experiment on Falling Objects | Jeanne Liotta | 2006 | 2:00 min.

The first real experimentalist was Galileo, who supposedly dropped a feather and a hammer simultaneously from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in order to prove by demonstration that the two would hit the ground at the same time. Approx. 400 years later that trick still works. (courtesy & sincerity, NASA 1971.)

Jeanne Liotta lives and works in New York City where she makes films and other ephemera. She also teaches widely and variously, including The New School , Pratt , The San Francisco Art Institute, and The Museum School in Boston and the Bard MFA program .Her latest project, Observando el Cielo' consists largely of 16mm field recordings of the night sky, and spans a constellation of mediums in an Emersonian framework at the intersection of art, science, and natural philosophy.

 

 

Blew Line | Ken Solomon | 2006 | 5:00 min.

The Blew Line video presents the process of photographing all of the red horizontal lines that I encountered over the course of a year. This daily obsession to gather data results in images of every day, universal mundane visual details united together by the “same” horizontal red line. It creates a harmony and relationship with totally unrelated elements- such as a snickers bar, with a Sol Lewitt painting with a row of kitchy bar stools.

 



 


Read My Lips | Stephanie Lempert | 2:00 min.

Read My Lips is a video piece which addresses the role of language as a method of communication. I worked with speech pathologist Beatrice Dulgarian to decipher the words being “spoken” by each fish. By using a speech pathologist to “read” the fish’s lips, I draw attention to the use of language and interpretation within our society.

Stephanie Lempert was born in Dallas, Texas. She received here B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work exists in a wide variety of media including sculpture, photography and video. Her work has been exhibited domestically and internationally at places such as Socrates Sculpture Park, Weisspollack Gallery, The Moscow World Fine Art Fair, and The 2006 New York Video Festival. In April of 2007 the A.I.R. Gallery in New York will feature a solo show of her works.

 


Untitled (Three Revisited Fairytales) | Eileen Maxon | 2003 | 3:35 min.

Aurora picks more than berries, Lady gets a new reputation, and Cinderella meets 90210.

Eileen Maxson drowns in white walls and cable television, emerging on occasion to press record. Selected screenings and exhibitions include the New York Underground Film Festival, New York. Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto; Aurora Picture Show, Houston; Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Portland, Oregon; The Dallas Museum of Art, and Cinematexas International Film Festival. She is the recipient of grants from The Artadia Award, The Dallas Museum of Art, the Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris County, and the Austin Film Society.

 

 


Untitled (Rambo)
| Rä die Martino | 2003 | 06:00 min.

Rambo, the character, is embroiled in a series of failed attempts to stop all war. The American icon becomes a parody of himself when seen in the context of silent cinema, his words replaced by affected inter-titles and his actions underscored by a clunky and obsessive piano piece. Famous world-wide, the original expensive production is completely destabilized by using little devices. Extrapolating bits of sequences from the original Rambo II film and then re-editing and manipulating them so that everything becomes completely different.
Rä di Martino was born in Rome in 1975 and she lived in London since 1997 where she graduated with an MFA at the Slade School of Art. In 2004 she moved to New York with a research grant award at Columbia University.



Coin Toss | Matthew Garrison | 2006 | 3:46 min.

Coin Toss connects a game of chance to ideas of fate and conflict by spinning silhouetted coins against a red background of archival war footage. The color red connects the imagery to violence and a state of emergency, while the choreographed coins represent players navigating a violent past. The game also draws attention to the polarization of conceptual and political issues within a system of heads or tails. The emotional cost of war is acknowledged in Coin Toss through wartime anonymity, intense color and the use of essential forms.

Matthew Garrison is a professor of Digital Art at Hunter College, NYC, and Albright College, Reading, PA. He received his MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Selected exhibitions include the Roger Smith Lab Gallery in Manhattan, The University of Wisconsin’s Foster Gallery and the Waterfront Center for the Arts in Belfast, Ireland.


 

The Frequency Of The Sun | Jason Boughton | 2005 | 10:00 min.

An American paratrooper tries to describe a firefight twice, but becomes confused; a confusion of places (Iraq, Kansas, London), times (1941, 1991, the present) and ways to die.
A gradual collage of Hollywood panorama, propaganda footage and combat reporting, The Frequency of the Sun plays a quotation game which is never fully resolved, tells a joke but the punch line is never entirely spoken. Performing a series of violent displacements of intention between mourning and celebration, the sky and the ground, Frequency is an exploration of the horizon line as the structuring element of American violence – an unreachable end-point, the boundless space which seems to verify a god-like power.

Boughton was born and raised in Washington State. He studied Literature and Studio Arts at The Evergreen State College. Now he lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is a MFA candidate in Visual Art at Columbia.


 


Temper Tantrum | John Richey | 2006 | 1:00 min.

A temper tantrum is an unplanned, unintentional expression of anger, often with physical and verbal outbursts; it is not an act to get attention, as is commonly thought. During a temper tantrum, children typically cry, yell, and flail their arms and legs. Temper tantrums usually last 30 seconds to 2 minutes and are most intense at the onset.
In Richey's characters, the outburst carries everything and nothing - A universe of emotions and yet, nothing but a tiny glitch. (C.S.)

John Richey is a cross-disciplinary artist who creates intimate works about the paradoxical situations of fear and control. He received a BFA from The University of Arizona in 2001 and a MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2004. His animations have been exhibited nationally and internationally and were mentioned in the “Best of 2004” issue of ARTFORUM International. Richey currently resides in Brooklyn, NY and is the Head Preparator at Greene Naftali Gallery.

 


 

Boxes, Jesus and Sandwiches | Jennifer Matotek | 2004 | 2:20

I found this bitchin’ doomsday cult recording from the 1980s, and thought about the 80s, and the whole weird conservative thing that was happening then, which is happening now… and then I thought, “fuck it – let's throw some stuff together.”
Jennifer Matotek is an emerging curator, interdisciplinary artist, and videomaker whose work has been shown across North America in galleries and film and video festivals such as the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the New York Underground Film Festival, and Cinematexas.

 

 



 

THURSDAY • June 14 2007 • 7:30 PM
PROGRAM 01: MEXICO CITY

 

Yepa Yepa Yepa | Miguel Calderón | 2002 | 4:23 min.

Yepa, Yepa, Yepa! is an eclectic music video for Mexico City musician Silverio, known for his cutting-edge performance-based electronic rock music, filmed at the infamous Patrick Miller transvestite night club in Mexico City. Calderón is the co-founder of La Panaderia, an alternative art space in Mexico City.

Miguel Calderón (Mexico City, 1971) is a video and installation artist whose work has been exhibited in Mexico and abroad, including at the Museo Rufino Tamayo, La Panadería and the Diego Rivera Gallery in Mexico, the San Francisco Art Institute and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. He both curates and writes about art. Calderón has a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.


VS [versus] | Demián Flores/Orlando Jiménez | 2005 | 8:00 min. (excerpt)

Starring Blue Panther, Hijo del Santo, VS is a conglomeration of short videos that originate from the evidencing of the sport-spectacle of “lucha libre”, its identity, theatricality, aesthetics, etc. The structure of these videos is based in repetition, in the multiple, the interminable, in a time-space game.


Microftalmia | Andrea Robles/Adriana Bravo | 2005 | 5:45 min.
This animation dives into the daily world of Benjamin. The sound track was constructed based on his emotional states. It¢s made by sounds produced by himself and by sounds that fascinate him. The images in this work are an attempt to interpret Benjamin¢s perceptions and sensations.

Andrea Robles (Mexico City 1976) obtained a bachelor degree on Visual Communication on 1999. In 2001 she formed the collaboration group dobleA (doubleA) together with Adriana Bravo. In 2002 Robles she created Mirada pérdida (Lost sight). The piece is an animation done with objects. She conceives the work Anatomy of a Moth on 2004. During the same year she received the stipendium Young Creators 2004-2005 from Arts and Culture National Fund. Within this period Robles produces Microftalmía (Microphthalmia), an experimental animation of oil drawings on glass.

Adriana Bravo. She was born on December 9th, 1972 in La Paz Bolivia. She obtained a bachelor in Fine Arts with a major in painting. In 2000 she moves to Mexico City to study an MFA at San Carlos Academy at the National University
of Mexico. In 2002 she ventures into the moving image area with the animation Lost Sight which marks the beginning of
her work in video and animation. In 2003 she creates the animation Anatomy of a Moth. This work was shown at Video Brasil, Interfilm Berlin, Mex Parismental Festival, Paris. It was also shown at the Antimatter festival 2005 in Victoria Canada. It was included in the section Foreign Matter: Mexican Experimental Videos Latest Trends. In 2005 she produces Microftalmía, an experimental animation of oil drawings on crystal.



Ciudad Moderna | Terence Gower | 2004 | 6:30
Shown as a digital video projection, Terence Gower's Ciudad Moderna is a composite of clips taken from a popular Mexican Film released in 1966. The source film, Despedida de Casada (Dir. Juan de Orduña), is treated as a document of the contemporary city, and is re-edited to show off the architecture. Clips from the original film are interspersed with single frames which each capture an image of the architecture in pristine black and white, or dissolve to a perspective rendering like illustrations from an architectural monograph.

Terence Gower is a Canadian artist living and working between New York City and Mexico City. He works primarily with strategies of representation in modernist architecture, with a special focus on Mexican Modernism. He has exhibited his installations and videos in museums, galleries and public sites in Europe, Latin America, the US and Canada. His most recent book, Appendices, Illustrations & Notes was published by Smart Art Press, Los Angeles in 1999.



Parálisis | Gabriel Acevedo Velarde | 2005 | 2:15 min.
A large sequence of geometrically shaped shrubs is shown in a very fast edition, interrupted by regular streets shots of the same shrubs crazily shaking their leaves. The humorous result tends to hide the meanings of this hysterical joke, shot in Mexico City’s typical middle-class neighborhoods.

Gabriel Acevedo Velarde (Lima, Perú, 1976) works mainly in animation and video. After studying Fine Arts and working in film production in Mexico City, his work has been shown in different art spaces as well as video festivals, like in Museo Carrillo Gil (Mexico), Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS, Mexico), Festival de Arte Electronica VideoBrasil (Sao Paulo), Galerie Adler (Frankfurt), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucarest), Centre pour l’Image Contemporain (Geneve), among others. Currently he lives in Sao Paulo and Mexico City.


Saida, Asra | Graciela Fuentes | 2006 | 3:20 min.
This video attempts to reflect on the construction of subjectivity through performative acts. It focuses on two young girls as they dance during a family event in Egypt. Employing a formal strategy of visual isolation their body language becomes accentuated, revealing the tension between self-awareness and self-absorption. In their performance the girls awkwardly alternate from adult-like seductive gestures to childish jostling among themselves. By focusing on the singularities of the represented subjects the work transcends its cultural specificity to question notions of girlhood, sexuality and identity formation.

Born in 1975 in Monterrey, Mexico. Her practice includes installation, photograpy and video work that questions notions of geopolitics and cultural identities in the current global landscape. Fuentes recently completed the Whitney Independent Study Program. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions in New York, Mexico, Portugal and Puerto Rico and in group shows in venues such as Stux Gallery, The Queens Museum, The Chelsea Art Museum, Smack Mellon, El Museo del Barrio, Exit Art,among others. She has received three grants from the National Council for Culture and the Arts in Mexico (CONACULTA) and was a 2005 Visual Arts Grant recipient from Fundación Marcelino Botín.


Escenario | Gabriel Acevedo Velarde | 2004 | 3:00 min.

This black & white animation depicts a group of little characters doing a strange and endless ritual in the middle of the mountains: one by one, they go up on a stage, where the shine of a strong spot light makes them pass over. After that, they recover among the audience, waiting for the next turn to climb back up to the stage.

Gabriel Acevedo Velarde (Lima, Perú, 1976) works mainly in animation and video. After studying Fine Arts and working in film production in Mexico City, his work has been shown in different art spaces as well as video festivals, like in Museo Carrillo Gil (Mexico), Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS, Mexico), Festival de Arte Electronica VideoBrasil (Sao Paulo), Galerie Adler (Frankfurt), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucarest), Centre pour l’Image Contemporain (Geneve), among others. Currently he lives in Sao Paulo and Mexico City.



El Legado de Mc Gava | Paulina Lasa | 2003 | 5:44 min.
MC Gava teaches his famous dance steps to a person who teaches them to someone else after. We see the same thing happening subsecuentely until the ninth person, that learns a series of steps that have very little to do with the original ones. It works like the telephone game in which information is modified in the process of sharing it.

Paulina Lasa graduated from visual arts by the art departmen of UNAM in Mexico City. Her work has been shown individually and collectivelly in shows like: "Declaraciones", curated by Guillermo Santamarina at Reina Sofía, Madrid; "A place in time", curated by Claudia Arozqueta at Camp Street, San Antonio; "Free Trade", curated by Outpost for Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; "Dadapsicodeli", curated by Xavier Rodríguez at X-Teresa museum; "Pregúntale a Alicia", a site specific project at La Torre de los Vientos, Mexico City. Has been granted by the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture-UNESCO 2005, FONCA-CONACULTA 2005-2006, Fulbright-García Robles 2007-2009 and achieved the best documentary award by AluCine Film Festival 2006.

 



 

Crack, Line, Twig, Hole, Universe | Mauricio Alejo | 2002 - 2004 | 5:00

Starting with the compositive elements related to the still image, these videos function on two levels, visual and semantic, translating purely formal issues –enhanced by texture and volume- into emotionally charged images. Works such as Crack and Hole bring to mind not only the instability of the image and the trick of perception, but also make one reflect on more complex and abstract themes, such as the vulnerability of the human condition. —Paola Santoscoy.

Mauricio Alejo. Fulbright Grant 2000 2002. Master in Arts for New York University 2000 2002. He has held solo shows in Mexico City, Toronto, Kyoto. Paris, and New York. His work has been featured at VIII La Havana Biennial and Paris Photo 2003, Triennal Poligrafica de San Juan de Puerto Rico among others international shows. Lives in México City and New York.

 

 

SPECIAL: SHORT DOCUMENTARY ON FAMOUS ARTISTS:
ART 21: Gabriel Orozco | PBS Series | 2002 | 25 minutes

Gabriel Orozco was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico in 1962 and studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arte Plasticas in Mexico City, and at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain. An avid traveler, Gabriel Orozco uses the urban landscape and the everyday objects found within it to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination of the viewer. Orozco’s interest in complex geometry and mapping find expression in works like the patterned human skull of "Black Kites", the curvilinear logic of "Oval Billiard Table", and the extended playing field of the chessboard in "Horses Running Endlessly". He considers philosophical problems, such as the concept of infinity, and evokes them in humble moments, as in the photograph "Pinched Ball", which depicts a deflated soccer ball filled with water. Matching his passion for political engagement with the poetry of chance encounters, Orozco’s photographs, sculptures, and installations propose a distinctive model for the ways in which artists can affect the world with their work. Orozco was featured at Documenta XI (2002), where his sensuous terra-cotta works explored the elegance and logic of traditional ceramics—a pointed commentary on Mexican craft and its place in a ‘high art’ gallery space. Orozco has shown his work at distinguished venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Venice Biennale. A major retrospective of Orozco’s work was assembled at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2000, and traveled to the Museo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterey, Mexico. Gabriel Orozco lives and works in New York, Paris, and Mexico City.