Cinematic Chimera presents works that strive for a radical synthesis of artistic genres, reviving the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork. United by their integration of theater, dance, music, architecture, literature, and visual art, these films also realize the Gesamtkustwerk’s technological imperative by making use of advanced cinematic techniques.
Main Image: Film still from Russian Ark.
Produced in part during Laurie Anderson's multiple residencies at EMPAC last year, Delusion is a meditation on life and language by way of music, video, and storytelling. Conceived as a series of short mystery plays, Delusion jump-cuts between the everyday and the mythic. Employing violin, electronic puppetry, music, visuals, altered voices, and imaginary guests, Anderson weaves a complex story about longing, memory, and identity. At its heart is the pleasure of language and a fear that the world is made entirely of words. Delusion tells its story in the colorful and poetic language that has become Anderson's trademark.
Live Shorts is a series of performances for the stage commissioned for Filament. Invited artists were asked to create a performance for a specific period of time under 20 minutes that made use of the following constraints: a 20’ x 30’ stage, with the possibility of using only one screen, one projector, and a sound system. Standing in contrast to EMPAC’s typical embrace of flexibility and open-ended possibility, these create a platform for working within a specific structure. The result is a varied and vigorous set of short works created by a range of artists, from performers in the worlds of contemporary theater and dance, to experimental and electronic musicians, to visual artists whose work is typically exhibited in museums and galleries, all sharing the same stage and set of technical parameters. The interstitial space between performances is activated by dynamic lighting design by Wingspace Theatrical Design.
Act Curtain — Like the grand drapes of the great old theater houses, this installation transfers the audience's attention from the performance area to the auditorium during the interstitial moments between performances. Using the medium of light, it animates the whole of the theater architecture through both space and time. ACT CURTAIN was conceived and installed by Scott Bolman, Zane Pihlstrom and Lee Savage of Wingspace Theatrical Design. Wingspace is a Brooklyn-based collective of artists, designers, writers, and thinkers committed to the practice of collaboration in theatrical design. Wingspace has created lighting environments for numerous projects at the Old American Can Factory, including the 2009 Beaux-Arts Ball for the Architecture League of New York. Wingspace members have collaborated with artists such as Robert Wilson, Isaac Mizrahi, the Kronos Quartet, Shen Wei Dance Arts and the Grammy-nominated Lila Downs. Their work has been appeared at the Roundabout, the Public Theater, Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Alliance Theater, Baltimore Centerstage, the Old Globe, the Shakespeare Theater and the Guggenheim Museum as well as internationally at venues in Canada, Ireland, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and South Korea. In addition to creating dynamic work of their own, Wingspace co-produces a salon series with XO Projects. Each salon brings featured artists together with the broader performance community for open-ended discussions of vital issues in contemporary theatrical design.
Sheepspace (SUE-C & Laetitia Sonami) — Sheepspace is a live film inspired by the writings of Haruki Murakami. Adapted from the Sheep Man character in Dance, Dance, Dance and The Wild Sheep Chase, the film is brought to life through the manipulation and projection of photographs, drawings, scale models and various three dimensional objects, along with the processing and amplification of electronic music, nostalgic songs, and field recordings. The artists draw from their palette of a suitcase-sized animation booth, miniature televisions, a train-propelled camera, motors, sensors, flash bulbs, and talking lamps to blur the boundaries of the real world and the cinema world. It is up to the audience to determine where dreams end and reality begins.
Intervention #2 (Created by Wally Cardona + a local expert) — Each Intervention is the meeting of Wally Cardona and a local specialized expert. Through their intimate encounter, they generate a new version of Cardona’s “empty solo,” designed to make itself completely available to an outside eye or opinion. The re-conceived solo is performed as a new entity. Intervention is a game leading to other games of meaning, intent, and form that can create multiple interpretations of “a dance.” It is also the first stage of development for Tool Is Loot, a collaboration between Cardona and Paris-based choreographer Jennifer Lacey.
You Don’t Know What You're Talking About (MTAA) — Internet artists M.River and T.Whid (MTAA), like you, have often wished while listening to a lecture, speech, or newscast to stand up and tell the speaker, "You don't know what you're talking about." MTAA, sitting behind a desk with two laptops and two microphones, and with a projection screen behind them that displays a timer and the text “#mtaa,” will invite the audience to start twittering. For the duration of the performance, they will read any and all texts sent to Twitter with the hash tag "#mtaa."
A Narrow Vehicle (Trouble) — Performers acting like ushers and doubling as shaman enact a cleansing ritual on the audience, which becomes a screen for projections of familiar spiritual imagery and the five elemental lights. Culminating in a performance of trance R&B saxophone meandering, a narrow vehicle brings up a promise — made by universities, militant groups, spiritual organizations, and pop culture. The promise is of freedom and self-actualization via transmutation of defiled elements, and we locate this process in (or on) each audience member. Imparting the message evokes a claustrophobic, aggressive style, but the promise is kept.
Another Circle (Jen DeNike) — Using video, performance, and sound as live ritual magic, a series of circles transforms the space into a vessel for scrying, an act of obtaining spiritual visions by peering into a reflective surface. In DeNike's video a prima ballerina in classical tutu and toe shoes performs what appears to be an infinite pirouette. The ballerina's circular movement becomes the pendulum for scrying. A live ballerina (Lucy Van Cleef) will perform abstract choreographed movements in reaction to and mirroring the video in collaboration with Rose Kallal who will perform an improvised sound accompaniment using a combination of vintage analog synth, guitar, and tape delay; her dark ambient sonic drone providing a complementary yet contrasting circular soundtrack.
AMAZINGLAND IN TROY EMagicPAC (Steve Cuiffo, Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle) — Amazingland is the second in a trilogy of theater pieces that embrace and subvert American popular entertainment. The piece is about illusion, delusion, and the role of deception in American culture. Cuiffo, Lyford, and Sobelle will enter magic contests as their illusionist personas, Louie Magic, Dennis Diamond, and Daryl Hannah, and, succeed or fail, create faux-documentary video to be integrated into performance. Their goal is to expose the pathos behind the gloss of popular Vegas-style illusion shows — and also to blow your mind out of the back of your skull with some incredible magic.
Based on the true tale of Kentucky hardware clerk Leonard Wood, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then uses live action and hand-drawn stop-motion animation to tell an inspiring, poignant, and darkly humorous love story of a man who built a bizarre and sprawling home for his wife by hand in the hope that it would cure her of terminal cancer. Accompanied by a stellar band of musicians that include Brendan Canty (Fugazi), Howe Gelb (Giant Sand), Catherine McRae, and others, Green uses intense narration ranging from quiet, vulnerable storytelling to cathartic fumes bordering on the evangelistic.
Brent Green is a storyteller, singer, songwriter, and self-taught filmmaker. Green often performs his films with live musicians, improvised soundtracks, and live narration in venues ranging from rooftops to art institutions such as the Getty Center, the Walker Art Center, the Hammer Museum, the Wexner Center for the Arts, The Kitchen, and MoMA. He lives and works in the Appalachian hills of Pennsylvania.
DANCE MOViES was a screening series showcasing short films and experimental videos made by contemporary choreographers and filmmakers.
World premieres of five new commissioned dance films chosen by an international panel; the screenings were followed by a panel discussion including the filmmakers and curator.
Hoop (Canada, 4.5 minutes) Directed by Marites Carino and performed by Rebecca Halls; floating in a black void, swinging through shafts of light, a woman keeps an incandescent and familiar circular childhood toy in perpetual motion.
Anatomy of Melancholy (US, 6.5 minutes) Directed by Nuria Fragoso; visual metaphors about space portray the melancholy that underlies contemporary society. Recursive imagery and gesture accumulate to reveal the catharsis of individuals who are faced with profound isolation in today’s communicative processes.
Quince Missing (US, 16.5 minutes) Directed and choreographed by Rajendra Serber. In this exploration of urban isolation, three strangers tracing their solitary paths through empty streets at night become locked in anonymous antagonism when trying to pass each other.
The Closer One Gets, the Less One Sees (Brazil, 10.5 minutes) Videomaker Valeria Valenzuela and choreographer Lilyen Vass collaborated on this intervention in the everyday lives of three street jugglers/beggars in Rio, which transforms the objective action of their juggling into the abstract vocabulary of contemporary dance.
MO-SO (US, 12 minute looping video installation) Directed by Kasumi; performed by Chan U Hong. Multiple video screens installed side-by-side layer film samples and a dancer’s gestures to create counterpoints of movement and image.
In Megunica filmmaker Lorenzo Fonda follows the Italian graffiti artist Blu through Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Argentina. The result is an ebullient and unscripted film, mixing animation and cinema verité, which asks broad questions about art in the urban landscape and its transformative powers. Unfiction is a series of documentary films that turn truth into something other than fact, using poetry and imagination, rather than transparency and objectivity. These filmmakers question the very notion of authenticity, and disobey the typical documentary filmmaking practices; instead they stage their own realities on location, employing techniques such as reenactment, personal voice-overs and special effects.
A woman floats in a black void, swinging through shafts of light, keeping in perpetual motion an incandescent and familiar childhood toy: the hula hoop. Carino and Halls—AKA Becca Hoops—shot footage for their DANCE MOViES Commission in residency at EMPAC. Trained in ballet and contemporary dance, Carino also has a postgraduate degree in broadcast journalism and has made several documentary films in addition to the dance films. HOOP was also commissioned by Canada’s Bravo!FACT program
This fall we bring you the onedotzero_adventures in motion festival, two nights of double feature screenings will be presented from the international touring festival which premiered in London in 2010. Curated and compiled by onedotzero, all programs explore new forms and hybrids of moving image across motion graphics, short film, animation, music videos, and more. Recommended for ages 3-11 Evelyn's Café will be open for healthy snacks and juices for the sprites screening from 10:30 AM–3 PM.
A dynamic program just for kids—the next generation of creators! This specially curated selection of shorts can be enjoyed by youngsters and parents alike.
Main Image: SPRITES 2010. Animation still courtesy onedotzero.
A video installation by Brian Alfred whose work is inspired by his interest in globalization, civil unrest, political and social opposition, and influential figures and locations. The animation features multiple soundtracks by musicians Flying Lotus, Ghislain Poirier, Roberto Carlos Lange, and many others.
Compelling narrative shorts from an eclectic range of international auteurs that pursue new visual approaches in graphic and altered alternative storytelling. whether it is expertly manipulating the latest digital technologies or skillfully breathing fresh life into familiar analogue techniques, each and every short ensures that aesthetic innovation is used to magnify the narrative for ultimate dramatic and emotive effect.