FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
hello@vastlab.org · vastlab.org
VLX 7.5: VASTLAB EXPERIMENTAL BRINGS A NIGHT OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND LIVE SCORE TO ELASTIC ARTS
Eleven short films from nine countries, paired with live score, land in Avondale on Friday, July 31 — a counter-program to Lollapalooza weekend.
CHICAGO — VASTLAB, the Los Angeles-based experimental film non-profit, will present VLX 7.5 at Elastic Arts on Friday, July 31, 2026. The 150-seat program features eleven short experimental films from nine countries, paired with a live score performed to experimental film in real time. Doors at 8:00 PM.
VLX 7.5 is the headline night of VASTLAB’s two-night Chicago transmission — the second movement of its seventh annual program. The previous night, VLX 7.4, runs Wednesday, July 29 at Material gallery in Roscoe Village. Both nights are deliberately counter-programmed against Lollapalooza weekend, which fills Chicago’s lakefront with more than 100,000 attendees.
“Chicago has a deep experimental tradition that doesn’t always get the same lakefront attention,” said Daniel Bates, VASTLAB founder. “Elastic Arts has spent more than 25 years building space for work the dominant institutions won’t touch. That’s the room this program needs.”
THE PROGRAM
VLX 7.5 features the following eleven films, ordered by runtime, totaling approximately 70 minutes of programming plus LIVEscore by NIREUS:
Whispers (dir. Yu Yan, United States, 2:31) — A peep-hole visual meditation on the deteriorating colossal presidential heads of Virginia, paired with whispered visitor recordings. Yu Yan is a 2025 Emerging Artists in New Mexico Award recipient and Harvard GSD alumna based in Santa Fe.
Dream Sequence: Stasis (dir. Adam E. Stone, United States, 2:40) — A nonverbal film about dissociation, dreams, and memory, filmed across New Taipei City, Osaka, Sapporo, and the United States. Stone’s work has screened at over 250 international festivals.
Vision (dir. Susanne Layla Petersen, Denmark, 4:00) — A reflection on AI’s influence, created in dialogue and collaboration with AI tools. Petersen is a Copenhagen-based interdisciplinary artist whose work has shown at On Art Film Festival, FilmArte Festival Berlin, CICA Museum, and the LA Art Show.
Repertoire of Death (dir. Guadalupe Arellanes, United States, 5:35) — A 16mm lucid dream in which the filmmaker dances with Death, blending found sound with rarely-heard music from the personal archives of Yma Sumac. By a Latina filmmaker based in Los Angeles.
Algorithmic Nudes Grapple with Entropy (dir. David R. Witzling, United States, 5:45) — A latent-space animation built across multiple Stable Diffusion passes over three years, set to granular-synthesis sound and field-recorded cicadas. Witzling teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Because it never changes (dir. Martyna Lebryk, Ireland / Poland, 6:30) — An exploration of how truth flattens and reality performs itself in contemporary life. Lebryk is a multimedia artist born in Poland, working between Dublin and Berlin.
Hawthorn (dir. Mina Bahra, Canada / Iran, 6:48) — A quiet meditation on diaspora and memory, tracing a single hawthorn tree from the filmmaker’s hometown in Iran to her current home in Montreal. Bahra is currently pursuing a master’s in cinema at the University of Montreal.
déjà morts / already dead (dir. Ghada Sayegh, Lebanon, 7:28) — A still-image film of Beirut’s EDL building photographed after the 2020 port explosion, drawing from the filmmaker’s poetic project The End of the World Has Already Occurred. Sayegh is associate professor at the Institute for Theater, Audiovisual and Cinematic studies, Saint Joseph University of Beirut.
Augmented (dir. Raymond (Ray) Rea, United States, 8:27) — Shot entirely on 16mm, an experimental documentary examining the language gap between medical augmentation and transgender alignment. Rea’s work has screened at Frameline, BFI London, Outfest, Inside Out Toronto, and the Hamburg LGBT Film Festival.
Polychora (dir. Abinadi Meza, Mexico, 8:53) — Waves and strands of time, light, and color in a prismatic living field, combining handmade 16mm with digital processing. Meza is a Latinx-Indigenous (Otomí, México) filmmaker based in Austin whose work has shown at the American Academy in Rome, the Walker Art Center, MAXXI, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and Wexner Center for the Arts.
Rectangle Boundary (dir. Enzo Cillo, Italy, 10:00) — An exploration of the image and its spatial boundaries, deconstructing the perimeter as a static element to reveal dynamic shifts along the edges of a rectangular structure. Cillo is a Rome-based new media artist.
VLX7 LIVEscore — NIREUS
The night features a LIVEscore performance by Nireus — violist and researcher T. Clara Takarabe with composer, synthesist, and multi-instrumentalist H. Anton Riehl. Rooted in classical music with ties to electronic and experimental practice, their cinematic work carries traces of Palestrina and Shostakovich, Penderecki and Tan Dun, and the music of medieval Andalusia. As part of VLX7, Nireus performs live to experimental film, scoring moving image in real time.
Nireus: nireus.bandcamp.com · @nireusofficial
ABOUT VLX
VLX (VASTLAB Experimental) is a creative collaborative based in Los Angeles, building community through experimental visual, audio, story, and technology arts. The 2026 annual program (VLX 7) unfolds across seven shows in three movements — three Los Angeles dates in March, two Chicago dates in July, and two additional fall programs in Raleigh to be announced.
ABOUT ELASTIC ARTS
Elastic Arts is a 501(c)(3) Chicago non-profit founded in 1998, supporting musicians, artists, performers, and audiences in the Avondale/Logan Square neighborhood. The organization has presented more than 3,000 events across music, multidisciplinary performance, theater, literature, exhibition, and film — establishing itself as a leader among grassroots experimental arts venues in Chicago and internationally.
EVENT DETAILS
Event: VLX 7.5 — VASTLAB Experimental, Night Two
Date: Friday, July 31, 2026
Doors: 8:00 PM
Venue: Elastic Arts · 3429 W. Diversey Avenue, #208 · Chicago, IL 60647
Capacity: 150 seats
Program: 11 short experimental films from 9 countries (~70 min runtime) + live score
RSVP / Tickets: hello@vastlab.org
More info: vastlab.org
RSVP is free at vastlab.org. Pay what you can at the door, suggested $15–25, no one turned away.