VAST EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM 1 – Sunday 11/14 7pm

Away From You by Andrew FisherA night away from you expressed as an abstract film.  Made using 35mm film photographs in the lights of the party, animated and distorted to form moving images.  Away From You is part of a larger project which will be released on his website soon.
Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet by Aryo Khakpour : An imaginary meeting between Tom Waits and Jesus Christ.
House Pieces by Christine Lucy Latimer : Years ago, my Mother sold her home. Hundreds of high dynamic range digital photos were taken to provide to the real estate agent for the online sale listing. The images were left on an SD card that was strangely stored and subject to environmental degradation. Disassembling each damaged, barely there high dynamic range photo into its light and dark component parts, I build a VHS cascade of house pieces (never quite reconstituting what was).
Bless You by Daniel Sweed : A music clip made from a mix of sneeze sounds, in a crazy world where COVID-19 masks come to life.
Falling Velvet by Delphine Mei : Falling Velvet, “Luo-Hong” in Chinese, originally means “Red Falling”: the term is traditionally used when women lost their virginities. But here I use it as a verb, metaphor for between zones, transiting from one stage/mind/body of being to another stage of being. “Falling” indicates a process, constantly flowing and evolving its/our forms and shapes, perceptions and roles. It is also referring to my memory of being birthed into this world, the time when I nearly died in the incubator. The moment when death and birth are Synonymous. When blessings are disguised as horrors. When multiple realities can be embraced simultaneously, as a prophecy to the future NOW. What/Who’s reality anyways? Where do we really belong? How we can all be falling gracefully into the new world that’s like a red velvet that embrace us softly?
Lairs by Emma Penaz Eisner : Lairs, layers, liars: In this poetry film, hatred insidiously supplants a couple’s love.
Ghost and Me by Francesca Pazniokas : GHOST AND ME (2020) is a surreal, animated short about the path to recovery. Through Rorschach-like images, it explores how trauma affects our minds and bodies, how we reconcile the past with the future, and the fraught role coping mechanisms play in our healing. While GHOST AND ME is a purely visual and auditory work, it was generated using verbatim text. For this project, I interviewed people recovering from eating disorders. I then took excerpts from their interviews and created a poem-like “script.” The animator, composer and I used this script to depict the inner conflict, trauma and hope that the anonymous interviewees described. What remains is a “ghost” of those interviews — a visual and auditory depiction of their journey to recovery.
Recaptcha by Heather Warren-Crow : RECAPTCHA uses abstraction in an attempt to narrate an inscrutable bodily trauma. The text of this video is a message I sent to a Canadian city police department via an online contact form. I performed this text for the voice-over while listening to my own voice at a slight delay, disrupting the fluidity of my speech and preventing me from fully owning my story.
(Screened In Person Only on 11/14 – not available online)
The Stream XI by Hiroya Sakurai
: In the man-made waterways of rice paddies, the water in nature must follow artificial rules. In that way, nature is made abstract, giving rise to a new form of beauty distinct from the natural state. The theme of this work is the liveliness of water as it follows the man-made course. In episode 11 of The Stream, I consider why water streams are created. Water flowing through waterways is necessary for the cultivation of crops. Agricultural products are mainly produced for human consumption and are sold and distributed in the marketplace, where crops are cultivated again with the profits are earned. It is the economy and the distribution of goods that create the flow of water, which circulates in society through transportation and information networks. Fields are separated by transportation networks and rivers. Waterways are laid out to transport water from rivers to farmland like blood vessels. The transportation network, which governs logistics including the distribution of agricultural products, is connected to highways and rises as a monument in a giant circle. On the highways there is a never-ending stream of vehicles traveling and circulating to maintain human society. In addition, fields are home to a diverse range of living organisms, forming ecosystems that utilize the environment created by human society. 
Battle by Hüseyin Mert Erverdi : In ‘Battle’ (2020), Shodo-Budo and abstract expressionism; eastern and western sensibilities of calligraphy and painting, put to a Zen like dynamic visual dialogue to evoke a feeling of an inner battle. ‘Battle’ also in a sense a salute to Stan Brakhage’s final film (Chinese Series), made during his own battle with cancer, by wetting a filmstrip with saliva and using his fingernail to scratch marks into the emulsion. ‘Battle’ is about the daily struggle of being in the world. It is dedicated to all the silent and not so silent battles we fought. Budo is a compound of the root bu, meaning “war”; and do meaning “path”. Do in the Japanese context is an experiential term in the sense that practice and discipline cultivated through a given art form. In reality modern Budo has no external battle or enemy, it only has an internal battle: an ego that must be fought. For many, Japanese calligraphy (Shodo) amounts to a vital part of Budo training. A spontaneous creative gesture of Shodo also has much in common with abstract expressionism, Shodo is more than mere writing, and its skilled practitioners believe that the rhythm created by the brush reveals the calligrapher’s physical and mental condition. Abstract Expressionist artists such as Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Lee Krasner, David Smith, AI Reinhardt and Mark Tobey and many others produced works that are reminiscent of calligraphy. Franz Kline especially chose to work in black and white, having been affected by the monochromatic quality of Shodo and the minimalistic aspects of Zen. Japanese artists also noticed what was taking place in abstract expressionist school and were in turn influenced by it themselves. In ‘Battle’ (2020), in order to create this dialogue, thousands of unique calligraphic images created along with the original sound design.
Absolute deafening void by Juan Carlos Reyes : Experimental short film mostly made with diverse stock material about 3 particular moments after my father’s death. An absolute bewilderment in which nothing made sense and passed quickly and abruptly without even realizing it. A second in which the experience of pain numbs the body and spirit to the point of profound alexithymia. And the third, that it is not a feeling of relief, but of deep sadness in which you realize that nothing will return to its place, and that you will never be whole again.
BOOM by Leyla Rodriguez : With a series of seven short films in all, Leyla Rodriguez composes sequences of family and identity. In many cases, penetrating autobiographical and intimate shots are assembled, developing the character of moving collages. Ahistorical, multiply ambiguous, symbolically charged images suggest narratives that are ultimately left open. In this way, the films do not generate a stringent view of time or narrative, but in a kind of endless loop form variable interpretations and possibilities of entry. The relationship between nature, culture, ‘Heimat’ and ‘dépaysement’, comes across as a superordinate and recurring principle, generating the melancholy and yearning that overlie the films.
House Without a Key by Marta Skoczeń : House Without a Key (2020, France) is a second experimental short by Marta Skoczeń, a young photographer and filmmaker living between Poland and France. It’s a visual essay on a female desire for emotional freedom. The artist uses a variety of visual and poetic means of expression to create an ambiguous atmosphere of calmness and waiting. Shot entirely in black and white on HDV cassettes, the film provokes a dialogue both with the weight of the past itself as well as its technologies.
Whisper, Rustle by Maureen Zent : Order gives way to chaos. Chaos generates ferment. Ferment spurs fecundity. Whisper, Rustle is a product of the Covid-19 pandemic, born of long walks in the forest spent memorizing poems by W.B. Yeats. Emergency measures disrupted regular patterns of human behavior and fear upended all normal interactions. The disequilibrium unsettled everyone but also brought a new understanding of the fragility of our sense of order. Whisper, Rustle depicts this cycle with animation of natural and stylized elements drawn primarily from Yeats’s poems and prose. Stop motion animated objects include sand, pebbles, flower petals, oak bark, leaves, gravel, sponges, seeds, egg shells, a rotting log.
The Onlookers by Natasa Prosenc Stearns : An incident disrupts a group of individuals. What happened? Who did it? Why is no one helping? As they are observing the event, their reality gradually turns into a nightmare. A semi-abstract visual poem about chronic uncertainty and insecurity of contemporary life.
TOUCH & PASTE by Ruxandra Mitache : my palm just waiting to melt a winter flake
Drink Some Darkness by Trevor Mowchun : A sentient patch of projected light guides us through a dark cosmic room and its three doors of life. Inspired by a poem of haunting revelation from the great Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer.
First Love by Ziyao Susan Xie : An adaptation, transformation, or simply imagination from a photo of my mom when she was in her twenties. I look at her photo when I am awake, and meet her in my dream.

 

VAST EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM 2 – Sunday 11/14 7pm

Cognition Solstice by Adam Holoubek : “Cognition Solstice” is an essay film combining videos and still photography from a variety of locations including New York City, Versailles, Bangkok, Yemen, Redwoods, Santa Monica, and The Faroe Islands. The film incorporates various recordings including conversations, rhythmic sounds of breath, hands rubbing, and voiceover with text. The actual poem “Cognition Solstice” is not revealed until later in the film and tells the story of meeting yourself as a child on a beach after walking thru an abandoned seaside town.
Sometimes at Night by Hanna Ojala : Dreams are a nightmare.
Jala Suite : deep air by Jing Wang, Harvey Goldman : Water. Mother of mothers, permeating our primordial oceanic memory, pulsating through the texture of our being. We are the brine fraught tear drops swirling through the sonic harmonies of the sea. The pulverizing water and the breathless wind, surrendering to the rhythmic pull of moon and sun. Awakening on a wondrous, inexhaustible wave of time. The deep unknown, pulling us under, spewing us out, as we wobble through the slender slit of now. The “visual music” collaborations of Jing Wang and Harvey Goldman attempt to produce a synesthesia like experience. The audience is encouraged to “see” the music and “hear” the visuals. The imagery and audio components are constructed without hierarchy, a true melding of sound and image.
Silver by Johann Calderón : “Silver“ is a non-narrative abstract short video. A mix of film footage and animation, which has been digitally alienated and abstracted from the original and dramatized with a sound collage. The major thoughts that flowed in for the visualization, is the idea of a flicker of electrical discharges and a gloomy representation of a nocturnal bombing. The video is inspired by the poem “Silver” by Walter de la Mare and a dark interpretation of it.
A Day In The Life Of Frusnuggels Penk by Johann Calderón : A Day in the Life of Frusnuggels Penk“ is a non-narrative 8:45 minutes experimental / music short video. It is a mix of video footage and animation, which has been digitally alienated and partly abstracted from the original and dramatized with a sound collage. The video is divided into four parts, each representing a time segment of a late winter’s day in the life of a young man in Vancouver, Canada.
601 Revir Drive by Josh Weissbach : A series of spatial limits are defined while a maker imbibes. Interdependence is inherited after a substance cannot be shook. An animal carefully guards an outlined space as a river runs backwards.
Cities of Ladies 2 (YOU) by Kim Noce : Cities of Ladies” is an immersive poetic animation documentary trilogycreated through multi-disciplinary art practices to foster hope, change and promote self-development; through the exploration and recognition of personal views and ideologies. The trilogy comprises of 3 short film Cities of Ladies 1 (WE) Flat Screen Cities of Ladies 2 (YOU) 360 VR Cities of Ladies 3 (I) 360 VR Inspired by “The Book of the City of Ladies” by Christine de Pizan (1364 – c. 1430), the film has been created in two formats: one in traditional flat screen and the other in 360 monoscopic. The film has a total of three versions. One flat screen version and two 360 versions. Each version captures a different stage of the process of thinking, making, watching and feeling the collection of voices, sharing their thoughts about today’s world. Cities of ladies was produced with support from Arts Council England’s Emergency Response Fund, Animate Projects Arts, in association with QUAD Derby and Phoenix, Leicester.
The Curve of the Earth by Lorenzo Benitez : Nearly four years after befriending on Facebook someone with the exact same name as him, Lorenzo Benitez ventures to South America to meet the friend he had come to know in writing, but had yet to meet in-person. Over the course of a few weeks in August 2018, what began in jest evolves in sincerity as the two appraise the surprising significance of their serendipitous friendship.
Collage 37 by Luis Carlos Rodríguez : Audiovisual intervention on the film in the public domain: DEMENTIA (Daugther of Horror) by John Parker (1955). Collage 37 is part of a research process in Audiovisual Arts where we try to explore the structural, formal and rhythmic relationships as generators and regenerators of their own meaning and vehicle for a new production of aesthetic experiences. In our work we intervene and construct spatial and temporal variations on scenes from mythical cinema films that have passed into the public domain. We modify, alter and intensify its previous meanings, modifying its significant formal elements. amplifying or varying its narrative value and its structural order and generating a new audiovisual gear.
matriarch by Martin Krafft : How do I mourn the death of my grandmother? This experimental documentary dives into the complexities of mourning the death of a woman who hid much of her life from her family.
For Myths and Memories by Mo Flannery : A poetic interpretation of storytelling passed on through images taken by my father as he traveled and worked through the Southern Hemisphere in the 1960’s & 70’s. Stories of personal and parallel struggles across lands and oceans.
Dirt by Helanius J. Wilkins, Roma Flowers : “Dirt”, a screendance project created in June 2020, is a collaboration between choreographer Helanius J. Wilkins with videographer Roma Flowers, and composer Andy Hasenpflug. Through the fusion of text, movement, layered visuals, and sound, this work presents a meditative exploration of identity and Blackness in a heightened time of unrest and uprisings fueled by issues of police brutality and systemic racism in America.