VAST EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM 4 – SUNDAY 11/21

An Approaching World by Andy Motz : An Approaching World is an experimental film reflecting on the journey so many queer people, take from rural to urban, from unsafe to safe, and from storm to shelter in search of liberation
ἐκπύρωσις (Ekpırosis) by Enzo Cillo : ἐκπύρωσις, Ekpırosis, “out of the fire”, in Greek philosophy is the universal conflagration or “great fire and end of the world”. The idea of the essay has been developed from these materials. The Nazi cancellation of history and the cancellation of brain memory are both actions that act on the cancellation of the individual, elimination of the image. I tried to cross these two points through an abstract flow of light. The light is the same of the Nazi fire, the burning synagogues in the night of Berlin and Dortmund, and it is also the same light as the electric shocks. “The very short passage of the electricity corresponds to a sudden muscular contraction (phase of electrical spasm), followed by epilepsy immediately or after a few moments, with a tonic phase, which lasts 10 – 20 seconds, and then, the clonic phase, announced by bilateral and symmetric clashes”. In order to remove the historical aspect of the images, I tried to rethink of them as electrical images. Nazi soldiers move around the fire, some people move in a place immersed by light, like the body of a man moving through electrical spasms. The electricity of the transmitters destroys and, at the same time, modifies and then creates. The action of light is not conceived as a way to hide the history, it is not the historical Nazi devastation, but rather an act of transmigration. The fire that destroys and the fire that generates new form through light, which is revealed and becomes an icon in the same way the image becomes coloured, when it manifests through the red colour of the flames, after the white and black of the documentation, of the historicization of the image. The question I started with is how the weight of the images can still be felt, as now, in a surplus of images, we can still see. In the end, the electroshock seems to be a cancellation of the contaminated look, an action to return to a pure image.
Wear and Tear by Jason Robinson : Allostatic load – The cumulative burden of chronic stress and life events. Super8mm. 2021.
Notes from Someone Else’s Lecture by s/n (Jennida Chase & Hassan Pitts) : A consciously playfully look at intentionality and experience at the end of all objects. The short video is a midsummer meditation on Brian Clark’s 2013 lecture “Are You Phenomenal” as a child plays in the ruins of an old building. (please note: we are willing to generate subtitles)
Interpolators by John Harlan Norris : Interpolators presents a series of animated portraits that focus on the process of constructing public persona at a time in which our likenesses have become increasingly malleable, fraught, and self-searching. In these works, signifying objects collide and disperse to build portrait subjects which appear hyper-performative yet exist in a constant state of flux. These objects, symbols, and patterns both attach and remove themselves from the human form at such a dizzying pace that they often seem to evoke unpredictable weather patterns to which the subjects must adapt. This interaction seeks to investigate the inherent contradiction between the increasing pressure for self-branding and presentation with the fluid and ever-changing experience of being a person. Ultimately, the work seeks to depict a moment in which the construction of public persona, once a rare and curious phenomenon, is now as ubiquitous, relentless, and mercurial as the weather itself.
Electric Bird by Josie Keller : The film ‘Electric Bird’ is dealing with the confusion between real life experiences and relationships, technically simulated relationships, in particular through online digital media, fueled by the desire to fit in and be popular, and giving up one’s particular identity in this quest. The film features the stop-motion puppet character ‘Edie W.’, loosely based on Andy Warhol’s Factory girl Edie Sedgwick, and is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s literary fairy tale “The Nightingale”, about a wealthy Chinese emperor who prefers a decorated mechanical bird to the gorgeous song of a natural nightingale. The film is using found poetry on the topic of disillusioned relationships read in an automatic computer voice, glitch art and experimental translation of image files to sound files. Watching Edie in her room with an infant lying on the bed, she is visibly talking, but we are unable to hear what she says. The film concludes watching her feet dancing to the Velvet Underground song “I’m Set Free (to find a new illusion)”. The film is a visual and audio allegory to the increasing alienation of human beings and absurd technology that is replacing actual meaningful communication, interaction, and contact.
WRAP MY ARMS by Marcelese Cooper : A spoken-word piece about the overwhelming need to be close and the worries such things bring. These words are draped across the frame built from live footage and animated elements.
Call Me Back by Melina Kiyomi Coumas : Originally made just for family, the filmmaker uses the last voicemail left on her phone by her Grandmother in this experimental short that becomes a meditation on loss and haunted spaces. Footage was shot on Super 8mm film one summer upon returning home to Hawaii, a few years after her Grandmother’s passing.
The Bearers of Memories by Miglė Križinauskaitė-Bernotienė : With every moment – one more memory. But memory sometimes goes blind and what is left becomes hazy.
Electric Window by Muriel Paraboni : Every day we open the house windows for the light and the sounds of the world to come in. But we soon turn our backs on them and spend most of our time immersed in the tangle of networks, browsing through virtual windows. Our perception is exhausted between countless stimuli, time and reality are confused, conditioned by the loneliness of technology.
Coincidences by Neil Ira Needleman : This is a true story. All these decades later, I still have a hard time believing that this actually happened in 1997.
Sympathy for the Devil by Rachel Gibas : The Devil is trying to turn over a new leaf, but Gretchen the bounty hunter is hot on his trail. In the end we are left wondering who pulls the strings?
Carnelian by Russell Kiel : The initial imagery in this film was recorded the last time the filmmaker saw his sister alive. By alternately sharpening and compressing the video, the imagery erodes and fades into a impressionistic wash of pixels, gesture and spirit. Featuring music by Chris Hunt, this piece serves as an ode to the dueling rhythms of memory and grief.
JUST LIKE THE FILMS by Sara N. Santos : “I always needed fiction to make sense of reality”. A cinematic image fills the void left by the death of a loved one. This is a film about loss, loneliness and the love for the movies.
you are, i am by Sibi Sekar : XX and XY find themselves struggling against oblivion, while an external entity referred to as ‘The Rose’, infringes their identities. The hows and whys are not applicable, although XX and XY claim that ‘The Rose’ distorts their understanding of the roles they’ve occupied.

 

VAST EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM 5 – SUNDAY 11/21 7pm

Stitch by Caroline Rumley (in person screening only – not online) : The English word “stitch” has vastly different meanings.
Shadow Time by Fred Hatt : A psychedelic noir in three movements Visions of moving through space with music by Andy Haas and friends. Shadowtime is defined as: A parallel timescale that follows one around throughout day to day experience of regular time. Shadowtime manifests as a feeling of living in two distinctly different temporal scales simultaneously, or acute consciousness of the possibility that the near future will be drastically different than the present. (Origin: Ranu Mukherjee, Alicia Escott, Field Study #009 Participants, California 2015) bureauoflinguisticalreality.com/portfolio/shadowtime/ Andy Haas is a veteran of the avant-garde jazz scene, a player of winds and electronics who has collaborated with a lot of big names in music. Three of Andy’s recordings, solo and with collaborators, form a trilogy of films featuring poetic psychedelic imagery of movement through space by visual artist and filmmaker Fred Hatt. Movement 1: BREATHTURN features street lights crystallized through a piece of prismatic plastic, a tesselated and quantized grid of motion. Movement 2: AMERICAN NOCTURNE is a stroll through Times Square, rendered in negative, upside down, and reverse motion, a voyage through the dark underworld beneath the shiny surfaces of the consumer culture. Movement 3: IDEA 2 juxtaposes the sparsely trafficked and sunny streets of 2020 lockdown NYC with the heavier traffic of a rainy night from the previous winter, a ghost reality recalled in forward motion.
Sidings of the Afternoon by Gina Hara : “Each age demands its own form.” – Hannes Meyer [Inspired by Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, light works by Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, and Bauhaus urban design.] “Follow my train of thought, my shifting perception of the space around me, my fleeting relationships with nature and my urban cell. Seasons passing by while I stare at the same three objects in my house. What is outside, what will we find when we emerge? How will we move on when our toxic relationship with a virus that paralyzed our urban bodies end? Scathed or unscathed? Dreams, algae, shadows, flowers and knives.” – Gina Hara What can a filmmaker do when they are locked in during a pandemic? They make a film using a computer. With the participation of game scholars and academics from the Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre, a town was built in Minecraft following the principles of Bauhaus. Just like the designers and artists of Bauhaus, we also need to rethink the way we use spaces, objects, cities. Beyond thinking about medical safety, as humans we need spaces that expand beyond our bodies’ physical circumference. Just like the light-shadow structures built by Moholy-Nagy, our inner worlds are bigger than the space our bodies take up. In Siding of the Afternoon, optimism for our future takes shape in a metaphor of see-through spaces and overlays, echoing the way our apartments expanded through videoconference windows connecting to and merging with other spaces all cross the world. The voiceover was created by data-mining the most commonly used words and expressions by the players who built the building shown in the film. It is to be enjoyed as part of the soundscape – not as informative text.
Powder Keg | The Quarries by Jasmine Dreame Wagner : Powder Keg | The Quarries is a film study of Gettysburg Quarry and Norcross-West Quarry of Dorset, Vermont. These abandoned quarries provided the marble that gave rise to the New York Public Library and the buildings of the National Mall in Washington, DC, including the Department of Justice and the Smithsonian. What is extracted in one place rises in another; there is a reciprocity between our natural resources and the culture created from them. In this piece, I documented the interaction between nature and excavation – light on the quarry walls – and used the light patterns as a visual score for vibraphone, guitar, and repurposed percussion. Land rights acknowledgement: This micro-documentary and music composition was filmed and edited on traditional Abenaki / Abénaquis, Mohican, and Wabenaki Confederacy territory.
THE SEPARATION by John Woodman : THE SEPARATION is a reflection on light, duration and transformation. Filmed in one continuous take at a constant aperture, moonlight on the sea surface is intermittently revealed and obscured by clouds, presenting a reflexive and phenomenological viewing experience. The title refers metaphorically to Genesis and could also be comprehended as a visual analogue to the cinematic apparatus itself, with consideration of the ways in which light separation occurs in both the perceptual and physical processes of representation. This film is silent.
INFUSION NO. 1 by Lauren Henschel : (2020) 3 mins, silent 3378 hi-con, hand-processed in medication, bodily fluids INFUSION NO. 1 brings consciousness around the “condition,” of residing in the temporary shelter of a body and of the impermanent and illusory concept of being well. The film is hand-processed in my own bodily fluids and medications as a visible reflection of my internal struggle with an invisible disability.
The Dark Forest by Martin Del Carpio : Genre: Videopoetry / Poetry Film A transcendental fable. “To honor the memory of his father who passed away in 2019, Martin Del Carpio opts for the medium of film once again, and delivers his most lyrical work to date. At once deeply personal, carefully veiled in a delicate fabric of pure emotions, and absolutely immersive in its dreamlike, mysterious beauty, ‘The Dark Forest’ transmutes its author’s innermost life into an admirable piece of introspective cinema. Opening with Dante Alighieri’s quote which inspired the title, it takes the viewer on a short, yet transcendent journey through the bushes of symbols and trees of thoughts, in the company of a lovely (and cunning?) forest spirit embodied by Carly Erin O’Neil whose poise and grace translate as otherworldly. The enchanting imagery that we see on our way is the result of another tight-knit collaboration between writer / director Del Carpio and DoP / editor William Murray, whereby the dense atmosphere of meditative seclusion is complemented by Dan Shaked’s ruminative voice-over and M. Nomized’s haunting score which occasionally gives off some strong ‘classic Hollywood’ vibes…” – Reviewed by Nikola Gocic
Circle of Seasons by Nan Su : This virtual reality video presents a world of beautiful scenery in four seasons. To provide the audience with an immersive experience switching between different seasons by looking around while listening to violin music, this video sets up a four-dimensional theatre environment. This experience will bring peace and relaxation to the audience by demonstrating the iconic scenery through four seasons.
Dreams Are Fabricated by Meg Chase : A commercial hype reel shredding the magic of the mechanism by which the dominant myth defends itself from deconstruction through the fabrication of dreams while simultaneously reproducing itself, duplicating, spreading, feeding, and manifesting into a structured ideology; this is a stretching of these ingredients across a digital canvas.
The Remembering Movement by Mersolis Schöne : What is the silent moment between thoughts, glances, and memories? “The Remembering Movement” thinks poetically about this moment. This film depicts an experimental and poetic film triptych: “Thinking-Chant”, “Gaze-Frame”, and “Light-Texture” based on the painting/assemblage “Poetikweltlichter” by Marion Steinfellner and the poem “Since Then” by Mersolis Schöne and Marion Steinfellner. This is connected by Michael Fischer’s soundscaping, which combines poetry and sound into a rhizomatic audio fabric triptych. Web: https://movingthought.org/media.html#Remembering
The Carnival of The Animal, Finale by See Ek Chang : ‘THE CARNIVAL of THE ANIMAL, FINALE’ is an solo project that displayed 3 minutes long animated classical orchestra titled ‘THE CARNIVAL of THE ANIMAL, FINALE’ written by Saint Sean in 1886. By using the concept of the original music piece, 11 creatures come together and perform the last piece of ‘The Carnival of The Animal’, which is finale. This project was inspired the 70’s Disney cartoon where all the characters were appeared in black and white. The whole installation was built by author himself by using cheap plank woods and mounting boards, then they were painted a coat of white paint so the projected content could be seen clearer. The whole installation plus animation content took around 7 months to complete.
Normal by Petr Nuska : “Am I normal?” Various forms of this question accompany us throughout our lives. If we don’t fit into the ‘normal’ box, the world reminds us to conform. But no matter how hard we try, there always seems to be a bit missing – or sticking out from the box. What to do then? Should we keep up our endless quest for normality, or is it better to accept that life doesn’t have to be normal? Czech singer-songwriter Petr Vořešák searches for answers to these fundamental human questions in a short music documentary based on a collaborative audio-visual experiment. People from around the world reveal a unique take on what normality means to them – from the perspective of their feet. The result of two years collecting these poetic contributions is a music film – but by no means a normal one.
Boredom Kills! by Roham Ahari : A man is unable to move beyond few blocks away from where he lives!
Kopierwerk by Stefanie Weberhofer : The cinema is a machine. Kopierwerk testifies to that, lets itself be carried by industrial rhythms, and in doing so, negotiates the analogue era, whose end meant also new beginnings, creative deviations: as complement to digital mass culture, taking place before our eyes is a movement largely freed from the pressure to generate a profit, a niche revolution of sorts in analogue media. First, the newspaper printing process is illuminated in old, silvery glimmering black-and-white images: the reproduction of propaganda and enlightenment from the ghost of factory work. A spectacular montage sets off the very “shock effect” that Walter Benjamin so enthusiastically described. Stefanie Weberhofer, protagonist in the young Viennese analogue film scene, lays out Kopierwerk as a self-reflective 35mm work compiled from found materials, trailers, advertising spots, and splinters of feature films. Already the printing prologue is fed from very different sources, the texture gives it away. From the factory, it moves to the wide-open space of Hollywood fantasies: Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty, and Jim Carrey handle newspapers and projection apparatuses; the meandering analogue photography is for the stars and the aura of the moment, indiscriminately capturing what is momentarily able to be captured. Film history, however, is not merely a glorious extravagance of prominence, but also one of material, a culture of secret pictures and messages found as printed inscriptions and instructions, as countdowns, codes, and numbers in the filmstrips themselves. The “highly dangerous” collective experience cinema can trigger panic, can do its work of destruction. But the film reels continue to turn. Kopierwerk thus mutates to an abstract game with the cinema’s physique, a dance of letters and the copier generation’s gray veil. In strictly manual production, for three years Weber worked on her film, which tells of the radical remodelling of the film industry and the (digitally multiplied) afterlife of analogue film images in the avant-garde. (Stefan Grissemann) Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt