Thank you for joining us for VLX5 Program #1!  We’re excited for this years programming and hope that you enjoy the show and stories below about our Friends this year and their projects.  xo VASTLAB

VLX5

PROGRAM #1, SAT DEC 9th 2023

Tonights lineup

7:30pm LiveScore part one with Threadbare Aristocrats & Pablo Perez scoring

Like a Lighthouse Richard Peter Tuohy
Business Susanne Layla Petersen
Flow Go John Dawson

 

~8pm VLX5 Program #1 – Part 1

Mirage Susanne Layla Petersen
Oversight Sara Suárez
Hen to Pan Cornelia Pierce, Daniela Huerta
a view of the unseeable Harrison James Gaushell
Dreams Under Pressure T.J. Blanco
Expansion Amanda VanValkenburg
Resaerate Jullian Young

8:30pm Intermission

 

8:45pm VLX5 Program #1 – Part 2

istén:’a KJ Edwards
Small Step for the Mankind Hannu Nieminen, Tapio Rissanen
Confluence: A Meditation in Documentary Form ETA, Shanhuan Manton
Light Leak Nate Dorr
Epicycle Deb Ethier

~9:30pm LiveScore part two with Threadbare Aristocrats & Pablo Perez scoring

Trouble with Johnny Paul Echeverria
Bye Bye Now Louise Bourque
Here are some Images Yannick Mosimann
The Silos – Until The Sun Goes Down Samer Ghorayeb
Lysis Mark Cira

w/ special guest on LYSIS –
Alia Hamdon O’Brien

10pm WRAP

VLX5 – Program #1

Los Angeles

Film Directors Synopsis Biography
a view of the unseeable Harrison James Gaushell A visualization of a dream that has been haunting me. Realized through footage recorded on a multitude of analog cameras and then transferred and manipulated utilizing a neural radiance field to become something formless. Currently studying Cinematography in the undergraduate Film Production major at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts @ Chapman University.
Business Susanne Layla Petersen Business video. “Business” may be shortened, so if you prefer eg. a small business version or a micro version, then feel free to request a version with the duration that fits your event Susanne Layla Petersen is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Frederiksberg, Denmark. Exhibitions and screenings worldwide.
Bye Bye Now Louise Bourque Waving hello to the filming cameraperson, the subjects through this very gesture, are also providing a future viewer with the acknowledgment of a constant good-bye to a fleeting moment. Yet when the film is projected and the captured gesture is seen, it’s as if the subjects are saying hello again from the past. This film is an homage to the artist’s father, the man behind the camera in these personal family archives. Citation: “BYE BYE NOW is cruel. A movie traumatized by time, which is the passing of time and all that inhabits it. Movies play into that, their only purpose is to reduce the living to shocked witnesses of those drowning before their eyes. Children are unknowing, not seeing or suspecting the wave overtaking them. Movie stars at least know what they’re doing and demand money for dying before the “objective” camera (certainly aging as we watch from movie to movie). “Movie shots”, what an expression. It tells you that someone understood what mischief they were up to way back at the very beginning of cinema. Dear Louise, that’s my take on your immaculate work.” —Ken Jacobs The filmmaker Louise Bourque recently moved back to Montréal after spending 30 years in the United States and elsewhere. Her films have been screened in more than forty-five countries and broadcast on PBS and the Sundance Channel in the US as well as on Télé-Québec in Canada and SBS in Australia. Her work has been presented by major galleries and museums worldwide, including the Musée de la Civilisation and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Québec city, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC.
Confluence: A Meditation in Documentary Form ETA, Shanhuan Manton CONFLUENCE is a meditation on ancestry and identity through the lens of APIDA and queer artists filmed during moonroom’s 2019 PHASE, an event series celebrating APIDA Heritage Month with underground events throughout Southern California. This mix of hypnotic images and heartfelt testimonies explores the turmoil of being othered, while enduring creatively and shattering community and perceptual barriers. The reductive myths unjustly stuck on the Asian American diaspora are directly questioned by those who’d rather choose their own labels — or simply do away with them altogether. ETA is a first-gen Vietnamese-American genrefluid filmmaker raised in Tustin, CA by refugees of the American War in Vietnam. Their debut feature film, Stockton 2 Malone, premiered via AFROPUNK and was lauded for infusing “intersectional, diverse identities into the mumblecore genre.” Shanhuan Manton is a genderqueer Chinese-American filmmaker focused on composting extractive methods of cinematic storytelling into regenerative rituals and making the possibilities of speculative worlds real through collective storytelling. They are currently developing several projects centering the more-than-human world, and the collective crafting of contemporary mythologies for navigating the convergent crises of our time. Together, Shanhuan and ETA are collaborating on several genrefluid films focusing on diaspora representation, undoing colonial trauma and queering and rewilding narrative structures.
Dreams Under Pressure T.J. Blanco What is the revolutionary potential of dreams? To astral project out of our bodies and into those more hurt by capitalism? T.J. Blanco is a non-binary, latinx, experimental filmmaker based in the Midwest. Their work explores ancestral memory, mythic construction and the everyday absurdity of life under capitalism.
Epicycle Deb Ethier A surreal experimental animated allegory of the cyclical rise, fall and evolution of social order. Animator, musician, graphic designer, writer…I wear most of the hats (and I even make the espresso!), although I often collaborate with other voiceover artists or musicians. Short and micro-short animated films are my passion, (including one-minute wonders) and they range from wacky off-kilter comedies to poetic immersions to contemplative narratives to surreal noir-inspired nightmares. Most of my films are low/no budget creations!
Expansion Amanda VanValkenburg This is a visual investigation of proliferation, growth through repetition and accumulation. Continuous expansion and endless repetition seem to be permanent fixtures of contemporary life, and this video utilizes found footage and 3D software to play with loops, repetition, and nightmarish visions of replication. Inky digital blemishes bleed into the visual collages, and wash away the image as the expanding “carchitecture” inevitably collapses. Amanda VanValkenburg is a visual artist using a combination of traditional and digital techniques to explore contemporary anxiety and digitally mediated interactions between the past and future. She received her BFA in Painting/Drawing /Sculpture at Brigham Young University, studied digital media at Hochschule für Künste Bremen, and received her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Film/Video/New Media/Animation. She currently teaches at Northern Illinois University as an Assistant Professor of Time Arts and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as an instructor in ACE and ECP programs. Her work has been exhibited in the MCA, Elmhurst Museum, Mana Contemporary, Woman Made Gallery, 6018 North Gallery, LeRoy Neiman Center, and screened at the Gene Siskel Theater, Nightingale Cinema, Links Hall, Filmfront, and the Chicago Digital Media Festival. She has completed residencies through High Concept Labs, Oxbow, and Ragdale.
Flow Go John Dawson “Flow Go” is an experimental film made by Colorado artist and filmmaker John Dawson in 2023. This short film is 100% hand made by drawing, painting and scratching directly onto 16mm film stock. I am taking an old school technique and trying to do something modern and current with it. My films are all about the motion and having fun! I hope people are entertained and energized by all of my films. You can think of it like a ride at the amusement park or view it the same way you might view fireworks or abstract painting. The music is That Funk Show by Diamond_Tunes from pixabay.com. Norman McLaren, Len Ley and Steve Woloshen were all great influences and inspiration for this work. John Dawson lives just outside of Boulder, Colorado and is the son of Colorado watercolor artist Milly Dawson. His fine artworks have been shown and sold in galleries in Colorado and online as well. He worked on and off for a small commercial animation studio in Denver.
Hen to Pan Cornelia Pierce, Daniela Huerta ‘Hen to Pan’ engages with an archaic human mindset and is inspired by Carl Jung and Erich Neumann’s analysis of the symbol of the ouroboros in relation to “The Great Mother” archetype in early matriarchal cultures. In the piece, a storyteller guides multiple passages of an anonymous body that along with nature is bound to a perpetual, and at times violent rhythm of ritualistic formation and deformation. This body carries an amorphous identity: its limbs are missing and its flesh embraces elementary instincts and forces of inertia. It is a vessel, an ancient archetype that holds in itself the symbols and consciousness of early man. ‘Hen to Pan’ moves within its own cycle, it is an autarchic great round, an ouroboros. Its myth is guided by the spirit of a snake in the pursuit of self-cannibalism, flowing back to itself and ending as a self-fertilized androgynous entity. This project was supported by the Goethe institute in Berlin. Prima Materia is a meditation on primal matter in the digital age. It is a versatile entity appearing in ever-changing temporary incarnations. Grounded in philosophical, historical, and technological research, it draws upon nature, rituals, and mythology. The human body and its transformation define Prima Materia’s artistic nature. The body becomes a primordial instrument, embracing the rawness of flesh and bones while engaging with the eternal cycle of destruction and recreation. Conceived in Berlin, Prima Materia consists of visual artist Cornelia Pierce and sound designer Daniela Huerta. Together they compose audio-visual narratives involving photography, video, and sound design for multimedia projects and in form of installation and performance art. Prima Materia is a SHOWstudio contributor, with a recent solo online exhibition at SHOWstudio.com. Other recent projects include a residency with the Goethe Institute, and collaborations with musician Lucrecia Dalt and video artist Morgan Beringer. Their performances have been presented at the 4-D sound space of MONOM at Funkhaus Berlin, at Galerie Weisser Elefant and Arkaoda in Berlin.
Here are some Images Yannick Mosimann “Here are some Images” is an short film exploring the interplay between internal and external images, using hand-processed 16mm footage and musings on perception and memory. Yannick Mosimann, born 1989 in Bern, Switzerland, is a filmmaker, sound-artist and photographer. His body of work comprises several films and video Installations, as well as collaborative works as a filmmaker and musician with a diverse spread of artists. Together with Biel-based musician and vocal artist Rea Dubach, Mosimann co-founded the virtual exchange platform “YR” for film/music/photography/drawing works with the aim of creating fluid collaborative workflows between artists. Yannick Mosimanns work focuses on intuitive processes, sensorial experiences and the re-imagination of narratives. It deals with themes like the anthropocene, nature and human perception. Yannick lives and works in Bern.
istén:’a KJ Edwards A poetic retelling of a visit from the artist’s mother, istén:’a looks to dreamspace as a meeting place for us and our late loved ones who we are always tethered to. KJ Edwards is a Kanien’kehá:ka,mixed-settler filmmaker and media artist. Their family is from Kahnawa:ké and Longueuil, Quebec, Canada; while KJ was born and raised in Treaty 6 Territory, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Holding a BFA in Film Production from the Toronto Metropolitan University, KJ is trained in narrative, documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques, using both analogue and digital hybrid workflows. They are a 2023 MFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, located on unceded traditional Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Territory in Vancouver. KJ’s thesis work involved eco processing analogue film, reflecting on the unpredictability of the medium as that of a collaborator, and the ways that dreams and memory can offer creative pathways toward content creation. KJ’s 2021 short film Meet The Sky, starring Chanin Lee, T’áncháy Redvers, and Cheri Maracle, is still making festival rounds two years after premiering at the 2021 American Indian Film Festival, where it was nominated for Best Live Short. Meet The Sky won Best of BC and the Short Film Impact Award at the 2023 Vancouver International Women in Film Festival. KJ was also recently a Youth Mentor for Saagajiwe’s Creative Native Project with Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Production Coordinator for the 2021 X University Virtual Pow Wow and a 2022 Pitch Participant with the first ever Indigenous Screen Summit at Banff World Media Festival.
Light Leak Nate Dorr (Possible strobe warning: gets mild-to-moderately flickery in a few scenes.) Light is information, a signal more lasting than recollection. If there’s anyone out there to receive the message. Isolated in a sealed apartment, a lone observer regards an outside world become increasingly unreal or unreachable. Archaic illuminations, old slides and the pin-lights of the camera obscura, crawl across the walls. Connections fray. Time loses meaning. A science fictional essay film, or its inverse. A rumination on optics, memory, data, and endings.
Like a Lighthouse Richard Peter Tuohy A blinding beam of light. The piercing sound of ships. Everything – the land, plants, the sky – shouts for attention. Perceptions assail us with their demands to be noticed.
Lysis Mark Cira The result of three years of experimentation, “Lysis” cycles through five different film stocks and a variety of processing methods. A hybrid of optical effects, post-processing analog techniques and digital effects achieves a mosaic of painterly impressions. “Lysis” revolves around themes of the porosity of the self in relation to memory, place and time. One part visual landscape of the soul as it yearns for the past and its place within it, set against the textural disembodiment of nostalgia in post-capitalist urban decay. Mark Cira lives and works in Toronto. His work is primarily centered around ideas relating to transference, interchangeability, language, synchronicity and the dialectic between ideology and the modalities in which they express themselves. He makes images and objects informed by an interest in early computing, textile production, and the transference from analog to digital.
Mirage Susanne Layla Petersen Video inspired by the optical phenomenon mirage Susanne Layla Petersen is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Frederiksberg, Denmark. Exhibitions and screenings worldwide.
Oversight Sara Suárez Oversight pairs satellite and human landscape observations, alongside a poem whose text draws from corporate internal communications. Parallel observers drift through downtown Los Angeles, in a silent meditation on visuality, control, and watchful care. Notes: The film is silent (no soundtrack). It can be screened in cinematic/theatrical screening formats, or as a loop in gallery contexts. Sara Suárez is an artist and cultural producer working in experimental film, sound, and social practices. She is interested in sensory and spatial perception, shared spaces, and in co-creative and collective processes. Her work has been presented by LA Filmforum, Slamdance, Alchemy Film Festival, ICDOCS, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Materials & Applications, and other venues. Suárez is the co-founder of virtual care lab, a creative community and project platform considering issues of collective care, solidarity, co-creation, and trust in digital space. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
Resaerate Jullian Young Resaerate (2023) is an experimental, data driven 3D animation that reflects on the human relationship to landscape in the aftermath of environmental catastrophe. On December 30th, 2021 the Marshall Fire ripped through Boulder county fueled by high winds and dry conditions, and took with it over 1,000 homes and structures. This video is inspired by resilience in the face of climate crisis and the reconfiguring of our connection to wind and air quality in particular. The animation is comprised of over a dozen landscape scans collected on the front range of Colorado over the course of three seasons. Hovering over the landscapes is a three dimensional representation of indoor air quality provided by the Hannigan Air Quality and Technology Research Lab collected in the months after the Marshall Fire. The eventual splintering and collapse of the object opens up the view to a single ponderosa pine tree while the accompanying audio is a series of layered sonified data of wind speed and wind gust measurements taken on December 30th, 2021. Jullian Young is a multidisciplinary artist and an Assistant Professor in Time Arts at Northern Illinois University. She works with various tools including 3D modeling and digital fabrication, data visualization, interactive technologies, algorithmic processes, animation and techniques in video art. She has exhibited her work in the US and internationally at the Leon Gallery, VivaTech Paris, the Contemporary and Digital Art Fair, Criatech festival, and presented work with re.riddle Gallery and the LAST/RESORT Club at the 2020 Ars Electronica Festival. Jullian’s work engages with the critical dialogue surrounding networked systems, and our participation as a species with the environment at large. Her artwork seeks to make connections between ecosystems and organisms that often go unnoticed, and challenge the dynamics of care, control, and power in an interwoven network of creatures that ultimately necessitates balance.
Small Step for the Mankind Hannu Nieminen, Tapio Rissanen Astronaut explores a strange, but somehow familiar environment. Mankind reaches out to space, but should we instead focus to clean up our planet? A short film poem, soundtrack is an audio mix of recordings done during the Apollo flights. Hannu Nieminen has been working with audio-visual art since 1990’s. He first worked with music videos for Finnish bands and later with experimental films and audiovisual installations. He has created more than 100 experimental films or music videos.
The Silos – Until The Sun Goes Down Samer Ghorayeb The 50-year-old silos of the Beirut port absorbed much of the impact when tonnes of incorrectly stored ammonium nitrate fertiliser went up in a massive explosion on August 4, 2020. The silos effectively shielded the western part of Beirut from the blast, which killed more than 200 people. In August 2023, Lebanon will be commemorating 3 years since the deadly port explosion and still no one was found guilty. Samer Ghorayeb is an autodidact Lebanese filmmaker and visual artist, he wrote and directed several short films and creative documentaries. His experimental films, Le Petit Cahier Noir, From My Window and Borderlines secured him great success in international arthouse film festivals. His major body of work is in the social documentary production and the video art fields.
Trouble with Johnny Paul Echeverria Trouble with Johnny explores the recurrence of loop, tempo, and flicker. The project uses found footage as a method for emphasizing the cinematic collisions between audio and visual composition. Working within the margins of structural filmmaking, Trouble with Johnny creates a visceral experience of fragmented sounds and cyclical imagery. Likewise, Trouble with Johnny functions as a parody of the mainstream movie industry. The source material derives from the 1980’s coming of age film, The Karate Kid. Throughout the story, the main antagonist, a bully who goes by the name “Johnny”, is revered by a dedicated clique of subservient underlings. Applied as an experimental technique, the repetitive use of the word “Johnny” draws attention to the stereotypical and recurring tropes found in many teen movies. In addition, the character name “Johnny” occupies a consistent prominence within many works of 80’s cinema. Upon reflection, the name calls to mind an intriguing array of 80’s era character types, including the outsider, the renegade, the bully, the cool kid, and the boy next door. A partial list of films that employ the moniker include, The Outsiders, Johnny Dangerously, The Breakfast Club, Dirty Dancing, Johnny Be Good, Johnny Handsome, and Point Break. By delving into this peculiar fascination with naming conventions, the filmmaker presents a revised interpretation of industry generated characterization. Overall, Trouble with Johnny offers an alternative version of this memorable character type. The film intends to highlight the enigmatic traces between tribute and critique. Paul Echeverria is a filmmaker, digital artist, and educator. His research and creative practice examine the formative dynamics between childhood, parenthood, and the family structure. In addition, he produces work that contemplates the inevitable collision between humans and technology. Echeverria’s films, installations, and performances have been exhibited at multiple venues including MoMA, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Angelika Film Center, Anthology Film Archives, Other Cinema, FRACTO Experimental Film Encounter, Festival Internacional de Videoarte de Camagüey, Experiments in Cinema, and the Echo Park Film Center. He currently serves as board member for the Millennium Film Workshop and has worked on curatorial committees for the Ann Arbor Film Festival and Experiments in Cinema. He is an Assistant Professor of Digital and Emerging Media at Wayne State University.

 

 

Dec 09

VLX5 – Program #2

Los Angeles

Nathalie Bujold, Kent Tate, Giorgio Gerardi, Roberto Niño Betancourt, Nataliya Bek-Gergard, John Woodman, Luis Carlos Rodríguez, Çağıl Harmandar, Benae Beamon, Francesca Pazniokas, Elise Cohen, Ewa Maria Wolska, Oleksandr Hoisan, An-Laurence Higgins, Aaron Pollard, Caleb Bender, Nan Su, Jumanah Saklou

Jan 20

VLX5 – Program #3

Chicago

Adam E. Stone, Aitor Irulegi,Alia Alkaff, Amanda VanValkenburg, Ben Spatz, Brian Alexander, Camila Dron, Caroline Rumley, Charles-André Coderre, Charlie Marois, Fanny Leiva Torres, Hodan Youssouf, Ihab Mardini, Josh Weissbach, Lisa Birke, Martin Gerigk, Sarah Lasley, Sharon Liang, Sharon Mooney, Stephanie Barber, Susanne Layla Petersen, Teri Carson, Tommy Becker, Tracy Miller-Robbins, Vasco Diogo, Vincent DeZutti

Feb 09

VLX5 – Program #4

New York

Zijing Chen, Josh Weissbach, Tim M. Sullivan, Kent Tate, Melina Kiyomi Coumas, Matthew Chan, Jingyi Wang, Brian Ratigan, Kim Timan, Sam Villa-Real, Vittorio Caratozzolo & Class 2 A (2022-23), Manar Mohamed, Luis Grane, Charles Rainville, Jazra Khaleed, Silvia Tsompanaki, Mara Trachtenberg, Enzo Cillo, Isabela Costa, Grant Petrey, Telemach Wiesinger, Jorge Caballero Ramos, Gustavo León, Liujun Li

March TBD

VLX5 – Program #5

San Francisco

Ian Haig, Hüseyin Mert Erverdi, Vasco Diogo, Nan Su, Padrick Sean Ritch, Martin Gerigk, Daksha Patel, Rita Casdia, Markus Maicher, Cosma Grosser, Camille Pueyo, Francoise Doherty, Emma Roufs, Neil Ira Needleman, Beth Walker, Andy Sowerby, Ethann Néon, Kym McDaniel, Mohammadreza Moghimnejad, Kilian Dellers, Zoe Chronis, Jonathan Rochier, Bettina Hoffmann, Mersolis Schöne, Boris Tsessarsky, Paige Alys Schmitt, Maarten Isaäk de Heer, Yini Yang

April TBD

updates here

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