6/21 lineup
8pm VLX5 Program #5 – Part 1
~9:15pm WRAP
8/25 lineup
4pm VLX5 Program #5 – Part 2
films by Ian Haig, Padrick Sean Ritch, Daksha Patel, Markus Maicher, Cosma Grosser, Francoise Doherty, Neil Ira Needleman, Andy Sowerby, Kym McDaniel, Kilian Dellers, jonathan rochier, Mersolis Schöne, Paige Alys Schmitt, Fanny Leiva Torres, Maarten Isaäk de Heer, Yini Yang
~6:15pm WRAP
VLX5 – Program #5
Los Angeles
June and July 2024
Useless Eaters (short version) | Ian Haig | Mutated hackable bodies, bodies that didn’t quite work out and bodies that can no longer be classified as bodies. Drawing on the transhumanist musings of Yuval Noah Harari….humans are now hackable animals. |
Ian Haig works across media, from video, sculpture, technology-based media and installation. Haig’s practice refuses to accept that the low and the base level are devoid of value and cultural meaning. His body obsessed themes can be seen throughout a large body of work over the last twenty years. Previous works have looked to the contemporary media sphere and its relationship to the visceral body, the degenerative aspects of pervasive new technologies, to cultural forms of fanaticism and cults, to ideas of attraction and repulsion, body horror, the defamiliarisation and confrontation of the human body. His work has been exhibited in galleries and film/video/media festivals around the world. Including exhibitions at: The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Artec Biennale – Nagoya, Japan; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Museum of China, Beijing; Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden-Rot, Germany. In addition, his video work has screened in over 120 Festivals internationally. In 2003 he received a fellowship from the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council and in 2013 and 2017 he curated the video art shows Unco and Very Unco at The Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles.
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Chromatic Symphony | Hüseyin Mert Erverdi | In Chromatic Symphony (2023), the colors embark on a journey, seeking to illuminate the world and fill it with their vibrant presence. Meanwhile, the enigmatic black forms, dance and weave through the canvas. The chase between the colors and darkness unfolds in a series of rapidly cut, abstract images that evolve into complex and layered compositions. The pursuit is a delicate dance in which each side seeking to embrace the other, while simultaneously asserting its own presence. By focusing on the pursuit between these opposing yet interwoven forces, the film invites viewers to embark on a sensory voyage that transcends traditional narrative and delves into the heart of a lyrical artistic expression. |
Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Hüseyin Mert Erverdi is an award-winning experimental filmmaker and new media artist. His work explores the convergence points between art, science and nature. In addition to communicating his vision through various art forms, Erverdi is deeply involved with philosophy and media theory. He received his B.A. degree in Visual Communication and Design from Bilkent University in 2008. A year after his graduation Erverdi was admitted to the M.A. program in Cinema and Television Studies at Bilgi University, which he graduated two years later with high honors. SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS & SCREENINGS —————————————————————— 2021 – Spektral Gökkuşağı Frekansı (Spectral Rainbow Frequency); Experimental Short Film 7. Punto y Raya 2021 Edition, Official Selection 25. NCCC Film & Animation Festival, Experimental, Official Selection 20. IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 17. Athens ANIMFEST, Experimental Film, Official Selection 15. CineToro Experimental Film Festival, CINETORO ART “The language of the different”, Official Selection 13. Video Art and Experimental Film Festival Video Art and Experimental Film Festival, “Honorable Mention” 7. Denver Underground Film Festival, Experimental Film, Official Selection 5. Darkroom Film Festival, Experimental Film, Official Selection 4. Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, Experimental Animation, Official Selection 4. XPRMNTL Anti-Festival London, Official Selection 2020 – Savaş (Battle); Experimental Short Film 6. Denver Underground Film Festival, “Best Experimental Short Film Award”, Official Selection 19. IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival, DOCUMENTARY & EXPERIMENTAL COMPETITION, Official Selection 16. Athens ANIMFEST, Experimental Film, Official Selection 10. BIDEODROMO International Experimental Film and Video Festival, Experimental Films and Videos, Official Selection 7. Bogotá Experimental Film Festival, Experimental Audiovisual Artworks, Official Selection 7. International Experimental Film and Arts Festival „Suspaustas Laikas“, Official Selection 3. Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, Experimental Animation, Official Selection 4. Festival ECRÃ Festival, Installation and Video-Art, Official Selection VASTLAB Experimental 2021, Short Animation, Official Selection Vortex Experimental Film Festival, Official Selection Hallucinea Film Festival, Experimental Short, Jury Special Award, Official Selection 2020 – Devr (Circumvolution); Experimental Short Film 43. Brussels Independent Film Festival 2022 Edition, Experimental Film, Official Selection 21. International Kansk Video Festival, Video Art, Officiail Selection 17. Athens ANIMFEST, Experimental Film, Official Selection 7. International Experimental Film and Arts Festival „Suspaustas Laikas“, Official Selection 6. Esto Es Para Esto – Exhibidora de Cine, Official Selection 6. Denver Underground Film Festival, Experimental short, Official Selection Hallucinea Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 2020 – Mandala; Experimental Short Film 16. Athens ANIMFEST, Experimental Film, Official Selection 2. Manchester Experimental Film Festival,International Experimental Films, Official Selection VASTLAB Experimental 2021, Short Animation, Official Selection 6. Esto Es Para Esto – Exhibidora de Cine, Official Selection 3. XPRMNTL Anti-Festival London, Official Selection Dreamers of Dreams Film Festival, Spiritual or Philosophical Short, Official Selection Hallucinea Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 2019 – Renk Üzerine (On Color); Experimental Short Film 40. Brussels Independent International Film Festival, Experimental Film, Official Selection 28. Florida Film Festival, SUNSPOTS: NEW VISIONS OF THE AVANT-GARDE, Official Selection 17. IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival, DOCUMENTARY & EXPERIMENTAL COMPETITION, Official Selection 24. Extremely Shorts Film Festival, Experimental Film, Official Selection Manchester Experimental Film Festival, Experimental Film, Official Selection 15. Athens ANIMFEST – International Animation Festival, Experimental Film, Official Selection 12. BLOW-UP International Arthouse Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 9. Carmarthen Bay Film Festival, Experimental, Official Selection 9. Golden Ger International Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 9. ULTRAcinema 2020 Film Festival, Experimental Shorts, Official Selection 9. New York Experimental Video & Film Fest, In The Spirit Of The Experimental, Official Selection 7. Denver Underground Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 6. Bogotá Experimental Film Festival, Experimental Audiovisual Artworks, Official Selection 5. London Experimental, Experimental Film, Official Selection 3. Festival ECRÃ Festival, Installation and Video-Art, Official Selection 2. Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, Experimental Animation, Official Selection 3. Dreamers of Dreams Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 2. VASTLAB Experimental Film Festival, Short Animation, Official Selection 3. MosFilmFest Moscow Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection Vortex Experimental Film Festival, Official Selection 2019 – Semâ (Sama); Experimental Short Film 17. IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival, DOCUMENTARY & EXPERIMENTAL COMPETITION Official Selection 12. BLOW-UP International Arthouse Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 9. Carmarthen Bay Film Festival, Experimental, Official Selection 7. Delete Tv Festival, Experimental Video Art, Official Selection 6. Bogotá Experimental Film Festival, Official Selection 7. Montevideo World Film Festival, Experimental short film, Official Selection 3. Dreamers of Dreams Film Festival, Experimental Short, Official Selection 3. Psychedelic Film and Music Festival, Psychedelic/ Transpersonal Short, Official Selection 4. Hermetic International Film Festival (FHIFF), Best Short Film – Sulphur Category, Official Selection 3. Esoteric International Film Festival, Esoteric Animated Short, Official Selection Fisura Experimental Cinema & Video International Film Festival, Official Selection Vortex Experimental Film Festival, Official Selection
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Anima # 2 | Vasco Diogo | Anima # 2 is an experimental animation that shows 6 hand drawn human like figures in a constant row. Their movement, similar to a video dance, is created by the nature of the drawing, both by form and color. The apparent stillness of the figures confronts the viewer, as if the latter is being watched and questioned about its physical condition as an observer. |
Vasco Diogo was born in Lisbon in 1970. He has a degree in Sociology by Universidade Nova de Lisboa, a master degree in social sciences by Universidade de Lisboa and a PhD in Communication Sciences by Universidade Nova de Lisboa, with the thesis: “Video: specificity, hybridity and experimentation”(scholarship by FCT, 2008). From 2008 to 2020 he was a professor at University of Beira Interior teaching mainly cinema directing, new cinemas and experimental cinema. After being co-founder of Projecto Teatral, works, since 1998 in performance, video art and experimental cinema around themes such as self-presentation, truth and manipulation. In experimental cinema he has won several international awards (more than 70), specially with the film: “anexperimentalviralvlog – the movie remix # !”. He has shown his works in several exhibitions and festivals in Portugal, Spain, Italy, USA, Canada, India, Germany, France, Cyprus, Poland, etc.
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(de)Vice Grip | Padrick Sean Ritch |
*formerly titled: Terms of Service A short film about the “terms of service” agreements of social media applications and smart phone devices.
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Permission to land | Martin Gerigk | War. Fragility. Instruction Abidance. Intuition. Digitalization. Dichotomous decision paths. What would we do if we were given the freedom to direct possibilities? |
Martin Gerigk (*1972) is a composer of contemporary music. His repertoire includes compositions for orchestra and chamber music, as well as several solo concertos. His compositions are performed nationally and internationally including in Korea, Japan, USA, England, Finland, Austria and Switzerland. In this context he works together with renowned international soloists and ensembles. In addition to his compositional work he is known for his remarkable audiovisual art and experimental films which focus on inherent synesthetic connections of sound and visual perceptions. Besides creating interwoven aural and visual landscapes of music, nature sounds and video sequences one important aspect of his art is the illustration of the hidden poetry of nature phenomena and sciences. His experimental films won several international prizes and were screened at noted festivals like Asolo Film Festival, International Digital Arts Festival Videoformes, Girona Film Festival, Salento International Film Festival, Columbus International Film & Animation Festival, USA Film Festival, New Jersey Film Festival, Sidney International Film Festival, Fargo Film Festival, Sherman Oaks Film Festival, Canberra Short Film Festival, Film and Video Poetry Symposium Los Angeles, Syracuse Film Festival or ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival.
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in the same breath | Daksha Patel | Since the pandemic, we’ve become more acutely aware of our bodies. Everyday things like food, exercise or touch have become big things to negotiate. It is as if the body has become a dangerous place. We are more emotionally vulnerable and everything is magnified and experienced through body sensations. The animation focuses upon the internal body, with a soundtrack of heartbeats, breathing, whispering and swallowing. It merges analogue drawings inspired by bio-medical imagery with creative coding to animate some drawings in response to the soundtrack data. Coding and data seem particularly relevant for this subject matter because the pandemic is made sense of through data and by using algorithms to model and predict future outbreaks. |
Daksha Patel ( www.dakshapatel.co.uk ) is a UK based visual artist whose practice encompasses drawing, printmaking, animation and installation. Her residencies include: Anatomy at King’s College London (2019-2021), Life Science at University of Dundee (2018/9), Applied Mathematics at University of Bristol (2019) and Neuroscience and Imaging Science at the University of Manchester (2016). Her solo exhibitions include: Dundee Contemporary Arts; Paper2 Gallery, Manchester; Watermans, London; Horniman Musuem, London; and LifeSpace gallery, Dundee. Her Art in Manufacturing commission was shown at Queen Street Mill, Burnley, as part of the British Textile Biennial 2019. Recent group exhibitions include: Coachworks, Ashford; The Ruskin, Lancaster; The Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary award at The Mall Galleries, London and Asia House Gallery, London.
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Tree Story | Rita Casdia | Tree Story is a stop motion animation in which small clay figures come to life to embody thoughts on the origins and destiny of humans, and on life itself. Anthropomorphic figures and larval entities move across a neutral setting, inhabited only by minimal spatial details. |
Rita Casdia, was born in 1977. She graduated Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Palermo in the 2000. Afterwards she moved to Milan, where she continued her study at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and achieved a specialization in Art and New Technologies (2006) and Academic second level degree in the teaching of Painting (2009).
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Earth Water Motor II | Markus Maicher, Cosma Grosser | Cutting through landscapes with the machine. Destroying the postcard images of places we know. Part two of the Earth Water Motor series is filmed on soundstock with a 16mm Bolex, hand developed and edited in-camera. The film music is composed with an analogue synthesizer. Beginning in Bschabertal the series finds its continuation in Krumpendorf. Earth Water Motor II is part of an ongoing series, it can be screened together with Earth Water Motor, or invidually, either as 16mm double (and tripple) projection or as a digital file. |
Markus Maicher (b. 1984) is a Vienna-based experimental filmmaker and media artist. His artistic practice is centered around a fascination with the cinematic dispositiv and the material poetry of analog film and video. In his PhD at the University of Applied Arts Vienna he investigates the specificity of analog and digital media, he also works as a projectionist at the Austrian Filmmuseum and is part of the artist-run film lab filmkoop wien. His films and installations have been shown at numerous international festivals and cinemas.
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Disparition(s) | Camille Pueyo | This film reflects on the gender violence suffered by the filmmaker and the impending disappearance of her childhood island. Patriarchal capitalism has forced a retreat from the world and a search for shelter far from their assailants – is there any other choice? |
Born in France in 1988, Camille Pueyo studied a Bachelor’s degree in Cinema and went on to undertake a Master’s degree in Visual Arts, focussing her research on haunted images and notions of memory. Her practice, which encompasses video art and documentary, questions the porosity of the intimate and the public. By combining film and video, including found images and footage shot on super8 film, she sets up a dialogue between different techniques and temporalities. Her films bring buried stories to the surface and the act of sharing them with the public lends these intimate works a political dimension.
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Ode | Francoise Doherty | Ode is a highly intimate, non-verbal experimental film that finds the pinnacle of humanness in the absence of the human. Minimalist at its core. “If I took one photograph every two minutes for 30 hours in a home with people, it’s possible, not probable, to record a massive event without ever seeing a person. Some stories are like that. This is an autistic story.” |
Ode is a highly intimate, non-verbal experimental film that finds the pinnacle of humanness in the absence of the human. It is minimalist at its core. Françoise Doherty is an experimental animator who creates worlds at the intersection of light, music and image. As both the composer-musician and the animator, she goes to a place without boundaries between sight, sound and story. Using strictly 35mm still photography, Ode tracks the light of a 30-hour period in the life of a certain inhabited home. It is a film that speaks to the core of her autism; it is a story driven through sense and created within patterns. It is not a linear narrative, it does not contain people, characters or words, yet the story is immense. Autism is often a world of constant translation between one mode of communication and another. The film Ode is not translated. It is an autistic film. Françoise Doherty has been creating stories for over 20 years and is presently based in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. With a background in visual art, photography and music, she naturally progressed into music-based stop-motion animation. She has an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts. She received two Audience Choice Awards: Montreal Canada’s Festival Image + Nation and for Cinéffable in Paris, France. She is a trailblazer in queer activism for young children with her animated series “The Girl Bunnies” about a world of queer rabbits (four films, 2007-2015). “The Girl Bunnies HOCKEY” was screened at Pride House in The Olympic Village during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Her non-verbal animated film The Story Of Ice (2020) is an intimate look into the repercussions of sexual assault and how we as a society can heal. Françoise’s evolution into non-verbal filmmaking allowed her to find what makes us human. In the absence of words, she shows us ourselves.
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Four seasons bouquet | Emma Roufs | Nature and body at work over the course of a still yet disorderly year on a foreign land. “In that place, memory means something more than just something one looks back on, or something one feels from the past, it means something real for now that has made you.” – RT |
While experimenting with both analog and digital technology, Emma Roufs is a canadian (quebecois) filmmaker who’s particularly interested in film-journal aesthetics and themes related to memory. Emma is a member and administrator of VISIONS, and co-founder of ‘la lumière collective’, two entities based in Montreal, Canada, dedicated to screening and shining a light onto experimental film practices and their makers. Her films have been shown in various festivals and cinema spaces around the world. Her first essay documentary ATALAYA (2021) was presented internationally and won awards at Cinema on the Bayou film festival (USA) and at Vues du Québec – Festival de cinéma de Florac (France).
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By way of explanation… | Neil Ira Needleman |
I never appreciated the sarcastic metaphor, “That’s as exciting as watching paint dry.” Why? Because I enjoy watching paint dry. I also enjoy watching grass grow, raindrops evaporating off the pavement, the moon arching higher into the night sky, and the tide creeping up the shoreline. I am fascinated (and sometimes spellbound) by these “slow” events because they help draw me away from the hyper-hectic world of human activities. They give me the temporal space to relax and contemplate the world from a different perspective. I believe that we should all seek new perspectives on life, motion, activity, and events—especially ones that remove us from the hurry-hurry-hurry multitask world of everyday man-made life. Ready to give it a try? Let this video be your introduction. (Revised April 2023)
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Beneath | Beth Walker | A meditation on growth, connection and symbiosis, inspired by the entangled lives of fungi. Recent years have seen a surge of research and collective curiosity around fungi. Particularly striking is the notion of the ‘wood wide web’ — the ability of fungi to connect plants and trees in complex underground networks. Beneath is inspired by the behaviours of fungi, and wider themes of growth, connection and symbiosis. Using experimental analog and digital techniques, the films takes its audience into a hidden world where edges blur, connection is vital, and life thrives through togetherness. Produced at the Royal College of Art, London, 2022. |
Beth is a filmmaker and visual artist, who has recently completed an MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art, London. Originally from Nottingham, UK, Beth studied English at Royal Holloway University. After graduating in 2012 she worked for documentary screening organisation DocHouse, and initiated a side project, DocTent, which brought pop-up documentary screenings to music festivals around the UK. Beth began her own filmmaking practice in 2014, focusing on projects with socially conscious brands such as Brighton Fashion Week and Good Money. She went on to work as in-house filmmaker for ethical travel company Responsible Travel. This role led to a two year period of travel and filmmaking in locations across Asia, Africa and Europe. Alongside commercial work, Beth developed her own creative practice, experimenting with a wide range of techniques. In 2019 she produced a solo exhibition for ONCA Gallery in Brighton, featuring collages, animations and an immersive installation. In 2022, she graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, with an MA in Experimental Animation, with her graduation film BENEATH premiering at London International Animation Festival.
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Origami | Andy Sowerby | The video aims to capture a raw, organic, tactile energy by scratching and painting directly onto found super 8mm celluloid film. I wanted the film to feel like it’s barely holding itself together and the whole thing could collapse at any moment. The film spontaneously flickers and burns, until it loses stability entirely and begins to break apart. |
Andy Sowerby is filmmaker and visual artist. Andy has a process driven practice, through an experimental and innovative approach to equipment and materials, that moves between both narrative and abstract work. Andy’s films have been selected for a variety of film festivals including London Short Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival and BBC Music Video Festival.
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Wavewidth | Ethann Néon | Wavewidth captures the sense of calm that a seaside landscape can provide. Lifted by waves of time, the spatio-temporal markers are disturbed by the sound. The marine and sound waves resonate in a contemplative cinematographic experience. |
Ethann Néon is a Belgian director. He studied animation cinema in Brussels and obtained a master’s degree in Plastic, Visual and Space Arts. He makes experimental films around the notion of space-time in a cinematographic form. His current practice focuses on the processes of visual reconstruction of time and the division of space within the framework of the screen. The aesthetics of his films are characterized by elaborated splitscreens that play with the frame and the off-camera.
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Invisible World | Kym McDaniel | To apply for an accessible or Crip parking placard, a doctor within the state must approve the application. As part of the application, there are six medical conditions which qualify a person for a placard. These conditions include: (1) cannot walk two hundred feet without stopping to rest; (2) cannot walk without the use of an assistance device; (3) is restricted by lung disease; (4) uses portable oxygen; (5) has a cardiac condition; (6) is severely limited in their ability to walk due to an arthritic, neurological, or orthopedic conditions. Many people with disabilities are included in these categories, and many are not. This film is a record of my introduction to healthcare in the state of Utah. My processing of the appointment and consequential aftermath as a video object serves as a reclamation and assertion for understanding disability and the physical world otherwise. |
Kym McDaniel (she/her) is queer, invisibly disabled, experimental filmmaker, choreographer, and performer. She began working in video after a head injury changed her relationship to her body, dance, and choreography. She uses image collages, text, gesture, and the body to explore chronic illness, queerness/disability, and structural dissociation. She is an AmSAT Alexander Technique teacher and has an MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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contour |
mohammadreza moghimnejad
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I am 47 years old. I am from Iran. I got my bachelor’s degree in Civil engineering. And I got my master’s degree in Cinema from Sooreh University of Tehran.
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Art Student | Kilian Dellers | The picture was taken with an analog Normal 8 camera. After development, it was not cut lengthwise. Now you can see two film images on top of each other, left side up and right side down. As an artist, I seek the impossible. I make collages or I use multiple exposures of images: several details in the same image describe a specific mood. By collaging several image fragments into one picture, an organic-looking something emerges in the movement and change, a pulsating whole that makes an inner cultural landscape appear similar to nature. With a camera moving up and down, I change the meaning. A to dark motive I shoot several times with a mounted camera and give a flickering expression to it. Wild flowers in winter or the surface of the stars. An afternoon with a person. A resting tree becomes dynamic. Threatening backdrops. Self portraits in different times of the day, moods. |
Born 1959 in Basel, Switzerland. 1988 University degree ‘free arts’, state art academy Düsseldorf. 2000 Tri-Energetic Counselling, Tri-Energetic Institute, Amsterdam. Film technician, workshop leader. His films have won prizes in Basel, Stuttgart, Zagreb, Odense, Hong Kong, Solothurn and Zurich. Retrospectives in Tokyo, Stuttgart, Utrecht, Turku.
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Two Video Errors | zoe chronis | This video contains unexpected transfer errors in the MIniDV footage I recorded at the Ásmundarsafn in Reykjavík. The metal-evaporated cassette had likely coated the camcorder tapehead with debris that interfered with the transfer. I performed the editing in-camera using a method I call “Swiss-Cheesing”—randomly scanning back and forth on a tape, dropping new video through old footage. The title of this 2022 exhibition—Loftskurður—a collaboration between Rósa Gísladóttir and Ásmundur Sveinsson—translates literally to “air cutting” or “spatial Infractions.” |
Zoe Chronis is committed to videography that deepens engagement with immediate experience at the expense of long-term preservation. Her provisional approach to video often involves faulty equipment and in-camera editing, blurring the boundary between intention and chance. Her work was recently screened at Film Diary NYC and included in the group exhibition throwntogetherness, organized by Mobile Projection Unit and Lino Kino Video. In 2012 she received an Affiliated Fellowship at The American Academy in Rome and has attended artist residencies in Finland and Iceland. She spent the summer of ‘22 accidentally re-making Joyce Wieland’s 1967 short film Sailboat. Zoe grew up in Cincinnati, OH and currently works for community media in Brooklyn, NY.
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Commun | jonathan rochier |
The crowd can be seen as a sum of individualities but also as an autonomous acting power with its own logic and structure. Commun is an organic, social, and sensitive experience of a mass of pins, its behavior crosses the three modalities: community, communitarianism, communion.
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Memories of Touch | Bettina Hoffmann | The video addresses the pleasure and pain of touching and being touched. It makes use of the versatile movement capacities of hands to take all kinds of shapes, their transformative potential and narrative expression. It creates shifting feelings immersing a viewer into fantastic imagery (metamorphosis of hands), sensual and violent interactions and at times, the uncomfortable realisation that hands seem to be cut off a human body. Though, it is also a celebration of the great abilities of hands that are so specific for the human animal. |
Originally from Berlin, Germany, Bettina Hoffmann is based in Montreal, Canada. Her photo and video work was exhibited in group and solo shows in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, England, Romania, South Korea, the USA and Canada. Solo exhibitions include e.g. Touch at Occurrence, Montreal, 2014, Drain at Oboro, Montreal, 2014, Émile at Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2009, Décalage at Dazibao, Mois de la Photo à Montréal, 2007, at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, and Kristi Engel Gallery, Los Angeles, 2008. Her videos were presented at festivals and video art fairs internationally, e.g. Crossroads, Film Festival at the Cinematheque San Francisco, USA, Movement on Screen in Liverpool, UK, Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois (Montréal), European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück (Germany), Opere Nuove – No Words, Centro Culturale Trevi, Bolzano, Italy, Première vue Montreal, Espace SD, Beirut, Lebanon and at VideoLisboa in Lisbon (Portugal), and several times at the VAD video festival, Girona, Spain. Her work is in several private and public collections in both North America and Europe. e.g. the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, and Berlinische Galerie in Berlin. Hoffmann received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Hochschule der Künste, Berlin and attended both the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles and the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam.
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PalimpsEst | Mersolis Schöne | A decade in newspaper headlines – Austrian artist Lisa Est has cut out, torn, and collected these headlines. She has crocheted, glued, wrapped, and randomly mixed them together, creating a multi-layered work between object and collage art as well as experimental literature. “PalimpsEst” scratches, illuminates, and recombines these layers of transformation into 9 experimental image-and-sound poems: . The Writing Cloud . Encounters in the Dark Fog . My Yesterday as a Reflection . Departure Inwards . Echoes in the Red Panorama . Endless Gaze, Through You . Arrival in Possibility . When I See You – Ocean . The Writing Cloud. |
Mersolis Schöne is a multidisciplinary film artist, visual artist, and researcher based in Vienna, Austria. In his cinematic work, he deals with methods of filmic philosophising as well as with the communication of art, philosophy, and science. His process-oriented approach combines these methods with experimental and poetic forms. In 2017 he founded Moving Thought – Film+Philosophy (www.movingthought.org) to implement projects that focus on these purposes.
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The Cedars | boris tsessarsky | A multi-media artist takes the viewer on a “tour” of Dallas’s marginal suburbs, seeking out hidden treasures amongst the city’s architectural ruins and “trash.” |
The recipient of a 2022 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Boris Tsessarsky directed and co-produced with PaulA Neves the award-winning hip-hop documentary, “The Remedy” (2021). A Russian immigrant who grew up in NYC in the 80s and 90s, Boris was deeply immersed in underground hip-hop culture. In 2016, Boris wrote and directed his first film—the documentary “King’s Highway: The Story of Malcolm Fairfield.” In 2018 Boris co-founded—along with PaulA Neves—Parkway North Productions, directing and co-producing the short film “Every Alien Pen” (2019), which premiered at the New York City Independent Film Festival. Boris’s most recent film, “The Cedars,” was shot in Dallas and explores one artist’s obsession with “trash.” It premiered at the 2023 FICIMAD festival in Madrid where it was awarded Best Cinematography in a Short Documentary.
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Rotten | Paige Alys Schmitt |
Rotten is an experimental short shot entirely on 16mm with a Bolex. It explores my struggles with depression and generational memory.
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Dancing with Dead Animals (Fulldome/ VR) | Maarten Isaäk de Heer | Available as VR 360° Film or as a Fulldome installation (see project files) Synopsis: Over the course of a single spring and summer, the artist made 3D photograms of all of the dead creatures he encountered in his direct environment. Their sometimes semi-decomposed bodies were brought back to life in a virtual paradise, so they can dance with a contemporary Adam and Eve in a of twigs, leaves, bark and other dead organic material. This living tableau of cadavers goes beyond good and evil, simply illustrating the same biology that governs us all. |
Maarten Isaäk de Heer is a Berlin-based animation artist. Besides his commisioned work, he produces independent animation. His works explore new forms such as installations of animated paintings, 360°, Fulldome, VR, lenticular print and animated wildlifedocumentary. In 2020 he started Menetekel Film; a productioncompany with a focus on bad omens.
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White-Haired Witch and Black-Haired Witch | Yini Yang |
In a distant corner of the universe, amidst flowers, vines, and an endless expanse of crimson water, numerous placentas float. One of the placentas connects two fetuses, and in a flash of lightning, the placenta is divided into two halves. From one of the halves, a white-haired witch grows gradually, longing to find the other half of the fetus but unable to locate it. Consequently, it gives birth to a black-haired witch from its own body to coexist. One day, the black-haired witch embarks on a journey, leaving behind a letter documenting its travels for the white-haired witch. While waiting, the white-haired witch finds answers and returns to the primordial dream.
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Eye-Skin | Fanny Leiva Torres | Eye-Skin travels through child memories, dreams and present thoughts. In a minimum and close space roots intertwine, showing us through stories those bodies that go unnoticed around our everyday life. Eye-skin is a daily-video that brings us closer to neurodivergence in first person. |
Fanny Leiva Torres is Audiovisual Director, partner and founder of the audiovisual production company Tapel Papiz. She is dedicated to animation in different analogous techniques and direction of audiovisual projects (experimental cinema, video art and video performance). She is currently studying the Master’s programs at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile: Film Studies and Master of Arts. Her work explores the blurring of boundaries between film and other arts with a special emphasis on courtesy to the material through animation.
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Vittorio Caratozzolo & Class 2 A (2022-23) at Giacomo Bresadola Middle School Trento, IT – Little Anonymous Mobile Phone Users
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VLX5 Artist Q&A with John Woodman
VLX5 Artist Q&A with Harrison Gaushell
VLX5 Artist Q&A with Richard Tuohy
VLX5 Program #1 December 9th Los Angeles
VLX5 Artist Q&A with Susanne Layla Petersen
VLX5 Artist Q&A with Hannu Nieminen
VLX 5 is kicking off Dec 9th in North Hollywood with Program #1 include two LiveScore sets from Threadbare Aristocrats & Pablo’s Perez. Programs 2-4 are will take place Jan-April 2024. Program 2 Los Angeles - Jan 20 Program 3 Chicago Feb 9 Program 4 New York...
VLX5 schedule coming mid Nov….
This year, we're expanding our horizons beyond Los Angeles to include special events in both Chicago and New York. Our unwavering commitment to boundary-pushing art—ranging from avant-garde films to groundbreaking sound and immersive performances—has always fostered...
VLX4 2023 TOURING SHOW
VASTLAB EXPERIMENTAL VLX42023 TOURING PROGRAMCHICAGO 4/15 7-9:30 pm Musical GuestToby Kaufmann-Buhler - Sawing SoundToby Kaufmann-Buhler (based in Lafayette, Indiana) explores sensory perception, identity, history and memory through work in video, sound and space....