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July 23rd
featuring Steve Reinke, Steina, Kristin Lucas, Kerry Laitala, David Hevey, and Anthony Discenza, curated by Darrin Martin. Face Time is a program of short film and video meditations on facial difference and distortion. The works span from documentary to experimental genres and explores issues of memory, disability, age, and aesthetic manipulation. The screening includes British filmmaker David Hevey’s “Behind the Shadow of Merrick” which surfaces the archive of Joseph Merrick, better known as the ‘Elephant Man,’ as a means to allow contemporary people living with disability to contemplate their own lives and imagine a relationship with an extraordinary human being. “Suspension” by video artist Anthony Discenza uses analog technologies to manipulate and mix the faces of celebrities into a vibrant and haunting composite of popular culture. Three shorts from Steve Reinke’s "The Hundred Videos"; Wish, Barely Human, and Instructions for Recovering Forgotten Childhood Memories gives voice to nostalgic longings and repressed desires through case study photographs, appropriated pornographic head shots, and childlike performativity, respectively. Kerry Laitala’s film “Secure the Shadow” cuts between details of interior architecture and stereoscopic medical images, to create a hauntingly ambiguous and open narrative. Kristin Lucas’s "Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive" coalesces stress levels, environmental illness, and hypochondria in a humorous meeting between the real and imaginary that surfaces to the skin. In “Lilith,” Steina evokes the mythical first wife of Adam through the performative gestures and facial expressions of painter Doris Cross, whose words and actions are processed towards the inaudible and sublime. Experience an intimate evening of unforgettable close-ups. VIDEO AGAINST VIDEO featuring Buky Schwartz, Tony Conrad, and Manual Saiz, curated by Chris Hughes From its inception, video has been used by artists to explore and expose the medium's own intrinsic properties; while artists such as Nam June Paik and Steina & Woody Vasulka were cracking open the picture tube with their research into process-oriented forms of video, theorists like Martha Rosler and Vito Acconci took on the seductive psychological tactics employed by the mass media. Subsequent generations of artists have ensured questions regarding technical facile-ness and control remain central to the medium. This program presents two videos from the first and second decade of video art production together with a contemporary piece which considers questions raised by the previous works. 1. Buky Schwartz - Videoconstructions, 1978 Complex spatial illusions are created and then dispelled, emphasizing the planar quality of video. A work which links the performative tendency in video art with the process-oriented strain. 2. Tony Conrad - In Line, 1986 Conrad aggressively emphasizes the one-sided relationship between video and viewer, dipping into the mass-media's bag of tricks to control his audience. In the end, we discover the extent of our powerlessness: we can't even demand to be seduced. 3. Manuel Saiz - The Two Teams Team, 2008 Convincing cinematic codes are employed to make the viewer uncertain of their role; high production values elicit a Pavlovian expectation for entertainment, yet the ball is clearly in the artist's court. As two actors discuss the difference between video art and cinema, a metalogue develops. Form and content merge in a consideration of both.
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