MIA screenings + exhibitions

WINGED HOST
25 January 2013 – 8PM

Hazem Berrabah – Devon Johnson
Zach Kleyn – Peter Lichter – Nathan Meier
Stephanie Meredith – Jeremy Moss – Alice Wang
Sasha Waters Freyer – Brooke White

MIA’s first screening of 2013 features ten projects on the theme of memory, WINGED HOST. From schoolboys on a class trip to the experience of Alzheimer’s, a family caught in the Cultural Revolution beside the evidence of a family history minus the people these works from the US, China, Hungary and France/Tunisia each offer a view on a different world.
Brooke White uses x-rays of skulls, combined with photographs and 8mm films bringing the viewer into an Alzheimer’s view of the world in Slices of Clarity (2010).

Sasha Waters Freyer‘s, Our Summer Made Her Light Escape (2012) is a wordless 16mm portrait of interiority, maternal ambivalence and the passage of time, exploring the beauty and quotidian cruelties of the natural world right outside one’s door.

The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness (2012) explores Alice Wang‘s family history painfully entwined with the machinations of the Chinese government’s covert operations during WWII and the backlash which caught them in the 1960s. Through the stories of three generations of women and the revisiting of sites of image production from the Cultural Revolution set in Zhenbeibao Western Film Studio, to the Imperial German Qingdao where the artist’s grandfather grew up, the project is an intimate look at how we see, and how we remember.

Jeremy Moss contemplates ideology and place in Those Inescapable Slivers of Celluloid (2011) attempting to apply memory to moving image.

Stephanie Meredith‘s, White Balloon (2012) recomposes another’s memory: claiming it as her own.

Nathan Meier‘s, Transit (2012) is a spontaneous experimentation of juxtaposed colors and images shot on a solitary spool of film in a single day during the transit of Venus.

Peter Lichter‘s, Kazetta/Cassette (2011) reunites childhood friends through an audio recording from their last class trip in 6th grade.

Zach Kleyn‘s, The Rapture, Remembered: Episode 3: Removing All Trace (Of the Family) (2009) shows every frame of a family’s home video archive which does not contain the presence of people, in chronological order.

Devon Johnson‘s, Noms De Pays (2012) is an exploration of involuntary memory and the photographic image after the writings of Marcel Proust.

Hazem Berrabah’s, Maj’noun (2012), freely inspired by “Layla Maj’noun” by Qays Ibn El Moulawah and “Fou d’Elsa” by Louis Aragon, follows a young dancer searching for his absent lover.

8PM – January 25, 2013
The Armory Center for the Arts
145 N. Raymond Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91103

28 December 2012
FAVORITES
from
ANOTHER EXPERIMENT BY WOMEN FILM FESTIVAL

Alessandra Cianelli – Lori Felker & Robert Todd – Angela Ferraiolo
Sasha Waters Freyer – Matoula Eolou Gekko – Noe Kidder
Sally Grizzell Larson – Ana Rodriguez León – Kelly Oliver
Liliana Resnick – Lynne Sachs & Maya Street-Sachs – Cinzia Sarto
Rebecca Louise Tiernan – Lili White – C & A Projects

For the December screening, MIA has invited the Another Experiment By Women Film Festival (AXWFF), curated by Lili White, to present a selection of the festival’s favorites. The AXWFF promotes the work of women making experimental films with screenings at the Anthology Film Archives in New York city.

Alessandra Cianelli, a native of Naples where the octopus plays a central role, tells the Story of the Story of the Octopus with a Heart-Shaped Head (2009).

A travel show taking the audience to a non-space, Lori Felker & Robert Todd explore the duality of place in The Mirrored Curtain (2011).

Angela Ferraiolo‘s Subway (2011) is an generative montage, assembled by a computer using a variety of algorithms to create the final result.

In You Can See the Sun in Late December (2010) Sasha Waters Freyer films evidence of absence, presence and maternity in cold winter light.

Matoula Eolou Gekko’s This Is A Test Reel (2010) is a series of portraits of strangers on the streets of Athens holding up captions the artist had pre-prepared which unfold the artist’s reaction to the financial crisis.

Using a home-made optical printing technique, Noe Kidder experiments with abstracting the image and her own experience of loss in Paradise (2007).

A repetition of images in equally timed segments lull and seduce in Sally Grizzell Larson‘s Axiom (2010).

Ana Rodriguez León takes the audience on a trip from the past to the future in Bell & Howell 2146 XL (2011).

Xmas in the suburbs is juxtaposed with a line from To Kill A Mockingbird, “There are a lot of ugly things in the world. I wish I could protect you from them.” in Kelly Oliver‘s The Borough (2010).

Through superimposed and repeated motifs, Liliana Resnick‘s INSiDE OUT (2011) shows how a cycle of violence empowers a man by destroying a woman.

Lynne Sachs films her daughter Maya Street-Sachs in Same Stream Twice (2011).

Una Sporca Vacanza (Dirty Vacation) (2005) by Cinzia Sarto joins imagery both documentary and digital to depict humans on vacation, indifferent to the reality surrounding them.

Rebecca Louise Tiernan‘s One Mississippi is a psycho-narrative of four girls playing skipping rhymes in a barren field with a lonesome Scarecrow.

A homage to motherhood, Lili White‘s 8 Happinesses in 8 Minutes at the Park (2011) spends a few minutes of time in a shared space with different species.

The mother-daughter collaboration, C & A Projects (Carolyn Radlo and Alanna Simone) investigate the state of the world in a stop motion animation, and this forest will be a desert (2010) – it’s all about plastic, panic and paradise.

7PM – December 28, 2012
The Armory Center for the Arts
145 N. Raymond Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91103

NOT APPLICABLE
26 October 2012
Peter T. Christenson – Ralph Dorey – Joe Casey Doyle – Clint Enns
CD Howe – Chris Ritson – Leyla Rodriguez – Cristian Straub – s.ara
Toby Tatum – Coalfather Industries (Kara Jansson and Craig Newsom)
The Isle of Lox series from collaborators Leyla Rodriguez & Cristian Straub is represented in two chapters, the first marking the beginning of the travel mysteries and the second celebrating a ritual of blending in to the pink situation.

Chris Ritson’s Tragic Chemistry is concerned with growth and copying. Crystals preserve their formal arrangement as they grow, snap and branch further through new facets. This hereditary copying is the essence of living systems, and often life is defined as that which persists via copying.

I See You from Coalfather Industries (Kara Jansson and Craig Newsom) navigates the uncomfortable conversation between voyeur and exhibitionist that we experience online. The collective web does nothing to ameliorate our loneliness, and functions as little more than a sterile echo chamber where we know more and tell more, but care less. A commentary on the contemporary experience, Jansson and Newsom juxtapose the mundane aspects of everyday life, removing them from their original context to highlight their absurdity.

Peter T. Christenson’s Relational Plane Rich Flight 209 is a “thematically networked narrative,” a consciousness stream fostered through the merging and repurposing of appropriated video footage and found audio segments. Clips were selected based on their similar depictions and presentations of symbolic and economic capital in popular culture and ultimately assembled to create
a fluid storyline.

Joe Casey Doyle molts strands of purple ribbon in I AM MY OWN CHEERLEADER, transforming himself and revealing a purple letterman’s sweater hand-knit from curling ribbon.

Clint Enns’ (e̺͙̟̠̜̰ͅb̠͚͙͓͎b͇̲s̞͍̤͔ͅ ̺a̬̞ͅn̝̦ͅd̳̩͙̯ ͕͔̙f͚̹͉͚̬ͅl̖o̼w̦s͎͓͇) is a meditative video exploring a transition from truth to loving kindness.

Toby Tatum’s The Subterraneans is a series of visions relayed through a heightened consciousness. The views frame the shadowy recesses that offer access to the underworld and draw us closer to the presences that lurk beyond the threshold.

Ralph Dorey’s Pot Healers explores questions of détournement, assimilation and the plane immanence as discussed by two characters engaged in gluing things together.

CD Howe’s Neural Network was created using EEG recordings of the artist’s brain activity in a variety of states. This data was assigned numeric color values and projected onto a standing wave of water which corresponded to the dominant recorded brain wave.

s.ara’s Tape Loading Error is an animation exploring the visual culture of video games and the spread of popular gif files. Magritte’s surrealist paintings give a working platform for modular elements and texture layers that emulate lo-fi quality and bug/glitch images of early computers

MIA presents NOT APPLICABLE
7PM – 26 October 2012
Armory Center for the Arts
145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103

HUMAN ANIMAL
September 28, 2012
Rachelle Beaudoin – Heather Cassils – Lauren Cross
Diane Dwyer – Teri Frame – Sara Holwerda – Jamie Sneider
MIA’s September screening, HUMAN ANIMAL, features performance based video art exploring relationships with the body, sexuality and sculpture. The program will begin with a selection of short performances, followed by a six-part performance documentation, Pre-human, Post-human, Inhuman from Teri Frame where she sculpts clay applied to her own head, transforming herself. The six parts of the performance, Simians, Early Humans, Hybrids, Proportions, Races & Post-humans each explore how Western ideas about the body have changed over time using familiar imagery from both the arts and sciences.
Sara Holwerda‘s Chair Dance II starts as a conventional burlesque-style chair dance which evolves into a exploration of self-defense and dramatized combat. Diane Dwyer‘s Thumb Wars sets the camera on a pair of hands encased in rubber gloves attempting a thumb war while covered in a liquid that makes the scene both visceral and intimate. In Way To Go!, Rachelle Beaudoin does push ups over a cake which she takes a bite of each time her face nears. In The Obsession, Lauren Cross tears at her hair, sculpting it into one style after another, exploring perceptions of beauty. In Mating, Jamie Sneider replicates the mating dance of a male Superb Bird of Paradise (Lophorina superba) wooing its female subject. 

By special arrangement, the screening will also include a modified version of Heather Cassils‘ Fast Twitch/Slow Twitch, part of her larger body of work, Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture in which the artist undertook a regime of body building combined with a specialized diet to sculpt her body to its maximum capacity. The work speaks directly to Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture and Lynda Benglis’ Artforum Magazine intervention while linking them to performative practices associated with the production of hyper-masculine and transgendered bodies.

MIA presents HUMAN ANIMAL
7PM – 28 September 2012
Armory Center for the Arts
145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103

ENDLESS PLAIN
August 24, 2012 – 7PM
Luis Arnías – Nestor Armando Gil – Jonathan Johnson – Michael Kugler
Ann Deborah Levy – Henning Frederik Malz – Dawn Nye – Aaron Oldenburg
Kelly Oliver – Laura Paul – Katrazyna Randall – Keary Rosen – Steven H Silberg
Mark Strandquist – Daniel Terna – Paul Turano – Michael Woody
MIA’s August screening, ENDLESS PLAIN, is a collection of works exploring the varied aspects of the American experience, from meditations on water and place, corporate imperialism, migration and rural poverty, to experimental documentaries dealing with the urban poor, biker culture, the Jonestown massacre and the 2008 financial crisis. ENDLESS PLAIN opens windows onto the personal, political and timeless, each a glimpse of one of the concurrent realities in our contemporary world.  The screening features the work of 17 artists from the United States, Latin America and Europe, culled from submissions received in response to MIA’s open call.

This Must Be The Place (2011) by Luis Arnías, depicts two summertime beach scenes, one far away and one close, both in geography and emotion. A man rows in a bathtub in Nestor Armando Gil‘s Siempre Solos/Never Alone (2011). Jonathan Johnson‘s, Explosions Bring Us Closer Together (2010) is a darkly humorous montage of found footage reflecting on the interconnectivity made possible through technology. The West Coast premiere of WATERCOLORS (2007) by Ann Deborah Levy, is a meditation on the ripples and reflections on the surface of a pond through the passing seasons.
Made entirely from animated film distribution company logos which feature space imagery, John’s Desire (2011) is a sublime reflection on the abyss beyond the screen from Henning Frederik Malz. Dawn Nye & Katrazyna Randall collaborate on a true story told from memory, American Love Story: A Landscape in Sequence (2011). Aaron Oldenburg‘s, Pieces of Jonestown (2010) is a short experimental documentary set at the site of the Jonestown massacre, overlaid with two local men recollecting what little they knew at the time. Second Firing (2010) by collaborative team Kelly Oliver & Keary Rosen, sets manipulated images of Americana under an evolving play on language performed by Rosen. A young man eats a meal in Laura Paul‘s Thursday Night at the KFC on Western (2012). Steven H. Silberg utilizes reductive software which eliminates, frame by frame, all but the moving (new) pixels leaving behind an elegantly subtle meditation in Cape Neddick, Maine – August 2007 (2007). Mark Strandquist is premiering his newest experimental documentary, 10 blocks (2012) which gives voice to the inhabitants of several low-income housing communities located within 10 blocks of the US Capitol building in Washington D.C. Daniel Terna & Michael Kugler focus on South Willimsburg, Brooklyn, where Latino and Jewish communities converge in Before After (2011). In Not Clear Cut (2012) premiering at MIA, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis caused Paul Turano‘s parents to make the difficult decision to harvest 40 acres of hardwood on the family’s land. Michael Woody‘s Arlington (2011), relates stories from 1978-79 in the biker community in Arlington, TX.

STRANGE LOOP
July 27, 2012 – 7PM

Melissa Bruno – Michele Jaquis – Whitney Lynn
Julie Rooney & Jonathan Sokol – Nina Ross

Strange Loop, MIA’s July screening, features five projects dealing with communication and misunderstanding:

Orgasmatique, Dramatique, Horror (2009) is a short performance questioning the portrayal of women and emotion in pornography, melodrama and horror films from Washinton D.C. artist Melissa Bruno.

Los Angeles artist Michele Jaquis envies people who speak multiple languages. Her series, i dream in your language (2010-2012) investigates the experience of seven such people, revealing the complex negotiations they undertake to translate and interpret words and meaning.

San Francisco based Whitney Lynn asks a rabbit (repeatedly) to “sit” for a portrait in Commissioned (After W.W.) (2010).

The Complect Voice (Suite for Birds and Mammals) (2012) attempts to include a variety of animals in a musical collaboration with the artist Julie Rooney & composer Jonathan Sokol, both based in Boulder, CO.

The Foreignness of Language (2011) by Nina Ross explores the disruption of personal identity the artist experienced as she incorporated a second language after leaving Melbourne, Australia to live in Norway.

Armory Center for the Arts
145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103

Inaugural MIA screening
IMPERIUM NATURAE
June 22, 2012 – 7PM

Featuring work by:

Greta Alfaro – Lisa K. Blatt – Karl Cronin
Cynthia Hooper – Kadet Kuhne – Elana Mann – Fette Sans

[download program notes]

Armory Center for the Arts
145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103