Artists Bios for DIRGES AND STURGEONS
curated and introduced by Astria Suparak
for Anthology Film Archives

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ARTISTS BIOS

Animal Charm. By re-editing sounds and images derived from a wide variety of sources, ANIMAL CHARM scrambles media codes, creating a kind of tic-ridden, convulsive montage, their disruptive gestures often re-investing conventional forms with subversive meanings.

Lawrence Elbert has made almost 100 fims and videos. 'In whichever role he is playing - director, producer, editor or writer - Lawrence is a collaborator.' Elbert continues his mockumentaries BEHIND THE TRUE BIOGRAPHY (including behind-the-scenes look at Dionne Warwick and Whitney Houston) with BEHIND THE TRUE BIOGRAPHY: BJORK AND THE MAKING OF DANCER IN THE DARK. Lawrence lives in Los Angeles.

For more on Mario Gardner, star of Lawrence Elbert's "Whitney: Mama's Little Baby", see here.

"Pierre Yves Clouin, a controversial video artist, creates challenging films, usually involving the body and its distortions. Clouin has mastered his skills of innuendo and metamorphosis. In less than five years, Clouin has produced nineteen short films, several of which have received awards in film festivals around the world." - Cinematexas International Short Film + Video Festival

Jacqueline Goss began making films and videotapes as a student at Brown University and earned her M.F.A. in Electronic Arts from Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in 1997. She currently lives in upstate New York and teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College.

Miranda July (born in Barre, Vermont, 1974) makes performances, movies, recordings and combinations of these things. Her work has been presented globally in spaces such as the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Guggenheim Museum, International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2002 Whitney Biennial. In 1995 she founded Joanie 4 Jackie, a movie distribution network for independent women moviemakers. She recently launched two on-going web-based collaborations. She is currently working on a feature-length movie, short stories, and a new performance. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

For the past three years July has collaborated with DJ and sound artist Zac Love; Love has composed live and recorded soundtracks for both the movies and live performances.

Bjørn Melhus is a filmmaker and video artist who creates short, cyclic fairy tales about movie myths, new media, eternal childhood, cloning and split personalities. Most of his work uses sound excerpts from TV or pop music, rhythmically assembled into new dialogues and redubbed by different characters, all embodied by Melhus himself. These creatures are not gender-specific and remain in a suspended state, a threshold that they can't overcome. Coming from the generation of a 'first TV-childhood' in Germany, Melhus makes uses of different phenomena related to TELE-VISION: the apparatus of identification, the mirror of doubles and multiplication of an electronic virtual life.

Seth Price is a writer and music producer who lives in Queens. "New York Woman", a band he produced, made their debut at MoMA this spring. He has been working with video since 1995, and his tapes have screened internationally, at venues including MoMA, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Rotterdam Film Festival. His work will be showing at the Stefan Stux Gallery this fall. A travel guide will be published by Random House this spring.

Curator: Astria Suparak (born in Los Angeles, CA, 1978) is based in New York. She curates site-specific shows for art spaces, alternative film festivals and theatres, music venues and bands. She then brings the shows to different audiences and venues including microcinemas, bars, living rooms, galleries, schools, churches. In 1997 she developed a twice-weekly multimedia series at Pratt Institute of Art and Design in Brooklyn. She has put together shows for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Anthology Film Archives, The Knitting Factory, The New York Underground Film Festival, Ladyfest, and the improvisational musical group The Boxhead Ensemble. Her videotape compilation Some Kind of Loving, produced by the alternative distribution network Joanie 4 Jackie, was released in 2000. She is currently on her sixth tour in two years. When at home alone she works on an upcoming show of drawings and projection.

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contact a@astriasuparak.com for more information
or see http://www.astriasuparak.com

PO Box 1813, Stuyvesant Station
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