Program
Notes for Keep In
Touch!
curated by Astria
Suparak with Lauren Cornell
for The New
York Underground Film Festival 2002
>
Press
>
Tour Dates
Keep In Touch!
|
>>>Re-enactments
and (r)evolution. “I thought I was the next Messiah.” Yeah, I’ve been
working on our fake naturalism- the glum gestures of love and natural
selection; artificial intelligence, learned behavior, replacements, endangered
species. Isolation vs. intimacy, so precious. Making the wrong choices,
and the power of denial. My mimesis/ mitosis. Stay Real, ‘K? |
It's
the tension between being so close, and not even really at all, just believing
in something that looks like you. You do look so good against this century's
haze. But it's not enough just to see you. I want to be there too. Young
people always forward! lc |
(The
following line-up was how this program screened in NYC, but it might be slightly
altered for screenings outside of NY.)
1) Dear Auntie
[World Premiere]
Matt Wolf. Film to Video. Loop.
“An exquisitely plain woman sits in front of the imposing lens and thick bellows
of a Victorian camera as her flinching eyes snap the shutter of gender-bending
family memory.” –M.W.
2) Untitled.
Zakery Weiss. Video.
4:30.
The artifice of artsy Arte: “So it happens like this. You're seated in a dark
room. Your eyes are closed. When you open them you are greeted by an endless
blue field of light. You are everything and everything is a lie. But you take
it all to be true.” –Z.W.
3) Triumf
Seth Price. Video.
15:00 excerpt of 60 minute work.
“An old drinking buddy of Ronald Reagan's paused for a moment by his rural log
cabin. The sun was at its zenith. In the sudden stillness one could hear the
buzz of dying junebugs and the mournful trilling of August's last tree-frog:
Autumn was on her way. The breeze was laden with the rich smells of dark loam
and decaying leaves. He squinted against the pale October sun. It would only
be a month or so before his old friend's legacy would be borne out by the highest
court in the land. He shook his head slightly, a smile playing over his rough-hewn
features, and took up his axe: he had a great deal of wood to split before dusk.”
–S.P.
4) Have A Nice Day Alone
Leslie Thornton. Video.
7:00.
Inverted A.I. with a technological, nervous twitch and a customized cosmic brand.
“A number of subjects gazed continually into the light...”
5) El Güero [NY
Premiere]
Jim Finn. Film on Video. 2:40 min.
Love and communism: “Three sing-alongs with a white rat, a red t-shirt and the
cowboy music of the Mexican Sinatra.” –J.F.
6) The Drifters, excerpts: Good Together; The Fruit
Miranda July. Audio.
Approximately 1:00- 3:30.
“These are selections from 20 short recordings Miranda made for the elevator
in the Whitney Museum, currently playing there as part of the Whitney Biennial.
This is what they were saying when you couldn't quite hear, it was all about
adults loving other people's children, risks taken with disastrous results and
women aging suddenly.” –M.J.
7) The 100th Undone
Jacqueline Goss. Video.
Silent. 9:00.
A love letter of sorts, The 100th Undone considers the individual in the age
of biotechnical reproduction. Using outdated video equipment, Goss' tape takes
on the textures of analog media in order to write a personalized pre-history
for human clones.
8) Ce qui est fait le mal est fait [NY
Premiere]
Messieurs Delmotte. Video. 4:00.
“What would happen if you were to go into your neighbour’s house without their
authorisation, in order to kiss them on the mouth, and ended up really doing
it? …This is not a performance and even less a good idea.” –M.D. Mystery artist
“Monsieur Delmotte” performs silent-movie hijinks with disregard for dignity
and limb.
9) Dogs [NY Premiere]
Stephanie Barber. 16mm Film. 15:00.
“a mini revolution. wrong choices. divorce of the ethereal beauty and mystery
so common in experimental film, in my films. what begins as awkward or ‘tender’
unfolds itself to show a deceptive, strangely rigid, formalism commented by
the content… hyper-reflexivity. art and love and the role faith plays in each…
this film requires a great deal of faith, because it is strange and labile.
its device-ness is so apparent as to have left it naked, and then so naked as
to be, perhaps, closed again (so that it is possible i have lied about the divorce).”
–S.B.
10) The Drifters, excerpts: The Star; Night Blindness
Miranda July. Audio.
Approximately 2:00- 3:30.
11) No Sunshine
Bjorn Melhus. Video.
6:15.
A short story about new bodies, the power of denial and a state of no sunshine.
A glance over the shoulder means destruction. The soundtrack is sourced from
Stevie Wonder songs and the musings of a pre-teen Michael Jackson.
For more information contact:
a@astriasuparak.com
PO Box 1813 New York, NY 10009
www.astriasuparak.com