• Shikata Ga Nai •

November Virtual Program
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Poli Mito

Alejandra Abad, 1 min 53 sec, video

Synopsis:
Poli Mito, partially based on a Venezuelan folk tale, Poli Mito (Poly Myth) is an animated tale about disobedience and independence. In the original tale, a father from the indigenous Warao tribe orders his daughters to bring light from el dueño de la luz (the keeper of the light). In Poli Mito, the daughter defies her father who orders her to stay in the darkness; instead, she brings light to her people (much like Prometheus), where before there was just darkness. The name “Poli Mito” is a response to the idea of the monomythic hero; while there can be similarities in heroic tales, this tale celebrates diversity and divergence from the status quo. This Short Animation was commissioned by Borscht Corp, (Knight Foundation & Time Warner) First generation Film / NoBRo Zone, it was screened at the Borscht Film Festival 2019.

Artist Bio:
Alejandra Abad was born in Venezuela and partially raised in Florida. She is an interdisciplinary artist with a penchant for dense, fantastical landscapes and abstract shapes. Her style is informed by her studies in Architecture at Florida Atlantic University and in Film, Video, and New Media at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her BFA. In 2018 she received a fellowship at CU Boulder, where she is currently pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices. Currently she is part of the 2020-2021 Engaged Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Scholars cohort at CU Boulder.

Her recent projects feature conceptual and collaborative pieces that work to break down the barriers between artist and audience. She creates honest and symbolic narratives in a visual language that depicts fragmentation, mythology, and folklore. Her installations use analog and digital processes – including painting, animation, sculpture, etc. – to make immersive environments that reflect her identity and values.

The Sea Seeks Its Own Level (After Joyce)

Erin Espelie, 5 min 13 sec, Super 8mm to video

Synopsis:
A distillation of references to the sea in James Joyce's Ulysses, and a tangible look at the material effects of an aging Super8-mm camera.

They are coming, waves, white-maned seahorses, wind brindled.

Drowning they say is the pleasantest. Salt green death, spiked and winding cold seahorn,

music everywhere. No, that's noise . . . The earth convulses in all its glory.

Operatic vocalization: Marika Borgeson

Artist Bio:
ERIN ESPELIE is a writer, editor, and filmmaker, with degrees in molecular and cellular biology from Cornell University and the experimental and documentary arts from Duke University. Her poetic, nonfiction films have shown around the world at the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute's London Film Festival, the Whitechapel Gallery, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Imagine Science Film Festival, and more.

Espelie currently holds an assistant professorship in Cinema Studies and the Moving Image Arts and Critical Media Practices at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she co-founded NEST (Nature, Environment, Science & Technology) Studio for the Arts.

All are from dust, and to dust all return

Lore Loyens, 8 min 21 sec, video

Schermafbeelding 2020-08-02 om 12.19.29.png

Synopsis:
‘All are from dust, and to dust all return’ is a short documentary which gives us an insight in what happens behind the scenes of a crematory.
The video makes us aware of the industrial way we have to say goobye to our loved ones these days.

Warning: Graphic content.

Artist Bio:
Lore Loyens is 19 years old and studies film at the KASK School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium. She has been making videos and audiovisual art for almost all her life.

Lore loves to tell her stories during nighttime. The night puts thoughts and feelings in another, interesting dimension. Experimenting with light and different kinds of sound plays an important role in her work. She loves to play with moonlight and sunlight, reflections and shadows. Her work has an overall dark but poetic atmosphere. Next to this she has a big interesst in the human body, feelings & psychology.

The Seas Advance

Ian Epps, 15 min 16 sec, audio
from Cave of the Eye | 38 min 20 sec
Improvisations recorded and performed by Ian Epps
Mastered by Rashad Becker

Statement:
“By dreams of marine flares
and inflatables, buoyant smoke, percolating fret,
one is weakened. Violence enters the imagination.” 
Bitumen, from The Road In is Not the Same Road Out by Karen Solie

Cave of the Eye is an examination of the preternatural and the advance of collective understanding. It serves as a lens to examine spectres in the psyche, as well as a metaphor for nature and its beautiful violent momentum. Never still and always changing.

Artist Bio:
Ian Epps is a Brooklyn based musician whose work explores immateriality through dense harmonic fields, a full spectrum sound combining room tone and feedback that is hypersensitive in its closeness while expansive in a drift of indeterminacy. Allowing the physical sound and the dynamics of the room to influence the shape of the unfolding acoustics, the room is played as an instrument.

 His compositions, soundtracks and field recordings have been exhibited in museums and institutions internationally at venues including MoMA PS1, Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, Gagosian, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Walker Art Center, Wexner Center for the Arts, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, LoveBytes (UK) and Carré d’Art – Musée d’art Contemporain.  He has composed, collaborated and performed alongside artists and musicians such as Ann Hamilton, Dara Friedman, Rafael Toral, Mountains, Jozef van Wissem, Joe McPhee, and Pauline Oliveros. He is a recipient of the 2014 New York State Council on the Arts Media Arts Assistance Grant and has released music on Tomlab/ Softlmusic (Germany), Grain of Sound (Portugal), Baskaru (France), Powershovel Audio (Japan), and Unframed Recordings (United States) as well as others.

He has composed, collaborated and performed alongside artists and musicians such as Ann Hamilton, Dara Friedman, Rafael Toral, Mountains, Jozef van Wissem, Joe McPhee, and Pauline Oliveros. He is a recipient of the 2014 New York State Council on the Arts Media Arts Assistance Grant and has released music on Tomlab/ Softlmusic (Germany), Grain of Sound (Portugal), Baskaru (France), Powershovel Audio (Japan), and Unframed Recordings (United States) as well as others.

Cuerpos de Agua (Bodies of Water)

Alejandra Abad, 4 min 33 sec, Animation

Synopsis:
“Cuerpos de Agua,” (“Bodies of Water”) is a reference to how life changes and we move from one place to another, we should all be able to relate to each other, since we are all largely made of water. The animation begins with a cyanotype I made from a negative of an old photograph of my grandfather and grandmother at the beach with my mom and my uncles. The changing cyanotypes are made from pieces that I cut. This stop-motion process was inspired by the formal experimentation of John Cage’s performance 4:33. Later the cyanotypes prints were made from negatives, paper laser cuts as well as hand made arrangements .

Artist Bio:
Alejandra Abad was born in Venezuela and partially raised in Florida. She is an interdisciplinary artist with a penchant for dense, fantastical landscapes and abstract shapes. Her style is informed by her studies in Architecture at Florida Atlantic University and in Film, Video, and New Media at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her BFA. In 2018 she received a fellowship at CU Boulder, where she is currently pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices. Currently she is part of the 2020-2021 Engaged Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Scholars cohort at CU Boulder.