Virtual Landscapes:  aTravel Through

// Friday, April 7th, 2017 // 7:00 PM // Woodland Pattern Book Center //
// 720 E Locust St Milwaukee, WI 53212 //

58 bpm (2013)

Joana Stillwell, 1 min, digital

The personal phenomenon of a heartbeat becomes a precariously shared experience. This was originally a looping three-channel piece, but in this version each becomes a singular episode.

Artist Bio:
Joana Stillwell was born in the Philippines and grew up around the Pacific in Hawaii, Japan, Guam, and Washington. She works in video and other materials exploring everyday phenomena with meditative gestures. She is interested in the capacity for technology, especially video, to create moments of sustained attention. By combining the commonplace and banal – elements that root us in our material world, with video – an extension of self, she explore ideas of a tangible consciousness as it relates to ritual, routine, objects of direct experience, and a nonlinear approach to time. She graduated with a BA in Art History and a BFA in Photomedia from the University of Washington in 2012. She currently lives and works in Richmond, Virginia pursuing her MFA in Kinetic Imaging.

The Negotiation (2013)

Lilli Carré, 6 min 27 sec, digital

Originally created as a 2-channel installation, this version places the two ever-morphing beings side by side, in a phased conversation that never resolves itself.

Artist Bio:
Lilli Carré currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Her animated films have shown in festivals throughout the US and abroad, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Animator Festival Poznan Poland, The Ann Arbor Film Festival, International Festival Rotterdam, and the Punto y Raya Film Festival. In 2010 she co-founded the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, which is held annually in Chicago, LA, and NYC, with additional curated programs presented internationally throughout the year. Her comics and illustration work has appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Best American Comics and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Solo exhibitions of her drawing, animation, and sculpture were recently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Western Exhibitions, and the Columbus Museum of Art. She has an MFA in Art Theory & Practice from Northwestern University and a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In Addition to Everything Real (2015)

Molly Palmer, 5 min 27 sec, video

In Addition to Everything Real is about two lifts in the lobby of a building. Only it's not about lifts, or buildings - and to say it's 'about' any thing is not quite right. There are objects and activities that are so ordinary that they're absorbed and held physically. We know them in a different way - on an unconscious level that hovers below language and description. This is an embodied knowledge that comes before the appearance of things as components of a rational 'real' world. Their presence is so commonplace that it is felt, not thought - we can move among them in the dark and in our sleep. The small blank moments when movement is instinctive and thoughts shift out of focus are when unknowable non-things start to leak into daily routine. They accumulate in intricate arrangements, like a magic eye puzzle that moves and grows. Sometimes in these unremarkable moments - between what is fixed and known - the mind becomes blurred in just the right way to glimpse what is hidden behind.

Artist Bio:
Molly Palmer is a London-based artist who works within and between the media of music, installation, choreography and filmmaking. Using handmade props, sets and costumes to produce layered video worlds, she green-screens her protagonists into parallel places, where music, gesture and dialogue form cyclical narratives that explore the strangeness concealed within ordinary things.

Palmer graduated from Royal Academy Schools this year, where she won the Gold Medal. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Sirens, The Surround Sound Artists Project curated by David Gryn for Art Basel Miami Beach, New World Centre, Miami Electric Blue, film program curated by Maria do Carmo de Pontes, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil, Not of This Earth, film program curated by Herb Shellenberger, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo NY, Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, RA Schools Show 2016, Royal Academy, London, Talk So I can See You, curated by Pil & Galia for the Czech Cultural Foundation, London, Mono 5, curated by Rafal Zajko at The Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton, Bikini Wax, Mexico City and MUPU, Oaxaca, Premiums, Royal Academy, London and The Fade, touring solo show at CCA, Glasgow, Enclave, London and Torna, Istanbul.

Estrin Tide's Metaphysical Hacking Tutorial (2016)

Rachel Stuckey, 8 min 45 sec, video

The demands of a hyper-employed, 21st century lifestyle have led Estrin Tide to feel frustratingly inadequate. She’s a 9-to-5 library IT employee and a 5-to-9 transhumanist, YouTube vlogger, forum moderator, gamer, and synth-loving New Age hacker who sleeps hyper-polyphasically (15s every 3m!) to keep up with it all. In her Metaphysical Hacking Tutorial, Estrin teaches how you can mentally tap into the subtle energies of WiFi in just a few easy steps.

Artist Bio:
Rachel Stuckey is an artist based in Austin, Texas. She received her MFA in Transmedia Studio Arts from the University of Texas in 2016, and her BFA in Filmmaking from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is hyper-employed as Director of Speculative Futures at The Museum of Human Achievement in Austin and Director of The Welcome to my Homepage Digital Artist Residency Program.
Her work has shown in Houston, Nashville, Chicago, Providence, New York, San Fransisco, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Prague, Ljubljana, and elsewhere. She has recently been artist-in-residence at Media Archaeology Lab in Boulder, CO and Signal Culture in Owego, NY.

60 bpm (2012)

Joana Stillwell, 1 min, digital

The personal phenomenon of a heartbeat becomes a precariously shared experience. This was originally a looping three-channel piece, but in this version each becomes a singular episode.

Raymond (2015)

Nina Yuen, 11 min 24 sec, video

Yuen asks her father to name all the people he knows who have died.  She pairs each name with a branch, a seed, a flower, or an organic fragment that has fallen to the street in a rainstorm.  The names describe the history of immigration to Hawaii through the sugar cane plantations that brought Yuen's ancestors to the islands.  The plants are also migrants: they came to Hawaii in the jet stream, a high elevation wind corridor that carries species over the oceans for thousands of miles.

Artist Bio:
Nina Yuen (b. 1981, Hawaii) received her BA from Harvard University, her MFA from Bard College, and completed a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Exhibitions include An Imaginary Relationship with Ourselves, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Oregon; Performance, Manifestacao Internacional, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; De-narrations, PanAmerican Art Projects, Miami, Florida; The Sky Within My House, Contemporary Art Patios, Cordoba, Spain, Lucid Dreaming, Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands, Children’s Biennial, Kaap, Utrecht, Netherlands, Junk, Moscow International Biennial for Young Art, Moscow, Russia, Never Done This Before, Delicatessen Zeeburg, Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Contact 2016: Foreign and Familiar, Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI.

79 bpm (2012)

Joana Stillwell, 1 min, digital

The personal phenomenon of a heartbeat becomes a precariously shared experience. This was originally a looping three-channel piece, but in this version each becomes a singular episode.

Stille dag (Silent Day) (2012)

Aleksander Johan Andreassen, 7 min 52 sec, HD video

The video follows the artist’s mother for 24 hours from a fixed position using time-lapse photography. The audio consists of two edited conversations between the artist and his mother about her passive lifestyle and the effect it has on their relation.

Artist Bio:
Aleksander Johan Andreassen is a Norwegian artist and filmmaker living in Oslo. His works have been screened at exhibitions and film festivals worldwide. Aleksander has also done video design for theatre plays as well as cinematography for stop motion film. He holds a BFA from Bergen Academy of Art and Design in Bergen, Norway and an MFA from Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden.

Work With Me (2005)

Thad Kellstadt & Ben Kinsley, 10 min 15 sec, video documentation of live performance

Work With Me was a collaboration between Ben Kinsley, Jeremy Boyle (who designed the soundtrack) and myself. It was made for a show of the same title where 10 different artists collaborated with 2 other artists in the exhibition. The idea was based on a music box toy that Ben had found that had a scrolling image of a village or town. The waltz that runs throughout is the theme song from the film "Around the World in Eighty Days”. All of the photo collages were made without Photoshop shortcuts.

Thanks to Jesse McLean and John Pena for their help with the performance.

Artist Bio:
Thad Kellstadt is a multi-disciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture and video. His work is inspired by archetypal imagery, folk art and utopian architecture and uses both formal restrictions and chance operations to create imaginary spaces that play with ideas of perception. He has shown nationally and internationally at a variety of venues including Space 1026, Philadelphia, PA; Secret Project Robot, NYC; Heaven Gallery & MCA, Chicago, IL; Alice Gallery, Brussels; Cell Project Space, London; SPACE, Pittsburgh, PA; Contemporary Art Museum & Lump Gallery, Raleigh, NC; The Ski Club, Milwaukee, WI. and screened work at PDX Film Festival, Portland, OR; CPHDOX, Copenhagen; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; MUFF, Milwaukee, WI; Acid Rain Televised Video Art Series, Brooklyn, NY and The Wood Street Galleries, PGH, PA.

Kellstadt lives and works in Milwaukee, WI

PEMEX (from PARAALLEGORIES) (2013-2015)

Adela Goldbard, 5 min 3 sec, 4K video

ON PARAALLEGORIES:
Series composed by 8 narratives (in both video and photography) that resort on reenactment and the construction (and destruction) of ephemeral sculptures in collaboration with artisans from Tultepec (the outskirts of Mexico City). The life-size vehicles, facades and objects made of cardboard and reeds refer to events that made the news in the Mexican media because of their violence, protest, dissidence or repression. Each effigy is loaded with a specific symbolism: for example, the Lobo pickup truck stands as an icon of drug trafficking while Oxxo stores become symptoms of capitalism. The ephemeral structures and artifacts blend with real cars and suburban landscapes, while the handcrafted nature of the objects contrasts with the technical quality of the videos and photographs. The ambiguous character of these staged protests reflects on the corrupt nature of reality, in both political and ontological terms.
Cinematography: Alex Albert
Sound Design: Daniel Goldaracena
Set construction and pyrotechnics: Osvaldo Urtado and Sánchez Olvera family

Artist Bio:
Adela Goldbard (Mexican, b. 1979) lives and works in Chicago and Mexico City. Goldbard is an artist and filmmaker who believes in the political power of art to generate critical thinking and social transformation. She is interested in questioning the politics of memory by suspecting archeological preservation, official history, mass media, and popular culture. Her work includes photography, video, sculpture, text, public actions and immersive installations, and is research-based: archival research (historical documents, newspapers, etc.) and ethnographic research (including participant observation and interviewing) are extremely strong components of her practice. Influenced by current reflections on the conflation of aesthetics and ethnography, Goldbard challenges traditional documentary and mainstream cinema by re-enacting history and by performing unrepeatable actions for the camera allowing the uncontrolled to happen, always with a subtle amount of parody and dark humor. She investigates possible connections among collaborative filmmaking and public sculpture by collectively building, staging and importantly, destroying, incorporating a critical perspective on the exploitation of land and labor.
Goldbard is a member of the National System of Artistic Creators of Mexico since 2015. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Language and Literature from the National University of Mexico and is currently completing her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was granted the New Artist Society Scholarship. Her work has been exhibited in Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Spain, Philippines, Russia, Argentina, Canada, USA, and widely in Mexico.