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New Media Caucus
Luis Macias’s expanded cinema performance Spectral Landscape launches this program of recent experimental films that includes a film found in space; recent research achievements; elusive spirits; sister portraiture; a mysterious protagonist; a wrecked 19th century paddleboat; seemingly motionless things; the edge of the bridge; and an anonymous character in perpetual free fall.
Spectral Landscape (In-Person Only)
Luis Macias
Barcelona, Spain | 2016–ongoing | 11 | 4 x 35mm slide projectors + external shutter
A Landscape. Without color and movement. Only a Landscape.
“At that beautiful moment between reality and
dreaming, an incorporeal animal emerges from
the darkness and light. Dark, violent and self-
assured, it shares its fears of nature’s
despair. But don’t be afraid—it’s an animal
just like you. Did you see it? Wake up. Open
your eyes.”
The Silver Reel
Josh Gibson
Durham, NC | 2022 | 24 | 4K Video
WORLD PREMIERE
A film reel found in space amidst the wreckage of a 20th-century space probe. The film itself was unwound in space, exposed to radiation and space dust. Who sent it and what was its purpose? Some speculate that in the scarred geography of the damaged frames is a first contact.
Tunable Mimoid
Vladimir Todorovic
Perth, Australia | 2021 | 7 | 4K Video
Scientists have discovered the unique ability of an extraterrestrial organism (mimoid) to regenerate after being exposed to harmful man-made radiation waves. This video was produced for the general public in order to promote the benefits of extraterrestrial studies on the Sustain Earth initiative.
Of this Beguiling Membrane
Charlotte Pryce
Los Angeles, CA | 2020 | 5 | 4K Video
The story unfolds on the Eve of Midsummer: on the day when the threshold between worlds is porous, and an idle gesture can tempt fate. Inspired by Robert Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth (1671), this work takes the outward form of a nature film. But observation gives way to illusion and the surface gives way to murky waters strewn with debris of those who have succumbed to its lures.
two sisters
Magdalena Bermudez
Milwaukee, WI | 2021 | 8 | HD Video
WORLD PREMIERE
A history of sister portraiture is reanimated by nascent datasets, as portraits dodge derogatory categories by paradoxically inhabiting both one and multiple bodies.
The Hairy Notion of a Green Afternoon
Susanne Deeken
London, UK | 2021 | 6 | HD Video
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
A mysterious protagonist emerges from elemental energies, leading us on her sensational journey. She (the “Ur-Frau”) is a mysterious force, ever-changing, responding to, and even becoming, her encounters with nature. A story of emotion: felt, rather than told, where the original score pulsates expressively with the visuals’ rhythm, breathing and oozing nature’s forms and wonders.
Congress
Kyath Battie
Regina, Canada | 2020 | 4 | HD Video
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
Mediated under flight and wing, possible collective memories are represented through a prism of vast tundra landscapes, a wrecked 19th-century paddle boat, and ancient lichen fields. Time, place, and history become nostalgic remnants from the Yukon Territory.
under the microscope
Michaela Grill
Montreal, Canada | 2021 | 7 | HD Video
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
In her glittering remontage of science films from the 1920s, Michaela Grill does not spread out catalogs of motifs, but aims straight at the fascination of these recordings: their value as educational material was never neatly separated from their aesthetic appeal as a pure cinematic spectacle.
That Was When I Thought I Could Hear You
Matt Whitman
West Chester, PA | 2021 | 9 | 16mm film
That Was When I Thought I Could Hear You on petals, on fire, and on the edge of the bridge.
Incomplete
Dalena Tran
Los Angeles, CA | 2021 | 4 | HD Video
Has the future already happened?