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(im)Permanent Landscapes: Film Screenings

(im)Permanent Landscapes: Film Screenings

(im)Permanent Landscapes
Screening: Sunday April 24th, 2016, 6-8pm

Terrault Contemporary Gallery
1515 Guilford Ave. Baltimore, MD 21202
www.terraultcontemporary.com
(336) 707-5511

Curated by Sarah G. Sharp

Artists: Cathy C. Cook, Ariel Jackson, Carolyn Lambert, Jaimes Mayhew, Megan Michalak, Joe Reinsel, Christine Stiver.

Presented by SVA Art Practice.

(im)Permanent Landscapes brings together video work by seven contemporary artists who address landscape and place in complex political and personal terms. These single-channel works range broadly from poetic re-combinations of natural imagery, historic narrative and “mundane” travel photos to an interstellar testimonial and DIY proposals for energy production. Together, they complicate accepted narratives surrounding social histories in relation to concrete and imagined public spaces.

Immortal Cupboard – In Search of Lorine Niedecker (2009), Cathy Cook
16mm Film transferred to Video, 15 min. (excerpted from 77min. feature-length film.)
Living for years in isolation poet Lorine Niedecker chose what many would consider a simple existence. But her dedication to the “mechanics of everyday life” has resulted in a posthumous body of work so rich and complex that literary circles now position her as the 20th century’s Emily Dickinson. Taking cues from Niedecker’s work and the Wisconsin heritage they share, award-winning filmmaker Cathy Cook has combined original live-action footage, animation, archival images, and the poet’s only audio interview, bringing new life to Niedecker’s ruminations on nature, ecology, gender, domesticity, work, culture, family, and social politics

The Origin of the Blues (2015), Ariel Jackson
Single Channel Video, 4:17 minutes
3-D compositing - Godfrey Hibbert
Viewers are guided through The Origins of the Blues by Confuserella, the artist’s performative alter ego. Confuserella provides a firsthand account of the journey from her fictional home of Panfrika to Earth, a voyage she undertook to unpack and understand the blues.

Solastalgia: Permanent Landscape (2015), Carolyn Lambert
Single Channel Video, 11 min.
Deferring a singular narrative or conclusive point of view, Permanent Landscape is a fragmented nature film, motivated by a desire to compose an alternative to popular narratives around the specter of climate change and extinction. A multi-vocal narration traverses desire, anxiety, concepts of nature, agency, and the future alongside a montage of insects, bodies, and real and simulated landscapes.

GIFS by Jaimes Mayhew
Relations (2012) is a series of animated GIFS that explore relationships between humans-as-consumer and landscape-as-consumed. In Energy for the Land/Energy From the Land, Mayhew uses a bicycle to generate electricity, powering a grow light for moss, while a geothermal plant makes electricity in the background. Human-Powered Paper Turbine (East Iceland) is an animated paper model based on a controversial hydroelectric station in East Iceland, and I am Generating Power is a tableau image of a performance of electricity production.

Coming Full Circle with The Empire (2011), Megan Michalak
Super 8 Transferred to Video, 2:12 min.
Coming Full Circle with The Empire examines cycles of boom and bust as told by Portugal, one of the first colonial empires, and recent European countries to collapse under “Austerity” measures resulting from the European Financial Crisis. Interviews with Novelist, Historian, and Journalist Pedro Rosa Mendes narrate undiscussed histories surrounding the 45 year Salazar Dictatorship, the Colonial Wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, and waves of Portuguese emigration that resulted from these events.

Sans Titre: (Contradiction Française) (2015), Megan Michalak
Single Channel Video, 5:14 min.
Sans Titre: (Contradiction Française) is an examination of some of the harsher realities surrounding immigrant communities that have emerged in France in recent years, often referred to as the “French Contradiction.” Shot in July 2014, just as Paris banned protest or public assembly in solidarity with the people of Gaza, even though Gaza was under siege. The video follows a path through the remains of the Morroccan and Tunisian Pavilions at the 1907 Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale, the Louvre, and the surrounding urban area in Paris in the aftermath of public reaction to the ban on protest. The work evokes the tapestry of influences contributing to present day tensions surrounding immigration in France.

Lim. 1 (2009), Joe Reinsel
Single Channel Video, 3:44 min
Reinsel takes us on multi-layered journey, where sound moves in opposition to imagery, producing increasing levels of tension, bringing the viewer directly into the work. Reinsel uses a series of sequences from still photographic images taken in Quito, Ecuador for the video component and produced the music for Lim. 1 using field recordings of naturally found sounds as source material. Reinsel uses an audio processing software that he created to sculpt and compose the original soundtrack.

Threshold Circuit (2009), Joe Reinsel
Single Channel Video, 3:38 min
A “threshold circuit” in technical terms, uses electrical voltage to overcome it’s own make-up by increasing voltage through the circuit and changing the flow of electricity. While these may be short lived moments, they are physical changes in the circuits own makeup. Threshold Circuit uses the errant noise in electrical circuits as an analogy to describe frustration, debasement and transcendence.

GIFS by Christine Stiver
Stiver’s series of GIFs (2015) takes sculptural objects through a transformation from genial to sinister via a non-linear narrative thread.

About:
Sarah G. Sharp is an artist and curator whose studio practice and research cuts across and brings together her interests in alternative social histories, language, landscape and craft. She holds an MFA and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism & Theory from Purchase College, SUNY. Sharp is the recipient of a Getty Library Research Grant, a BRIC Arts Media Fellowship, residency awards at ESKFF at Mana Contemporary, Cortijada Los Gázquez in Almeria, Spain and the The Vermont Studio Center. Exhibitions include The Aldrich Museum, Real Art Ways, Hampden Gallery at UMass Amherst and Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NY. She is Assistant Professor in Visual Art at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in Baltimore and faculty in the Art Practice MFA Program at School of Visual Arts in New York. Sarah lives and works in Brooklyn and Baltimore.www.sarahgsharp.net

Cathy C. Cook has been creating films, videos, poetry films, animation, collages and installations since the early 1980’s. Cook's new project, Cranes in Motion, takes her to the largest migration locations for Sandhill Cranes and Whooping Cranes. IMMORTAL CUPBOARD: In Search of Lorine Niedecker won a Jury Award at the 2009 Wisconsin Film Festival and was nominated for the Best of Documentary at the 2010 Beloit International Film Festival. Cook has exhibited her award-winning work extensively in both solo and group shows including screenings at MOMA and the Whitney Museum. In 2001, Cook was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Currently she is an Associate Professor in Visual Arts at The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Whenever possible she takes in nature, on a small lake in Wisconsin with her dog Zippy. www.cathycook.info

Ariel Jackson is a multi-media artist who works and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She grew up in New Orleans, LA and after experiencing Hurricane Katrina began using her body as a vessel to testify about sociopolitical traumas and situations. Jackson earned a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York 2013. She participated in the Bruce High Quality Foundation University’s Summer Emerging Artist Residency Program in 2015, and is currently a Van Lier Fellow in the Visual Arts Program at Wave Hill. Jackson’s work has been shown at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Bronx Museum, Susan Inglett Gallery in New York and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.www.arielrenejackson.com

Carolyn Lambert’s videos, objects, and installations have been exhibited and produced at venues such as the SculptureCenter, Exit Art, Flux Factory, Studio for Creative Inquiry, Pittsburgh, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Michigan. She is currently part of the Open Sessions Program of the Drawing Center, and based in NYC.www.carolynlambert.com

Christine Stiver is a Baltimore City visual artist and educator. Her practice includes interdisciplinary sculpture and performance that asks the audience to reposition their relationship to the media environment. The interchange between domestic space, benign objects and casual fear is currently consuming her practice as a series of ritual garments and induction ceremonies. Christine is a graduate of The Ohio State University’s Art Education program, received her teaching license from Towson University and is an MFA candidate in Art Practice Graduate Program at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. www.christine-stiver.squarespace.com

Jaimes Mayhew is an artist, organizer and educator. His artwork is often collaborative, interdisciplinary, and based in conceptual research of social and cultural phenomena. His work has been shown both nationally and internationally. Mayhew has received awards from The Fulbright Commission, Maryland State Arts Council, and Provisions Library. His work has been published in Art Papers, Undercurrents Journal, Baltimore City Paper and the Boston Globe. He is the Co-Director of Life After Boring Studios, a Baltimore based artist and curator’s residency. Jaimes was recently awarded a commission for a collaborative project with Rahne Alexander at the Baltimore Museum of Art. www.enginesofthefuture.com

Megan Michalak is a transmedia artist currently living in Barcelona, Spain. Inspired by William Burrough's statement, “If you cut into the present, the future leaks out,” Megan Michalak’s work is a public invitation. She asks: if we, the public, held the historical-record hostage, what would the ransom note say? What would get reinserted? Her international exhibits include: Lisbon Architecture Triennale, 2nd Moscow Biennale, Galarie Titanik, D’Art Contemporain Frac Languedoc-Roussillon, Bronx Museum, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Yerba Buena, Artists Space, & Smack Mellon Gallery; with screenings in film/video festivals in France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, & Brazil. https://vimeo.com/meganmichalak

Joe Reinsel uses media, video, and sound to explore ideas about architectural space, time, and touch. His creative work continues to considers interaction and the environment and each work investigates different facets of communication such as video work for public installation,
collective storytelling, and interactive exhibitions. He is the recipient of grants from The Flint Public Art Project, International Society of Electronic Arts, Maryland State Arts Council, Baltimore Museum of Art, New York State Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Baltimore City Office of Promotion and the Arts, and University of Michigan among others. He has presented work in thirteen countries on four continents at venues such as Museum of Contemporary Art(Chile), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Ars Electronica, Centro Cultural São Paulo (Brazil), Centro Cultural de España(Mexico), ZeroOne, and SIGGRAPH.
http://www.joereinsel.org/

MFA Art Practice at the School of Visual Arts is an expansive low-residency, interdisciplinary graduate program founded on the belief that artists need not be defined by their use of materials or chosen platforms. The program offers experienced artists an opportunity to deepen their studio practice and develop an advanced body of work under the guidance of some of the world’s foremost artists and critics in the heart of New York City’s Chelsea gallery district.

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Sunday, April 24, 2016, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Free

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