February 2009 Archives

Chicago-based filmmaker Deborah Stratman will be at REDCAT tonight to show some new experimental works, including a 50-minute exploration of American patriotism called O'er the Land. The film moves through a series of vignettes depicting particularly American activities, shot with poetic languor, as if Stratman were a curious and respectful visitor fascinated by the odd habits and rituals of everyday life. These segments are dramatically interrupted, however, by the gripping story of Colonel William Rankin, a pilot whose jet failed while 47,000 feet above Earth in 1959; forced to eject, Rankin was tossed about in a thunderstorm such that his downward tumble took nearly 45 minutes. He managed to open his parachute, but all in all, the trip was harrowing. But why does this quiet film suddenly shift gears? What is the relationship between the serene, keenly observed portraits and this riveting story?

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The Hammer Museum is currently home to a 65-minute animated video titled What Manner of Person Art Thou?" by Erin Cosgrove. It's an anachronistic allegory about two fervent believers, Elijah Yoder and Enoch Troyer, who traipse from one realm of belief into others, subduing anyone they think irreverent along the way. Seemingly set in the distant past, the story suddenly lurches into the present as the two young men encounter a string of characters and question their conflicting beliefs. With a visual style that veers between lush and simple, psychedelic and hand-made, the apocalyptic mash-up of Biblical stories and South Park episodes deals with very real issues, albeit orthogonally, and highlights the peculiar genius of another LA-based artist. Who is Erin and how did this animated project come about?

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I've been researching different kinds of storytelling using various "screens," and stumbled across Erik Loyer's new project Ruben & Lullaby for the iPhone. Erik is an LA-based artist who works with interactive multimedia; he collaborates with scholars to create dynamic, interactive projects for the online journal Vectors, published by USC, for example. He's also the creator of Chroma, described as "a serialized exploration of the nature of racial identity in digital space," and The Lair of the Marrow Monkey, a wonderfully elliptical story that unites movement, music and text. With Ruben & Lullaby, Erik has created a very unusual iPhone app, one that's all about gesture and story, something Erik has been exploring through the Wii as an interface. The story centers on two people in a new relationship having their first argument....

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Starting in January 2009, the screening schedule for Filmforum, LA's experimental film organization, has suddenly expanded. I asked Filmforum's director Adam Hyman what's up, and he attributes some of the changes to several new board members with strong archival interests. "They have been proposing more shows that have archival elements, and I'm interested in that, so we have added them," he says. "I've also consciously decided to increase the documentaries and animated shows this year, due to my own interests, which means actually that we might have fewer traditional experimental films this year. But we're having a few good ones, starting with Marilyn Brakhage presenting works by Stan on January 11. That was a sell out. We're doing a show of classics in conjunction with the release of Treasures From American Film Archives IV. And there will be some others." Filmforum generally screens its own programs at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, but is now working closely with several other venues, including the Silent Movie Theater, the Echo Park Film Center, along with REDCAT, which has been a frequent collaborator in the past, to host co-presentations. Why?

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Turbulence, an organization dedicated to commissioning and sponsoring networked-based art, just announced two new commissions, including Without a Trace, a project by Los Angeles new media artist Jody Zellen. Zellen moves across many different platforms - she works in photography, installation, artists' books and network-based art; her projects frequently explore the urban environment and she often uses words in some manner. Ghost City, for example, is a dense, interactive collage referencing the city and reinterpreting urban space for the space of computer screens. More recently, Zellen has been making animated projects. Walking in the City is a double-screen depiction of jaunts through city streets enriched with sentence fragments, while Structured Time sets words in motion to create kinetic poetry. With her newest project, Zellen creates another kind of collage. In this case, she collected versions of the comic strip Real Life Adventures, from which she removed all text; she has also been tracing portions from the front page of The New York Times as a daily practice. Without a Trace unites these elements in random assortments every day, bringing together the drawings, three words from the comic strip and a comic image. The result? Provocative koans that are at once enigmatic and compelling. The outlines of figures in the newspaper traces and the comics are haunting, while the text - today it's "Steep Slide in U.S. Economy as Unsold Goods Pile Up" - is grounded in the everyday world. There's room for contemplation and creative reinterpretation, as if you're reading tarot cards pulled from the world around us.