ARTISTS' TELEVISION ACCESS
Weekly Calendar
THIS WEEK AT ATA:
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:: ATA Screenings
: Tuesday, September 9, 2008. 7:30PM donation
The Hornucopia Festival presents:
Fundraiser for Kafana Balkan / Bread and Cheese Circus
Program:
Screening of Emir Kusterica's
Black Cat White Cat
and
Preview of Documentary about Joe Mama
for info: www.hornucopiafestival.org
Check it out! Sept. 4 -14; 10 Days, 30+ bands with Horns and Brass at over 9 bay Area Venues! Tickets on sale now.
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3290
: Thursday, September 11, 2008. 7:30PM $6
Machuca
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Film Series
Pedro Machuca is a boy of indigenous descent, brought into an upper class private school during Chile's brief socialist era when the government of President Salvador Allende began integrating schools on a class basis. The film shows the class conflicts of Chilean society played out in the friendships of three students. All around them, Chile drifts towards civil war. The enormous rift between two of the students—Gonzalo, who comes from a bourgeois household, and Pedro, who lives a few miles away in an illegal shantytown—ultimately becomes impossible to bridge once the bloody military coup of September 11, 1973 erupts. Directed by Andrés Wood, Chile, 2004, 121 min.
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3236
: Friday, September 12, 2008. 8PM $6
ANIMANIMAL/MAMMAL/MANIMAL //SICK TRANSIT, GLORIA
DEEP LEAP is excited to present a two-headed demonsterative: Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa & Brel Froebe’s ANIMANIMAL/MAMMAL/MANIMAL, fresh from its debut in Brooklyn, and the premiere of Jesse Malmed's SICK TRANSIT, GLORIA together in one screening. The programs have been hybridized, genetically-modified and flown this way and that over internets and airplanes, to create a heady jumble for Bay-based experimental media fanatics. In the first of hopefully many bicoastal shows this night brings together recent work from young artists across the country, heralding their commitment to an ongoing conversation.
DEEP LEAP is a San Francisco-based literary zine, DVD and organizing force for cooperative creative endeavors. Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa & Brel Froebe live and work in Brooklyn, NY and are currently involved with Light Industry, Film Comment, The Film Makers Co-op and Artists' Space. Jesse Malmed lives and works in San Francisco and has just released a DVD of his work through lasercave.biz. Ben, Brel, Jesse and many of the artists shown attended Bard College in upstate New York, where they were taught the value of progressive cinema and collaborative explosions. More information is available at deepleap.net.
Program:
ANIMANIMAL/MAMMAL/MANIMAL
Curated by BenjamÏn Schultz-Figueroa & Brel Froebe
September 12th 2008 at ATA
ANIMANIMAL/MAMMAL/MANIMAL is an experiment in translation that began as a narrative concerning the history of animals and humans. Sent to a myriad of different artists who each responded in equally divergent fashions. Using these responses, the screening recreates the myth for the viewer.
Expect dead pigs, furry wrestling, alien gods and more…
SICK TRANSIT, GLORIA
Curated by Jesse Malmed
SICK TRANSIT, GLORIA is a collection of films and videos hinting towards notions of transit, translation, globalization and movement. The eclectic program is guided by a momentum and internal logic of masked chase scenes through Prague wild/er/nesses, Roman bicycle jaunts, found-footage chemistry experiment graphic films and other unknown cinematics.
Visit www.deepleap.net for more information.
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3244
: Sunday, September 14, 2008. 8 pm , doors at 7:30 pm $6
I Can See You Just Fine
New Works by Jimmy Robson
Who do we become when we watch a movie? Television? Sometimes when we sit down at the end of a hard day and watch a story unfold, we go a little too far into the life of another... This program features two new videos about characters and personas that are guilty of "TMI". The desperate people that appear in these movies are just waiting for the right moment to spill the beans to us. Each member of the audience becomes an enabler: we are implicated in these layered stories often by lending an ear to the characters in the videos who know that we are out there watching them. Touching upon the horror genre, these two videos also explore off-screen violence, questioning how terror both threatens and preserves the very screen upon which these movies appear.
"The Face of Susan White"
This video tells the story of a woman who is struggling to change. After watching a mysterious green fluid disrupt a morning news cast, Susan White finds she has a new power: the distance between herself and the outside world is suddenly abolished. Given this new perspective, Susan discovers that she is now able to transform her life. But when a figure from her past confronts her, everything is placed into jeopardy. 30 minutes, DV. WORLD PREMIER!
"I Just Saw a Scary Movie"
A fortune teller and her grandson become obsessed with a mysterious and morbid character, Jeff, who posts videos of himself on youtube. The story is told through a series ambiguous testimonials given by the family about their new obsession. Finally, when Jeff is given the chance to speak for himself and come clean, the story threatens to self-destruct. 22 minutes, DV.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Extremetalkshow
http://www.myspace.com/100sofdismemberedhandbags
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3233
: Monday, September 15, 2008. 7:30PM $6
Rough Cuts:
American Maverick – The Life and Times of Pete McCloskey
Rough Cuts is a series of work-in-progress documentary screenings that are produced every other month by The LAB. Each evening one rough cut of a feature-length documentary will be screened, followed by a moderated conversation about the film led by guests who are either accomplished filmmakers or established film professionals.
Please RSVP to roughcutsrsvp@yahoo.com by Monday, September 15 at noon.
for info www.thelab.org/roughcuts
American Maverick – The Life and Times of Pete McCloskey
Produced and Directed by Rob Caughlan
At a time when the word “maverick” is increasingly heard this political season, it might be worth considering the life of Pete McCloskey—environmental crusader, politician, marine veteran, gadfly. As a presidential candidate, he led the charge to impeach President Nixon—before Watergate. As a Republican congressman, he co-founded the first Earth Day and co-authored the Endangered Species Act. And at age 78, he came out of retirement to wage one more unexpected, brave campaign. Narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Paul Newman, American Maverick - The Life and Times of Pete McCloskey offers an unexpected portrait of a true American character.
Moderators - Michael Wilson and Natalie Zimmerman
Michael Wilson and Natalie Zimmerman recently formed Social Satisfaction Media and made their first feature-length documentary, “Silhouette City,” which premiered at the Miami International Film Festival. Wilson and Zimmerman’s other projects have included performance new media, installation and photography, and they have exhibited/performed at festival, museums, galleries and art centers throughout the world. They are currently artists in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3307
: Wednesday, September 17, 2008. 7PM Door, 8PM $6
The Revival House Classic Queer Cinema
"Chop Suey"
Each month The Revival House brings you the very best in homo-grown cinema from decades past. On Wednesday, September 17th The Revival House will present the contemporary classic, "Chop Suey", by photographer Bruce Weber.
"Chop Suey" ( U.S.A. , 2001) is equal parts documentary, fashion editorial and beefcake flick. Following the career of young Weber discovery, Peter Johnson, we are given a bird's eye view into the homoerotic vision that has been the hallmark of Weber's career. With these images juxtaposed alongside Weber's fascination for the life and music of 60's Jazz vocalist, Francis Faye, Chop Suey takes the viewer on an unforgettable and singularly sensual ride of site and sound.
The screening will open with "Photo Finish" (U.S.A., 1977) a hardcore short by director Arch Brown which explores the relationship between a photographer and his young discovery. (This will conclude our 3-part series of queer, hardcore art films.)
For film clips and more information please go to:
www.myspace.com/therevivalhouse
www.dlist.com/revivalhouse
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3243
: Friday, September 19, 2008. 7:30PM $7-$20
The 12th Annual MadCat Women’s International Film Festival
Screening the best films by women directors from around the world
The 12th Annual MadCat Women’s International Film Festival is just around the corner with two special events that celebrate its superlative history as a showcase for the finest work by women directors everywhere. September 19th at ATA, MadCat Looks Back: 8 Greats from the Festival Archives screens some of the most exciting 16mm films culled from past editions of MadCat. On September 23, Hear It to Believe It continues MadCat’s longstanding tradition of presenting silent films to live musical accompaniment under the stars at San Francisco’s outdoor venue El Rio.
This year marks a change at MadCat with a new schedule for the call for submissions and the announcement of an expanded touring program. MadCat’s open call is now exclusively for touring works, which will be selected by May 1, 2009, for a national tour to begin in Fall 2009. Submissions are accepted beginning in October. Although the schedule has changed, MadCat’s commitment to women directors and quality film is unwavering. As always, MadCat seeks films directed or co-directed by women that are produced ANY year. MadCat accepts ALL GENRES: experimental, documentary, animated, narrative, hybrid, etc. The Festival favors works that push the limits of genre and expand notions of visual storytelling. The expanded tour will stop in San Francisco as well as continue to reach audiences at venues around the country that in the past have included: Anthology Film Archives, Brown University, Harn Museum of Art, Harvard Film Archive, the New School, Pacific Film Archive, PRATT, and RISD Museum of Art, among others.
2008 Program: Sept 19 and 23
8 Greats from the MadCat Archives Artists’ Television Access, September 19, 7:30 pm
Some of the best 16mm films MadCat has screened over its twelve-year history are highlighted, including works by local talent Kerry Laitala, Angela Reginato, and Phoebe Tooke.
Hear It to Believe It El Rio, September 23, 8:30 pm
Continuing a long-running tradition, MadCat presents a series of silent 16mm films set to live music performed by local musicians, including bands Tartufi and Silian Rail. Learn more about these musicians at: http://www.tartufirock.net/ --- http://www.myspace.com/silianrailmusic
SEE BELOW FOR DETAILED PROGRAM NOTES
MADCAT See Movies you won’t find anywhere else!
Founded in 1996, MadCat is the longest running women’s film festival in San Francisco and the only avant-garde women’s film festival in the United States. The festival is proud of its worldwide outreach and has presented films by women from around the globe, from Ireland to India and from Siberia to Spain. Annually culling through hundreds of entries, MadCat champions work by female directors who explore notions of visual storytelling and aims to entice audiences with out-of-the-ordinary groupings of films and videos. Screenings include thematic shorts programs, trailblazing documentaries, and slide presentations by local artists.
MadCat Women’s International Film Festival
Note new deadline schedule for 2008–2009
Early Bird Deadline: Nov 15, 2008
Late Bird Deadline: Jan 25, 2009
Tour Begins: September 2009
For information visit http://www.madcatfilmfestival.org
2008 MadCat Women’s International Film Festival
Program Notes
Program 1: MadCat Looks Back: 8 Greats from the Festival Archives
Screening Friday, September 19 at Artists’ Television Access
Orbit Kerry Laitala
2006 • 7 min • Color • 16mm • US Filmmaker in Person
Candy-apple light emissions tickle the retinas in this playful pulsation of mis-registered images created when a lab accidentally split the film from 16mm to regular 8. (screened at MadCat in 2006)
Winter Return Chelsea Walton
2006 • 1 min • Color • mini-DV • US • Filmmaker in Person
A moody stop-motion peek at a city. (screened at MadCat in 2006)
Contemplating the City (Contemplando La Ciudad) Angela Reginato
2005 • 3:30 min • B/W • 16mm • US/MX
Perfectly, without affect, a girl sings along with a pop tune, transporting herself through space and time to Mexico City circa 1978. (screened at MadCat in 2005)
Late Diane Cheklich
2003 • 7:38 min • B/W • 16mm • US
A collage of eerie, high-contrast shots of seedy hotels and Dial-A-Savior billboards flicker by as late-night radio evangelist Sister Agnes Phillips dispenses wisdom and hope to lost souls. (screened at MadCat in 2004)
Hotel City Phoebe Tooke
2004 • 16 min • B/W • 16mm • US • Filmmaker in Person
Four tenants living in SRO (single residence occupancy) hotels struggle to improve their lot. Through the Central City SRO Collaborative, they fight alongside other tenants and community members for better, safer conditions as well as address larger issues facing their neighborhoods. (screened at MadCat in 2004)
Historia del Desierto Celia Galan Julve
2002 • 6 min • Color • Beta • UK
Spanish with English subtitles
Set against the Chihuahua desert, artful stop-motion action illustrates the brutal crimes of the fictitious Rosita Guzm·n, a.k.a. La Mocha, who keeps her pursuers guessing for more than forty years. (screened at MadCat in 2003)
Vessel Wrestling Lisa Yu
2001 • 13 min • Color • 16mm • US
Jello, clay and human hair are the elements of this domestic space gone awry. Hairballs have a mind of their own and humans melt into light fixtures only to ooze out of the walls in erotic delight. (screened at MadCat in 2002)
Sorry, Brenda Samara Halperin
2000 • 3 min • B/W• 16mm • US • Filmmaker in Person
Using scenes from Beverly Hills 90210 shot on Super-8 off a television monitor and optically printed to 16mm, the filmmaker arranges a love affair between two unlikely characters. (screened at MadCat in 2001)
Program 2: Hear It to Believe It
Screening at El Rio on Tuesday, September 23 at 8:30 pm
Live musical accompaniment by Silian Rail and Tartufi
Observando el Cielo Jeanne Liotta
Soundtrack by Peggy Ahwesh
2007 • 19 min • Color • 16mm • US
Seven years of celestial field recordings gathered from the chaos of the cosmos are inscribed onto 16mm film. These naturally occurring VLF (very low frequency) radio recordings of the magnetosphere allow the universe to speak for itself. Chosen as one of the Top Ten Films of 2007 by Artforum and the Village Voice.
Air Sheri Wills
2008 • 6 min • Color • 16mm • US • West Coast Premiere
Mimicking the unpredictable and frequently serendipitous nature of watercolor paints as they run over a blank sheet of paper, these images unfold on the screen, become charged with life, then quickly disappear into a mysterious void.
Box Office Jenny Perlin
2007 • 2:25 min • B/W • 16mm • US • US Premiere
Shocking statistics highlight the hypocrisy of American foreign policy in Iraq.
Fallen Flags Amanda Christie
2007 • 8:10 min • Color • 16mm • Canada • US Premiere
A layered tapestry of filmed trains and underwater footage, this film explores fear, death, and transience through the traces of human voices set amid the flickering light and shadows of empty passenger cars.
Ecstatic Vessels Diane Kitchen
2008 • 20 min • Color • 16mm • US • Northern California Premiere
Fluid images of nature create a dreamlike palette of color and time, what fellow filmmaker Grant Wiedenfeld called, “A symphony of movement, color, focus, line.”
The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly Charlotte Pryce
2008 • 3:50 min • Color • 16mm • US • Northern California Premiere
A philosophical quest drenched in luminous colors and sparkling light, this film was shot on color reversal and entirely hand-processed and re-printed on the optical printer.
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3229
: Thursday, September 25, 2008. 8PM $6
HOW WE FIGHT Program 1: Iraqi Short Films
presented by kino21
This fall kino21 presents How We Fight: Conscripts, Mercenaries, Terrorists and Peacekeepers, an international series of works that examine various forms of soldiering. Each program explores the experience of what it means to participate in war from the point of view of those on the ground while questioning assumptions we might hold. By filmmakers from Argentina, Russia, France, Germany, Holland, and the USA, the films address situations of war in Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Beginning with Iraqi Short Films, a brand new compilation of videos by soldiers and militia fighters in battle in Iraq, the series continues with programs ranging from the observational to the interview-based, from video diaries of the battlefield to post-combat rumination. They include observational portraits of Russian soldiers in Chechnya and Kurdish PKK rebels in the mountains of Iraq and interview-based films examining U.S. soldiers' attitudes to the My Lai massacre, the profession of the mercenary across the globe, or post-war trauma of soldiers who work as UN peacekeepers.
Iraqi Short Films by Mauro Andrizzi, Argentina, video, 94 min (2008)
"Methodological, well-targeted propaganda or unbridled outbursts, these images, in their own myopic, implacable, rough ways, relate the conflict. […]The daily life of a warrior captured in the harsh brutality of a visor made into a lens, without the relief of a counter shot."—Jean-Pierre Rehm, FID Marseille
Iraqi Short Films by Argentine director Mauro Andrizzi is a compilation of short videos shot in the midst of war, whether by US or British soldiers, Iraqi militia members, or corporate workers. These are not “films” per se. They are a mix of slices of life recorded on video (many shot while firing on the enemy or being fired upon), pithy propaganda pieces, and soldiers’ visions of war as music video. They are crudely shot fragments, some rife with raw fear, some gloating over momentary victory. Filmed mainly as records, for friends, family, or fellow fighters, and at one point or another put on the web or on local television, the pieces were culled by Andrizzi over several months. Ranging from the banal to the intense, from the shocking to the darkly humorous, Andrizzi’s compilation depicts war as experienced, articulated, and vividly imagined by those actually fighting and dying in it. His addition of a handful of texts, from Mark Twain to C. Wright Mills to Dick Cheney, and sporadic manipulation of a few images suggests a bleak vision of this war’s inexorable chaos and horror. But it is a vision that combines the responsibility to look with critical empathy, analysis and a desire to comprehend some of its impact.
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3225
: Friday, September 26, 2008. 8PM $6
Scary Cow film co-op presnts:
IRAN (is not the problem)
IRAN (is not the problem) is a new feature length film responding to the failure of the American mass media to provide the public with relevant and accurate information about the standoff between the US and Iran, as happened before with the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.
We have heard that Iran is a nuclear menace in defiance of the international community, bent on "wiping Israel off the map", supporting terrorism, and unwilling to negotiate. This documentary disputes these claims as they are presented to us and puts them in the context of present and historical US /IRAN relation.
It looks at the struggle for democracy inside Iran, the consequences of the current escalation and the potential US and/or Israeli attack, and suggests some alternatives to consider. This 79 minute documentary features Antonia Juhasz (The Bu$h Agenda), Larry Everest (Oil, Power, and Empire), and other activists and Iranian-Americans. There are differences of opinion between many of the voices in this film, but all agree that a war would be unjustified.
See the trailer at www.iranisnottheproblem.org
Filmmaker Info:
Produced by Aaron Newman, an independent film-maker and part of the Scary Cow film co-op in San Francisco. He is an anti-imperialism/pro-democracy activist, founder of the SF Chomsky Book Club, and a member of Hands Off Iran.
Reviews:
"After years of working on Iran and Middle East politics, this is perhaps the most engrossing and easily digestible film Ive ever come across. A phenomenal educational tool that explains often misunderstood and complex issues in US-Iranian relations." - Sanaz Meshkinpour, Middle East Program Coordinator, Global Exchange
"I have watched it twice, and am deeply impressed with how much crucial historical context it provides in an engaging and accessible manner, combining archival footage with incisive analysis from interviews by US-based activists and scholars...I consider “IRAN (is not the problem)” to be an invaluable tool for raising our collective consciousness around the deeper reasons driving military aggression, for combating our lethal national amnesia in relation to Iran, for inspiring discussion, reflection and action, and for empowering citizens to better understand the present in light of the past."-Zara Zimbardo, Fellowship of Reconciliation, National Council
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3311
: Thursday, October 2, 2008. Doors 7:30pm, Film 8:00pm, $10
ATA Film & Video Festival 2008: Opening Night
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Mock Up On Mu
Craig Baldwin - 2008, 114 minutes, San Francisco |
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3262
: Friday, October 3, 2008. Doors 7:30pm, Films 8pm, $10
ATA Film & Video Festival 2008: Program 1
PROGRAM
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Why Was I Born
Marlon Gonzalez - 2008, 17'26, 35mm, Super16, Super8, San Francisco |
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Kogel Vogel
Federico Campanale - 2007, 5'30, film, Amsterdam |
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Vivid Dreams
Jim Granato - 2008, 4'30, Super8, San Francisco |
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Ants (Ants Ants Ants)
Clare Samuel - 2007, 2'41, HD, Canada |
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Case Histories in Psychotherapy
Tony Gault - 2008, 8'15, 16mm, Glenwood Springs, CO |
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The Quiet Storm
Jibz Cameron and Hedia Maron - 2007, 9'16, miniDV, Brooklyn, NY |
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Sunshine Bob
Christian Simmons - 2006, 3'30, DV, San Rafael, CA |
| Martha's Party
Marthaxiv - 2007, 4'55, DV, San Francisco |
|
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Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show
Lise Swenson & Richard Schimpf - 2007, 12'30, HD, San Francisco |
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Sphinx on the Seine
Paul Clipson - 2008, 7', Super8, San Francisco |
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3258
: Saturday, October 4, 2008. Doors 7:30pm, Films 8pm, $10
ATA Film & Video Festival 2008: Program 2
PROGRAM
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Ghosts and Gravel Roads
Mike Rollo - 2008, 16', HD, Canada |
| Retrospectroscope
Kerry Laitala - 1997, 4', 16mm, silent, San Francisco |
|
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Nocturnal Transmission
Carl Diehl - 2007, 3', analog/digital video, Portland, OR |
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What for What
John Davis - 2008, 9', Super8, Napa, CA |
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Visions of Wasted Time
Neil Ira Needleman - 2007, 4'40, Super8, Katonah, NY |
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In Search of a Mystic Bartone
Mack McFarland - 2008, 1'48, miniDV, Portland, OR |
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Baird's Beaked Whale
Douglas Schultz - 2004, 10', Super8, San Francisco |
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The Stalin that was Played by Me
Daya Cahen - 2006, 15', DigiBeta, Amsterdam |
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Infection
Esther Maria Probst - 2007, Syracuse, NY |
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3x1
Telemach Wiesinger - 2008, 10', 16mm, Germany |
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3261
: Thursday, October 9, 2008. 8PM $6
HOW WE FIGHT Program 2: Conscripts
presented by kino21
This fall kino21 presents How We Fight: Conscripts, Mercenaries, Terrorists and Peacekeepers, an international series of works that examine various forms of soldiering. Each program explores the experience of what it means to participate in war from the point of view of those on the ground while questioning assumptions we might hold. By filmmakers from Argentina, Russia, France, Germany, Holland, and the USA, the films address situations of war in Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Beginning with Iraqi Short Films, a brand new compilation of videos by soldiers and militia fighters in battle in Iraq, the series continues with programs ranging from the observational to the interview-based, from video diaries of the battlefield to post-combat rumination. They include observational portraits of Russian soldiers in Chechnya and Kurdish PKK rebels in the mountains of Iraq and interview-based films examining U.S. soldiers' attitudes to the My Lai massacre, the profession of the mercenary across the globe, or post-war trauma of soldiers who work as UN peacekeepers.
Interviews with My Lai Veterans by Joseph Strick, USA, 22 min. (1971)
Clean Thursday by Aleksandr Rastorguev, Russia, 45 min. (2002)
The series continues with two films portraying the words and worlds of conscripted soldiers. Tonight is a study in opposites, on one hand frank questions about slaughter in Interviews with My Lai Veterans and on the other, poetic and ironic observation on fighters' repose in Clean Thursday. But these films share an unflinching ear and eye for the soldiers who have fought on the ground in two of the world's most powerful armies.
Filmed two years after the My Lai massacre took place in Vietnam, the Oscar-winning Interviews presents five soldiers who recount their personal experience and understanding of that gruesome day, each one with a different perspective. While Interviews focuses on how soldiers interpret and narrate their role in massacre, Clean Thursday gives the converse: a sensuous and candid look at how soldiers live their moments between the carnage. During the Russian occupation and "cleansing" of Chechnya, a group of rear-guard soldiers is in charge of keeping their army clean. An old steam train transformed into laundry wagons and bathhouses is where most of Rastorguev's film takes place. Soldiers arrive from the front, sweating and trudging through mud. For a day or two of respite, they wash, swear, remember family, brag about sexual conquests, and recount the hell of a war they've survived, as they clean their bodies and clothes only to "once again" kill or be killed at the front.
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3289
:: Open Screening
: Thursday, September 18, 2008. 7pm Door, 8PM $5
OpenScreening
ATA's open screening is the only monthly open submissions screening in the Bay Area. Get your work out there! Get feedback! Or just come and take it all in! One hour of shorts are accepted monthly on an open revolving basis, anything goes with the screened work, and the refreshments are pretty good too. $5, FREE admission for contributing artists. Door:7:30pm Projector: 8pm
Not a filmmaker? Come and hang out with us anywayEnjoy the atmosphere, the art, the movies, the people, the refreshments
Submissions: Label all tapes w/ name, contact, title and length. Mail to: Openscreening, 992 Valencia, SF, 94110 1-2 week advance submissions strongly recommended. If not. . . it is all good. Max length: 15 min. Formats: DVD, miniDV/DVcam, VHS, beta, 8mm and 16mm All genres.
More Info: contact Matt & Richard at ataopenscreening@atasite.org
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3245
:: In the Gallery
: August 27, 2008 - September 23, 2008.
Gonzalo de Sepulveda
Tecnochinampas
Opening Reception
August 27th from 7-10pm
Tecnochinampas
The development of the technochinanpa as an art concept started two years ago, when I was reading a chronicle of the conquest of Mexico, written by a Spanish soldier during the XVI century. The chronicle portrayed the first impressions that the conquistadors had about the city of Tenochtitlan, Capital of the Aztec empire. One of the most impressive features that the new city offered to them, were the “Chinampas” (nahuatl word for floating gardens) On front of the European eyes, those chinampas, looked as strange and sinuous formations, which virtually covered the part of the lake which surrounded the Aztec capital. Technochinampas is an interpretation of the original chinampas , but seen from the air. Technochinampas , are also based in the complex and gigantic patterns of design which still cover the plains of Nazca, Peru. Finally I took some inspiration on the sophisticated designs used in the Diaguitas pottery developed by the early inhabitans of Chile before the arrival of the conquistadors.
I utilized the symbol of the Technochinampas in order to express the amazing level of complexity that our civilization has achieved. Complex patterns of strong black ink over the immaculate white of the surface will represent our complex but at the same time fragile institutions, governments, and in general our whole civilization.
Gonzo de Sepulveda (Gonzo)
Gonzo is a South American Artist originally from Chile. His work is mostly based in his life long experience making comic and illustrating magazines and diverse publications in his native place. His work is highly influenced by a childhood watching animations and reading comics, the aesthetics and colors from the 50’s, and the art made by the prehispanic civilizations of America. Gonzo made is first show, “ Plop” during the last year in “La Casa del Libro Gallery”
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3242
: October 3, 2008 - October 4, 2008.
ATA Film & Video Festival 2008: Gallery Installations
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THE GREAT STORM v1.5
Shalo P. - 2008, San Francisco |
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Ode to Kirlian
Sam Manera - 2008, 16mm, San Francisco |
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3265
:: Window Installations
: September 1, 2008 - September 27, 2008.
The Obscene Excesses of Capitalism
installation by Andrew Wilson
Reception with artist on Wednesday, September 10, 7pm-10pm
Lexan Sphere, dirt, genetically modified corn, water, plant stand, stolen Skittles, stolen fruit-infused Garnier hair gel, stolen candy-like rat poison.
Through an opening in a large Lexan sphere I first laid down soil and planted in it genetically modified corn. I then gradually added Skittles, fruit-infused Garnier hair gel, and D-CON rat poison colored and shaped like candy, all stolen gradually from large chain stores.
Perhaps this thing will present a microcosm of the obscene excesses of global capitalism, as it invokes the spatial limits of growth that the smooth space of smooth capital seeks at every turn to negate. Creating artificially flavored/scented products beyond any basic human needs has become possible via man's liquidation of natural elements for capitalist commodity production. The annihilation of nature through pesticides and rodentcides to create the space in which agricultural, industrial, and financial production can take place is not only a destructive force, but also constitutes and presupposes what counts as civilization, nature, and progress. The power of institutions in techno-scientific societies resides in their capacity to create and name social reality, and then impose on all this tissue of fabricated existence these instruments of diversion and mystification (taste the rainbow), while aggressively eradicating their social origin (food without GMO labels, nourishing hair gel, the naturalization of economic interests and the pricing of risk). This developing "laboratory planet," as Bureau d'Etudes and Ewen Chardronnet have called it, promotes the manipulation of the living and social reality according to the doctrine of "acceptable risk." The colonization of inner life grows and merges with that of our exterior environment through experimental political technology of an unprecedented order (Chardronnet, 2008). "Naturally", those in the developing world assume a substantial and disproportionate share of the risks engendered by such experiments in global capital, while their "food security" is subject to and managed by corporate and finance capital interests. For now, the real horror happens there - Latin America, Africa, and much of South Asia - not here. Everywhere, the spectacle of annihilating any distinction between goods and commodities, or true satisfaction from a survival that, as Guy Debord said, increases according to its own logic, is accepted as necessary or even natural by the agents of multi-national corporations and finance capital. And so consumable survival must increase, because it continues to enshrine deprivation. "If there is nothing beyond increasing survival, if there is no point where it might stop growing, this is not because it is beyond privation, but because it is enriched privation (Debord, 1995)." This systemic and expansive neutralizing of subjective, heterogenous reality comes from the commodity, which can be thought as an indexer of "true satisfaction."
The objects I have chosen to place inside the sphere are mental conceptions of the world that have become objectified forces via processes of capitalism. In this context, the objects form a conceptual constellation of the organization of productive forces particular to global capital. My intent is to use these objects to contribute to alternative mental conceptions of these processes, a new space for subjective activity, so as to imagine a change in the dominant social relations that these mental conceptions and objects flow from.
Skittles are mostly devoid of any nutritional value; while their manufacturer, Mars Incorporated, have executed documented examples of animal testing and environmentally detrimental production and distribution methods (PETA, 2008a). Yet the candies serve the transnational corporation's necessity for ever-expanding markets (available in over 65 countries) while becoming successfully manufactured objects of desire for a global consumer-base in their perversely expanding varieties – Tropical, Wild Berry, Sour, Smoothie, Ice Cream, Carnival, Double Sour, Xtreme Fruit, Mint, Chocolate, Bubble Gum, and "Sensations". As a "fruit candy" they contain a natural polymer known as "shellac" that is obtained from the secretion of a female insect, and gelatin, composed of animal bones, connective tissues, organs, and intestines. The brand's successful instruments of diversion and mystification, such as their playing to customers' affective investment in consumer choice and "taste the rainbow" marketing campaigns, tend to conceal the history of what these objects actually are. Mars Incorporated argues that due to private ownership, there is no need to account to anyone but themselves, and the company chooses not to cooperate with many widely publicized organizations such as Fairtrade (Mars, 2008). Mutilated animals, animal tested chemicals, and insect secretions become mutant fruit products, mutating consumer's bodies and desires into an integrated space for the flows of capital.
Garnier is a division of L'Oreal that has become profitable with its "Fructis" line, which, in combining "science and nature," is not only tested on animals (PETA, 2008b), but also uses a fruit concentrate to "give your hair the nourishing care it needs to look healthy every day." This nourishing, fruit-infused gel replicates the care given in Garnier's hair coloring, shampoos, conditioners, treatments, and serums. The necessity of this fruit concentrate, if it actually does help to "replenish liquids that the skin is lacking" and "stimulate the growth of the cells in the epidermis", is not addressed. Perhaps Garnier, a company that claims their scientists are"constantly innovating and creating new technologies for your hairs needs," are substituting science with informationalized capitalism's cooptation and reorganization of scientific labor, of which private industry has now become the largest employer (US National Science Foundation, 1999). Further, one can speculate that the creation of these "needs" for human hair is meant to disguise not only the chemical ooze making up most of the hair gel but also the needs of and behind marketing a wholly unsustainable perpetual innovation economy. The unattainable true satisfaction of a self-aesthetic of scrunched curls, bursting shine, body & volume, or sufficiently shielded color is promoted, manufactured, and developed by the controlled experiments of a politicized techno-scientific capital. If our head-pieces are suffering from a lack of nourishment, might the growth and expansion of such capital, among others, be causing a change in our environment that creates this lack, a Petri dish world different from the Earth of the last 300 million years that mammals have been confronted with?
In May 2008 the U.S. EPA announced it would be tightening up safety on ten different rodentcides that are blamed for poisoning 10,000 children – mostly black and Latino inner city kids – every year. Those ten chemicals will no longer be available in the form of little pellets that look like candy and will only be allowed inside tamper-resistant bait stations. At any department store chain one can find the brightly colored pellets sold in loose-bait tray form, and will be able to do so for the next three years, as manufacturers are allowed to maintain business-as-usual until the EPA's final "release for shipment" date of deadly bite-sized pellets in 2011(Pattison, 2008). But why the electric blueberry candy-color in the first place? Could it make them more attractive to small childrenwithout proper education and parental supervision, and so acting as another form of population control by eliminating those who often resist disciplined contribution to this global economic and social order, above and beyond the obvious target of rodents?
A human would perish in attempting to survive off a diet of Skittles, rat poison, and fruit-infused hair gel. Natural foods, or foods that were once natural and have since been modified, are still the core of a human diet. The argument for genetically modified crops goes as follows:
-we need to increase food production to feed the world
-yield increasing science has worked before
-the nay-sayers want to reduce output through organic agriculture
-Monsanto (a multi-national biotechnology company), on the other hand, is investing in science
-therefore we ought to embrace GM technology to fight the food crisis
Impoverished consumers not able to afford a sufficient diet (of goods) and reduced support for domestic agriculture is a potential for profit and so is distorted into a call for increasing crop output via GMO production. "Green revolution technologies" (yield increasing science) have brought about long-term ecological ruin as needs for climate-change-inducing fuel is required on farms for the production of fertilizers that have proved to be, along with pesticides, environmentally unsustainable. Monsanto, an agricultural biotech company, feeds off public sector research not in developing genetic traits, but patenting already existing traits and creating Genetic Use Restriction Technologies to protect their intellectual property (Patel, 2008). And as the current ethanol-from-corn boom so clearly demonstrates, having diverted 100 million tons of grain from human diets mainly to American car engines, "biofuel" may be a euphemism for subsidies to the rich and starvation for the poor. A chance to address climate change and the food crisis through sustained building of soil fertility (something GM can never do), integrated pest management, reduced energy footprints, sustainable energy alternatives and equitable local distribution systems is turning into an opportunity for a commodity of speculation and bargaining and an integrated network of power for the forms, functions, bonds, and organized transcendences of global capital. Here GMO corn becomes another form of population control, not only repressive in that its proliferation brings with it a massive depeasantization of the Global South, but also in how these globally administered short-term economic systems govern life and nature by determining what counts as "green," "environmental," "progress" and acceptable risk (such as the unknown future of a genetically modified world.) Elements that exceed those conceptual categories, such as organic agriculture, need to be destroyed in order maintain the forms of discipline that are required for genetically modified economic and social models.
The spectacle of annihilating any distinction between goods and commodities, or true satisfaction from survival in turn becomes a spectacle annihilating any distinction between needed goods and speculative goods. In other words, the goods actually needed for starving humans, and goods produced for financial control and growth. This conflation produces a range of knowledge and of means making it possible to intensify the involuntary responses to stimuli that promote the "advantageous" functioning of the managed civilization, to project a mentally-conditioned society of genetically modified consumers and to dream of worldwide techno-psychic control.
In the context of this project, my movement through spaces of capital was not driven by a desire for satisfaction through consumption. Instead I found myself amongst the overwhelming complexity of candy, pest control, and hair product aisles to shoplift these products as a form of defining certain problematics myself, and to define the conditions under which a satisfactory answer or response to these questions and problems might be obtained; however molecular the effect may be, they nonetheless attempt to contest the sacrifices art often makes within spaces of capital for the sake of its own existence. This gesture illuminates a hope for future forms of imagination and resistance to the cognitive and social walls that give us a false sense of powerlessness against integrating global capitalism.
To get involved with the food sovereignty movement, seek out Via Campesina, The National Family Farm Coalition, Grassroots International, Rural Coalition, Food First, and other like food and farm activist organizations.
Chardronnet, Ewen, Léonore Bonaccini, Xavier Fourt, Bureau d'études. 2008. Introduction. The Laboratory Planet No2.
Debord, Guy. 1995. Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books.
Mars Incorporated. 2008. The Five Principles. www.mars.com/global/Who+We+Are/The+5+Principles.htm. (Accessed on 7/17/2008).
Patel, Raj. 6/13/ 2008. "The Opposite of Science." www.StuffedandStarved.org. (Accessed on 6/15/ 2008).
Pattison, Fawn. 5/30/ 2008. Grist. "Candy Shaped Rat Poison on its Way Out." http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/29/135928/265. (Accessed on 6/17/2008).
PETA. 2008a. "Mars Heartless Animal Experiments." www.marscandykills.com/experiments.asp. (Accessed on 6/15/2008)
PETA. 2008b. "Companies That Do Test on Animals." www.caringconsumer.com/pdfs/companiesDoTest.doc. (Accessed 8/30/2008).
US National Science Foundation, Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System. 1999. Table C2. "Employed U.S. Scientists and Engineers, by level and field of highest degree attained, sex, and employment sector: 1999."
andandrewrew AT gmail.com
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3238
: September 7, 2008 - October 3, 2008.
Right Window at ATA
The Plastic Exploding Inevitable, an installation by Christine Wertheim
Opening: September 7, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
At 6:00 Christine Wertheim will talk and answer questions about the project
Coral reefs the world over are dying faster than rain forests. In homage to these vanishing wonders, Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring instigated a project to crochet a woolen reef, an effort that now engages women around the globe. This collective testimony also celebrates the strange hyperbolic geometry of the oceanic realm. As it has grown the reef has spawned, dividing and growing into multiple sub-reefs, each with its own unique ecology of corals, anemones, kelps and other sea life.
In September Right Window will be showing the Plastic Exploding Inevitable (PEI), a spawn of the Toxic Reef, aka Bikini Atoll, made from plastic bags and other refused and recycled materials. The most psychedelic of the Institute for Figuring reefs, the Plastic Exploding Inevitable features irradiant pink "sand," miniature white plastic spires, a grove of wine-glass trees, and a gorgeous reef panorama painted on a take-out box by Alicia Escott. In the decades since Warhol created his Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the multimedia component of the Silver Factory, the words he strung together have taken on a more sinister edge, and Wertheim's installation helps us parse this new reality. In the North Pacific, for example, there is a gyre of floating plastic debris roughly the size of Texas.
Contributors to the Plastic Exploding Inevitable include:
Kathleen Greco, Sarah Simons, Evelyn Hardin, Alicia Escott, Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim.
The Right Window at ATA is curated by Dodie Bellamy for the month of September, 2008.
When she is not crocheting reef items, Christine has a full-time job in the Department of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts, where she teaches experimental writing and feminism. She is also an experimental poet and writer whose work deals with the intersection of language and logic. Christine's first book of poetry, +'Ime-S-pace, was published in 2007 by Les Figues Press, LA.
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3256
: October 1, 2008 - October 31, 2008.
ATA Film & Video Festival 2008: Window Installation
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Sandwich: The Musical
Ertrok - 2007, 7', miniDV, Milwaukee, WI |
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RGB Expose
Nick Briz - 2007, 4'09, miniDV, Oviedo, FL |
| The Isthmus of Kansas
Christopher Cassidy - 2007, 8'06, NTSC SD, Greensboro, NC |
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Close to Home
Jan Erichsen - 2007, 1'16, Norway |
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Poderia Haver Algo No Fundo Do Espelno (Is There Something Behind the Mirror)
Erika Fraenkel - 2006, 11', Brasil |
| Baghdad Plan Is A Success
Sabine Gruffat - |
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| August
Vanessa O'Neil - |
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Ozuland 002
Carlo Sansolo - 2006, 9'56, miniDV, Brasil |
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Steve Martin on the Loose
Rebecca Whipple - , 4'56, Paris/San Francisco |
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=3263
