150 Years of SAIC

Radiant Visions: Media Art from SAIC, 1965–Now

Radiant Visions: Media Art from SAIC, 1965–Now is a month-long series of films and artist appearances celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Featuring nearly 50 artists and a breathtaking range of techniques and ideas, the series showcases the pioneering and influential work of SAIC alumni and is presented by SAIC's Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Admission to Radiant Visions screenings is free to SAIC students, faculty, staff, and alumni with an SAIC ID. Complimentary tickets are available at the Gene Siskel Film Center box office 24 hours in advance of each screening. Tickets are available for public purchase on the Gene Siskel Film Center website.

Radiant Visions is presented by SAIC's Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center. The series was organized by Amy Beste, Jon Cates, and Daniel Eisenberg with special thanks to Jim Trainor, Bruce Jenkins, Mary Patten, Melika Bass, Frédéric Moffet, Chris Sullivan, Claudia Hart, Tirtza Even, Patrick Friel, Fred Camper, Ed Rankus, Carolyn Faber, Abina Manning, John Manning, Josh Mabe, Michael Phillips, Michelle Puetz, P. Adams Sitney, Elena Rossi-Snook, and M.M. Serra.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul (MFA 1998, HON 2011), still from Cemetery of Splendor, 2015

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Cemetery of Splendor
Monday, February 1, 6:30 p.m.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul in person. Chicago premiere

“Weerasethakul is utterly unique among filmmakers…Cemetery evokes a sense of alien wonder…the purest expression of cinema as it was meant to be seen.”—Jessica Kiang, The Playlist

“Quietly incandescent…an unstemmable flow of beautifully unfathomable images, cinema as the stuff dreams are made of.”—James Lattimer, Slant magazine

Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or in 2010 for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (MFA 1998, HON 2011) once again proves masterful in exploring the intersection of the human and spirit worlds through a film of delicate, sumptuous beauty. A few soldiers lie stricken by a mysterious sleeping sickness in a rural town’s veranda-like hospital. The film’s subtle theme of healing brought about with the help of otherworldly forces encompasses not just the prone figures in the beds, but characters including a hospital volunteer, a psychic, and an awakened soldier, all of whom will come to walk knowingly or unknowingly, with resident spirits. The real and the supernatural mix with casual concreteness and infusions of offhand humor under the placid spell of Weerasethakul’s mythic world view. In Thai with English subtitles.

2015, Thailand/UK/France, DCP, 122 min.

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Lyn Blumenthal (MFA 1978) and Carole Ann Klonarides, still from Arcade, 1984. Courtesy of the Video Data Bank

Machine Visions
Thursday, February 4, 6:00 p.m.

Nick Briz, Jon Satrom, and Deborah Stratman in person

This program considers the technologies of moving images and their reverberating influence on contemporary life. In Jane Veeder’s (MFA 1977) trailblazing 1982 computer animation Montana, stylized mountain peaks and erosion patterns dance with symbols of the technological age. Louis Hock’s (MFA 1973) Silent Reversal (1976) derails cinematic conventions while drawing comparisons between the mechanics of projection and transportation. Jon Satrom (BFA 2003) exploits the fallibilities of analogue and digital data storage devices in his multimedia performance MicroMonotaur. Nick Briz (BFA 2009) breaks down the structure of paid influence and teaches us How to/Why to Leave Facebook (2014). Deborah Stratman’s (BFA 1990) Hacked Circuit peels back the layers of fabrication inherent in movie-making, sound recording, and aural perception through an astonishing single-shot portrait of the Foley process. Jenny Perlin’s (MFA 1998) quietly unnerving Transcript reveals the reach of Cold War surveillance by using the transcript of a 1953 dinner party—which had been recorded (and augmented) by an FBI informant charged with tracking people tangentially related to the case of Juilus and Ethel Rosenberg—as its script. Jodie Mack’s (MFA 2007) exquisite Posthaste Perennial Pattern (2010) animates woven florals to bridge design and nature. Arcade (1984) by pioneering video artists Lyn Blumenthal (MFA 1978) and Carole Ann Klonarides’s Arcade (1984), is a pop-montage of recycled television images, flashing graphics, and surveillance-like footage. Multiple formats.

1972–2014, multiple directors, USA, ca 81 min.

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Katie Torn, still from Breathe Deep, 2014. Courtesy of the artist

Identities
Monday, February 8, 6:00 p.m.

Jennifer Reeder, Mindy Faber, Jessica Bardsley, and Oli Rodriguez, and Tatsu Aoki in person

The works in this program explore social and individual identity, self-performance and presentation, and the role of media technologies in shaping and expressing notions of the self. In Jennifer Reeder’s (MFA 1996) notorious anthem to the abject White Trash Girl (1995), a child of the sewers wreaks havoc on the world. In Bouncing in the Corner #36DDD (1999), Dara Greenwald (MFA 2003) casts herself in a remake of a Bruce Nauman video. The film 3275 (1980) by Tatsu Aoki (BFA 1983, MFA 1985) is an abstract evocation of the artist’s inner life, three years after his arrival from Japan. Mindy Faber (MFA 1985) casts her mother in comic book scenarios while exploring her history of mental illness and the historical pathologizing of women’s experiences in Delirium (1993). Jessica Bardsley (MFA 2011, MA 2012) stitches together stolen footage in The Blazing World (2013), an essay on Winona Ryder, kleptomania, and depression. Byron Grush’s (MFA 1967) Hand and Bodie Transformations (1976) are animated studies in metamorphosis, while Breathe Deep (2014) by Katie Torn (MFA 2012) presents a kinetic sculpture in phantasmagoric 3D animation. An undercover operation by Oli Rodriguez (MFA 2009) uses the Little League as a site for reinvention in The Baseball Project (2009). Multiple formats.

1976–2014, multiple directors, USA, ca 79 min.

Tom Kalin (MFA 1987), still from Swoon, 1992. Courtesy of the artist

Tom Kalin: Swoon
Thursday, February 11, 6:00 p.m.

Tom Kalin in person

A key work within the emerging queer cinema of the 1990s, Tom Kalin’s (MFA 1987) debut feature Swoon is a sparse, but highly stylized, dramatization of the infamous Leopold/Loeb kidnapping and murder case. While set in 1920s Chicago, the film mixes contemporary deconstructive, culture-jamming strategies with an almost timeless, sensual handling of the physical materials of the medium. Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin declared it an “audacious” work intent on fracturing “familiar notions and prejudices.”

Presented in collaboration with SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program. Kalin will give a talk as part of the Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series on Wednesday, February 10. For details, visit saic.edu/vap.

1992, Tom Kalin, USA, 35mm, 82 min.

Elisabeth Subrin, still from Shulie, 1997. Courtesy of the artist and the Video Data Bank

Citizens
Monday, February 15, 6:00 p.m.

Tom Palazzolo, Latham Zearfoss, and Elisabeth Subrin (via Skype) in person

Through re-enactment, appropriation, performance, and collage, the films and videos in this program explore the intersections of the personal and political, reflecting on legacies of past radicalism, contemporary moments of resistance, and new political models. At the center of the program is Elisabeth Subrin’s (MFA 1995) masterful Shulie (1997), a shot-by-shot re-enactment of an unreleased 1967 documentary portrait of SAIC student Shulamith Firestone (BFA 1967), who, a few years later, would become a central figure in the rise of radical feminism. Through its meticulous staging, the film expresses in Subrin’s words, “the residues of the past,” and the resonance of issues around gender and class today. Tom Palazzolo’s (BFA 1965, MFA 1966) sardonic montage of the era, Love It/Leave It (1971) cuts between a nudist competition, football, neighborhood parties, and the political foment around Chicago’s 1968 Democratic Convention. An early work by artist and activist Paul Chan (BFA 1996), Now Let Us Praise American Leftists (2001) uses wanted-poster computer technology to foreground the exclusionary nature of leftist politics. Steffani Jemison’s (MFA 2009)The Meaning of Various Photographs to Tyrand Needham (2009) restages a classic John Baldessari video with images of African American subjects to highlight strategies of misreading and resistance. Latham Zearfoss (BFA 2008) sets the words of the Black Panthers to a new beat in Something to Move In (2014, with Joel Mideen). And, in Irina Botea’s (MFA 2004) Now It Is a Matter of Learning Hope (2014), artist Ileana Faur rehearses utopian manifestos among the abandoned remains of a park once planned to celebrate Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romanian dream. Multiple formats.

1971–2014, multiple directors, USA/Romania, ca 75 min.

Marjorie Keller, still from Misconception, 1977

Marjorie Keller: Misconception and Daughters of Chaos
Thursday, February 18, 6:00 p.m.

Followed by a discussion with film scholar P. Adams Sitney (author of Visionary Film) and filmmaker and fellow SAIC alum Saul Levine

From the late 1960s through to her untimely death in 1994, filmmaker, activist, and scholar Marjorie Keller (SAIC 1971–73) forged a fiercely poetic body of work, exploring intimacy and everyday life. Misconception (1977), her longest and best-known film, documents of the birth of her niece, using the small-gauge format of home movies, jagged editing rhythms, and sync sound, to give expression to the event’s pain and joy, and the chasm between experience and memory. Daughters of Chaos (1980) uses footage of a wedding to look forward and backward in time, from girlhood to maturity, and the mysteries of growing up.

1977–81, Marjorie Keller, USA, 16mm, ca 75 min.

Print of Misconception is courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which preserved the film with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Lilli Carrė (BFA 2006), still from How She Slept at Night, 2006. Courtesy of the artist

Intimacies
Monday, February 22, 6:00 p.m.

Saul Levine and other artists in person

This program explores intimacies of all kinds—family life, close friendships, anecdotes, sexual encounters, as well as the intimacy of the camera in close ups, home movie footage, snapshots, and abstract evocations of the inner life. Saul Levine (MFA 1973), leading exponent of personal cinema, is represented by two works: Note to Pati (1969) and Note to Colleen (1974), a collage of sunsets, and a sidewalk artist drawing a woman’s portrait. Celebrated animator Lilli Carrė (BFA 2006) offers an eerie snapshot of marriage, memory, and loss in How She Slept at Night (2006). The line between public and private is conjured through texts from the gossipy “secret histories” of an 18th-century gentleman’s library in David Gatten’s (BFA 1998) Secret History of the Dividing Line (2002).

Coiled (1991) by Zack Stiglicz (MFA 1991) is a richly textured meditation on masculinity and sexuality. Sara Ludy’s (BFA 2004) abstract Otha (2011) explores the domestic architecture of Second Life, while Martine Syms’ (BFA 2007) Memory Palace (2014, with Kahlil Joseph) is an elegiac evocation of family memories. In Song E Kim’s (SAIC 2000–02) delicately drawn animated psychodrama Bite of the Tail (2012), a woman, her doctor, her husband, and her sister find themselves working at cross-purposes. Multiple formats.

1969–2014, multiple directors, USA, ca 70 min.

Christopher Harris, still from Still/Here, 2001. Courtesy of the artist

Christopher Harris: Still/Here
Thursday, February 25, 6:00 p.m.

Christopher Harris in person

“One of the significant avant-garde works of the past decade.”—Michael Sicinski, Cinemascope magazine

In this austere and sorrowful portrait of his hometown, St. Louis, Christopher Harris (MFA 2000) sets his black-and-white camera loose to wander through the city’s decaying North Side neighborhoods, an area populated almost exclusively by working class and working poor African Americans. Gliding down empty streets, across the facades of once-elegant homes, entering condemned buildings, the camera makes a detached but ultimately damning portrait of civic neglect and apathy. Poignantly, human beings are rarely encountered; their presence haunts the soundtrack of eerie footsteps, an unanswered telephone, and sparse voiceover commentary from found sources.

2001, Christopher Harris, USA, 16mm, 60 min.

Still/Here is presented in collaboration with South Side Projections and Black Cinema House, which will screen a program of Harris’ short works on Friday, February 26.

Ben Russell, still from Greetings to the Ancestors, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and the Video Data Bank

Channelings
Monday, February 29, 6:00 p.m.

The works in this program reach through time and space, creating new landscapes for history and the imaginary. In Greetings to the Ancestors (2015), a recent addition to his widely-screened series of experimental ethnographies, Ben Russell (MFA 2003) visits a feverish prayer vigil in Swaziland and an ascetic community of Xhosa healers in South Africa. Animation is represented by Joshua Mosley’s (BFA 1996, MFA 1998) puppet film Jeu De Paume (2014), which recreates a game of the precursor to modern tennis, complete with vivid camera moves and swift action; while Mountain for Your Mind (2011) by Yaloopop (BFA 2011, MFA 2015), is a slow glide around an ersatz landscape, wintry, unreal but somehow comforting. A wordless restaging of Louis Malle’s post-apocalyptic 1975 film of the same name, Amie Siegel’s (MFA 1999) Black Moon (2010) sets a band of female soldiers loose in a landscape depopulated by housing foreclosures—reinventing the past in the ruins of a future that never was. The optical printer obscures recognizable forms, reducing everything to pulsing abstraction, in Coleen Fitzgibbon’s (BFA 1973) FM/TRCS (1974), while simple, digitally-created landscapes are superimposed with magic symbols in Something’s Gonna Soon (2008) by Dylan Mira (BFA 2006) and Math Bass. The filmmaker attempts to come to terms with death in Buriels (1981), the final film in Allen Ross’ (BFA 1976) esteemed Grandfather Trilogy. Multiple formats.