Conversations at the Edge: Current Schedule

Karen Yasinsky in person

In the strange and seductive animated films of Baltimore-based artist Karen Yasinsky, an eyeless woman is abandoned in a landscape of wolves, boys writhe restlessly in a cowboy-papered room, and characters from Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934) and Robert Bresson's Au Hazard Balthazar (1966) act out sublime new scenes for each film. Telescoping themes of anxiety and desire, Yasinsky crafts her suggestive half-narratives through hand-made clay puppets and the painstaking process of hand-drawn rotoscoping. For this program, she presents a survey of films from across her career; including the US premiere of Life is an Opinion, Fire a Fact (2012).

1998–2012, USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 min + discussion

Karen Yasinsky (b. 1965, Pittsburgh, PA) is an artist working primarily with animation and drawing. Her video installations and drawings have been exhibited in numerous international venues, including the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art, NY; UCLA Hammer Museum, L.A; Kunst Werke, Berlin, and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. Her animations have screened worldwide at various venues and film festivals including Museum of Modern Art, New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant Garde, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Baker Award, and is a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin and the American Academy in Rome. She teaches at Johns Hopkins University in Film and Media Studies.