SPOTLIGHT ON ART VIDEO: CONCERNS OF ANIMALS AND PEOPLE
SATURDAY, APRIL 26
EVERSON MUSEUM : 9:30pm
For as far back as people can remember, Syracuse has always had a great video art scene. Syracuse University has been a hotbed for new forms of video messages since the early 1970s. Today in this explosive era of YouTube on-line video sharing, as the video age is dawning, the Syracuse International Film Festival presents a timely selection of exemplary video art works by artists with connections to Syracuse. Most of these artists teach at SU now, and a few were students at SU who still live in the area. These artists are concerned with the well-being of the environment in the broadest sense (physical and ideological), and are aware that the creatures we share our lives with must be listened to and cared for. These timely video messages give voice to concerns of animals and people.
John Orentlicher
Stable, 2007, 10 minutes: A video projection alternating handheld camera with surveillance multiviews of horse’s bodies, juxtaposing necessary discomfort with the well being of receiving care in the stable.
Hot Shoes, 2008, 11 minutes: A video projection with two frames in one, exploring the art of the farrier in custom fitting shoes on horses.
Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby
Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure, 2006, 14 minutes: To describe Duke and Battersby’s Songs of Praise…“as ironic doesn't do it justice. Irony implies brittleness, cleverness and world weariness, but these two artists have...a sense of wonder at the endearing weirdness of life and all the vulnerable, furry little creatures immersed in it (mostly us).” (Sarah Milroy)
The Spirit Guides are Watching, 2008, 10 minutes: Because we are making so many mistakes, and because we are hunting them, and because they are growing more and more intelligent, and consequently, bored, the spirit guides are watching us…Mostly they're benevolent, but sometimes we do manage to piss them off. And they bite.
Yvonne Buchanan
Bridge, 2005, 6 minutes: Using the visual language of abstract painting “Bridge” takes the viewer through a timeless multidirectional experience, a moving forward and backwards simultaneously, using a bridge as a metaphor for life, time and belief.
Listening, 2005, 4 minutes: Contrasting the everydayness of an ordinary kitchen scene with subtle supernatural moments the piece is about absence, grief and longing. The video suggests a bridge across the rupture separating the living and the dead. An empty kitchen, signifying loss, reveals desires for an after-death existence and connection.
Perfect Stranger, 2007, 2 minutes: A musing about personhood and particularities of being an individual.
As Yet Untitled, 2007, 2 minutes, 30 seconds: A haunting work about being comfortable with uncertainty.
Joanna Spitzner
Private Space, 2008, 6 minutes, 30 seconds: Relationships among people, commodities and space within large retail stores are explored. The interior of the privately owned marketplace becomes the public space of the self.
The Real Campaign, 2006, nine minutes, 10 seconds: The history of soap advertising is paralleled to the political history of women’s liberation, in response to Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty.
EcoArtTech (Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir)
A Series of Practical Performances in the Wilderness, 2005, 15 minutes: A QuickTime performance database made in the woods and on rural back-lots and is part of Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir’s series of performance art videos begun in 2002.
Nerve Theory (Bernhard Loibner and Tom Sherman)
World of Strangers, 2 minutes 45 seconds, 2006: Because more and more of us choose to live in cities, we find ourselves living in a world of strangers. We find privacy in the city, and loneliness.
Brain Fingerprinting, 2 minutes 50 seconds, 2006: Brain fingerprinting is a new kind of lie-detector test. Instead of looking for nervous reactions on the surface of the skin, brain fingerprinting technology looks directly into the mind of a suspect.
Cultures of Fear and Loathing, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2007: In our cultures of fear and loathing practically no one is frightened by the singing of birds. You can hear them in the dark of morning, and as the day collapses into night.
Gig, 3 minutes 30 seconds, 2007: A young garage band plays its first real gig. The band was called Cranston. The place is Liverpool, Nova Scotia in 2005. The lead guitar player plays so hard he bleeds all over his instrument.
Fray, 4 minutes 20 seconds, 2007: High school girls play tackle football without helmets or pads. This grudge match between members of the junior and senior classes at Nottingham High School in Syracuse, New York was recorded in 2002.
ARTISTS' BIOS: |
Yvonne Buchanan: born in New York City, she focuses on illustration, drawing, video and film. Her political illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, The Nation and Newsday. Author of six children’s books, her videos and films have been screened at the Anthology Film Archives, the Slamdance Film Festival, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. She resides in Syracuse and teaches illustration and narrative drawing at Syracuse University.
Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby are Canadians. They work collaboratively in printed matter, installation, curation and sound, but their primary practice is the production of single-channel video. Their work has been screened at the Walker Art Center, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The European Media Arts Festival (Osnabruck), The Images Festival (Toronto) and Impakt (Utrecht). Represented by Jessica Bradley Art and Projects in Toronto they both teach in the Transmedia program at Syracuse University.
EcoArtTech (Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir) are based in Cazenovia, New York. They create art about the environmentality of modern life. Peppermint is a conceptual and performance artist teaching at Colgate University. Nadir’s doctoral work at Columbia University is on modern environmental literature, art and thought. Both are Syracuse University alumni. Their video and multimedia work has been featured at the Ginza Art Laboratory (Tokyo), the Pace Digital Gallery (NYC), Dorkbot, Interaccess (Toronto), and the Boston Cyberarts Festival.
Nerve Theory (Tom Sherman and Bernhard Loibner) have created numerous performances and recordings as Nerve Theory, broadcasting on public radio in Austria and Germany and performing live multimedia shows in New York, Berlin, Vienna and Montreal. Sherman is an artist and writer who splits his time between Syracuse, New York (where he teaches video art at Syracuse University) and Port Mouton, Nova Scotia. Loibner is a media artist and musician based in Vienna, Austria. Many of their collaborations often take place on the World Wide Web.
John Orentlicher resides in Jamesville, New York, Orentlicher has exhibited his experimental documentary video extensively throughout Europe, Canada, Latin America and the United States. He has taught video art a Syracuse University since 1976 and has received two Fulbright Awards to teach and conduct research in Colombia and Chile. He is currently researching the traditions of trio music in the Huasteca and Jarocho regions of Mexico. Orentlicher is also fascinated with the interactions of humans with animals, most recently horses.
Joanna Spitzner lives in Syracuse, New York. She is interested in the experiential nature of art. Her work involves video, images, ephemera, performances, and writing. The Joanna Spitzner Foundation is a Syracuse-based foundation designed to give small grants to artists, grants that are funded by wages donated from work performed by Spitzner herself. The Spitzner Foundation is both an art work-in-progress as well as a functioning private foundation. Spitzner also works at Syracuse University, where she teaches Time Arts in the Department of Foundation.
SPONSORS:
Community: Department of Transmedia, College of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University
Foundation: New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA)
