Heterotopias is a Moving Wall | Pictures screening of short videos and films by Kenneth Anger, Liliana Porter, and James Schneider. Music pins this evening together with aural nostalgia confusing our senses with a gentle suggestions of both childhood and a time of new prosperity. These videos/films are at first humorous tapestries of fairgrounds, fantasy realms, and their artifacts, but quickly reveal the sardonic relationships occurring within make-believe spaces. In the context of our current exhibition, the no place, these films become metaphors for the ever-present desire to deviate from reality amidst crisis and conflict. Liliana Porter's Matinee, employs vintage toys and figurines in a series of vignettes that offer a poetic interpretation of the human condition. Kenneth Anger stages a collaged accumulation of antique Mickey Mouse memorabilia in Mouse Heaven to examine the dark undercurrent present in playful aspects of popular culture. In his Faerie-Monition segment of The Dystopian Trilogy, James Schneider creates an atmospheric portrait of Euro Disney, questioning whether the theme park is a new utopia or a dystopian corporate project.
Kenneth Anger
Mouse Heaven, 2004 (duration 10 minutes, video)
Born in 1927 in Santa Monica, California, Anger has been creating films since the 1940s beginning with Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat (1941). Anger’s six-decade oeuvre includes most notably Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949), Eaux d'artifice (1953), Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954-66), Scorpio Rising (1963), Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), Lucifer Rising (1970-81), Rabbit's Moon (1950-79), Mouse Heaven (2004), Elliot’s SuicideIch Will! (2008), and Foreplay (2008). He also performs as Technicolor Skull with Brian Butler.
Liliana Porter
Mantinee, 2009 (duration 20:45 minutes, video)
Born in 1941 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Porter has lived in New York since 1964. She works in many different mediums including printmaking, painting, installation, photography, film, and video. Since 1991 she has been a professor at Queens College, City University of New York. Porter's gallery representation includes Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY; Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco and New York; Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX; Galería Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Galería Brito-Cimino, S. Paulo, Brazil; and Galería Espacio Mínimo, Madrid, Spain. Additionally, Porter is represented in national and international public collections.
James June Schneider
Oasis, 1995 (duration 10 minutes, color, 16mm)
Faerie-Monition, 1993 (duration 8 minutes, color, 16mm)
From the Dystopian Trilogy
Living in Washington D.C., Schnieder is a filmmaker, video performer, writer, and curator/programmer. He wrote and directed THE STATICOSE CHAMBER, BLUE IS BEAUTIFUL (with DC's punk-gospel group The Make-Up) and the sci-fi tone poem feature 1,2,3, WHITEOUT among others. He is an advocate of video/audio-sampling, a form of live cinema which he performs as MATTERLINK. Schneider has collaborated with musicians, activists, and Trade Unions as a filmmaker and via live projections, music videos, and sensory audio-visual experiments.
Presented in conjunction with the no place, on view through March 6.
Moving | Wall Pictures is a new series of film and video screenings held at BRIC Rotunda Gallery in conjunction with exhibitions on view.
Venue Information:
BRIC Rotunda Gallery is the old contemporary art exhibition space of BRIC.