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September 26th : 7pm : Rm 229
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Women on Camera: Performing in Persona

Dara Birnbaum
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman
1978, 7 minutes

A stutter-step progression of "extended moments" unmasks the technological "miracle" of Wonder Woman's transformation, playing psychological transformation off of television product. Birnbaum considers this tape an "altered state [that] renders the viewer capable of re-examining those looks which, on the surface, seem so banal that even the supernatural transformation of a secretary into a 'Wonder Woman' is reduced to a burst of blinding light and a turn of the body—a child's play of rhythmical devices inserted within the morose belligerence of the fodder that is our average television diet."

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Alex Bag
Untitled Fall ‘95
1995, 57 minutes, color, sound

In Untitled Fall '95, Bag, at the time an art student, "plays" Bag the art student. In a series of deadpan performances, Bag gathers fragments of pop detritus, fashioning a thoroughly mediated document that is at once a celebration and a record of loss. With the narrative inevitability of a TV serial, the eight diaristic segments trace a woman's struggle to make sense of her experience at art school. As each installment marks the start of a new semester, Bag's character addresses the camera with her latest observations and frustrations.

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Kevin Blechdom + Lucile Desamory
Countdown to Nothing
2004, 13 min. 25 sec., DV (shot on Super 8), color & b/w

COUNTDOWN TO NOTHING is a collaboration with the musician Kevin Blechdom. A musical starring two women meeting in a tree. One cannot touch the ground, the other is stuck. A hypnotic voyage through their psychedelic subconsciousness will relieve them from their troubles.

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Miranda July

Atlanta
1996, 10 minutes
A 12 year-old Olympic swimmer and her mother (both played by July) speak to the public about "going for the gold."

The Amateurist
1998, 14 minutes, b/w
A short, captivating video about surveillance, identity, watching and being watched, The Amateurist slides along the edges of horror and satire to create an unsettling portrait of a woman on the brink of a technologically-driven madness.

Nest of Tens
1999, 27 minutes
Nest Of Tens is comprised of four alternating stories which reveal mundane yet personal methods of control. These systems are derived from intuitive sources. Children and a retarded adult operate control panels made out of paper, lists, monsters, and their own bodies.

Getting Stronger Every Day
2001, 6 min. 30 sec.
Getting Stronger Every Day captures the experience of being lost, then found, from moment to moment, and over the course of a lifetime, in mundanely poignant tableaus in which the spirit realm is manifested in low-tech effects and remembered TV movies.

posted by ryan griffis at 9:45 PM Friday, September 21, 2007

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