Monday June 17, 7:30pm
Videos by Ina Archer
artist in person
Still from “RW” (2004) by Ina Archer, HD video, color, sound, 2 minutes 27 seconds – Image courtesy of the artist
We are very pleased to welcome DC-based artist Ina Archer back to the gallery for a solo screening of a selection of her video works made between 1991 and the present. This program culled from Archer’s extensive body of work — ranging from single-channel to multi-channel installations involving physical and sculptural elements — are centered around the “representation of African Americans and of Others through re-making, re-editing and re-contextualizing images of blackness in commercial cinema.”
In her works, Archer often remaps the history of cinema through the evidential use of found footage at times combined with the artist’s own parodic performances, approaching recurring themes such as miscegenation, minstrelsy, appropriation, and the representation of the marginalized found in Hollywood films and musicals.
For example in the 23-minute video “1/16th of 100%!?” (1993-96), a title referencing the definition of a “colored person” according to a 1910 amendment to the constitution of the State of Virginia, Archer examines racism in the US through pre-1964 legal texts and scenes from Hollywood movies including “Blond Venus” (1932), “Show Boat” (1936), and “Imitation of Life” (1959), among others.
A short chapter from a work-in-progress “Il Giallo della Paine! (The Yellow of Paine)” — employing tropes from 1970s American horror, British Hammer fright movies, and Italian Giallo thrillers — juxtaposes sequences from John Huston’s “Reflections in a Golden Eye” (1967) with original footage shot by the artist in a personal investigation of what happened to her family’s house and possessions following the death of her father.
The earliest of the eleven works in the program is the 1991 film “7 & Deadly” featuring Taylor Mead and other New York actors each personifying a deadly sin. “Trail Her” (2014) includes the most current of her appropriated materials in which Archer updates and upends the trailer for the movie “Her”, notably featuring the main character played by Joaquin Phoenix falling in love with his computer’s OS, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
Archer will be in attendance and available for Q&A following the screening.
General admission $8
Students & Members $6
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Ina Archer is a filmmaker, visual artist, programmer and writer whose multimedia works and films have been shown nationally including at Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Texas; Maysles Cinema, New York, NY; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Portland Museum of Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon; Spelman Collage Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, among others.
Archer was a Studio Artist in the Whitney Independent Study program, a NYFA multidisciplinary Fellow, a 2005 Creative Capital grantee in film and video, and she has been awarded numerous residencies. She is a Media Conservator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. She is also a contributor to Film Comment Magazine, as well as other film periodicals and three blogs (Continuum Film Blog, Black Leader, Ina’s Horror Blog).
Ina Archer received a BA in Film/Video from RISD and an MA in Cinema Studies from NYU.
Program:
1/16th of 100%!?
Single-channel video, 1993-96, 23 minutes
Montage that examines themes of appropriation, miscegenation and minstrelsy through manipulating footage found in Hollywood movies from the 1920s through the 1950s–including Imitation of Life, Showboat and The Jazz Singer.
La Tête Sans Corps
Single-channel video, 1992, 2 minutes
Writer, director, editor, camera. A short tape about the discovery, reanimation and exploitation of the disembodied head of young black women.
RW
Single-channel video, 2004, 2 minutes 32 seconds
Ina Archer and Richard Widmark are destined to shoot it out in “RW”! Using the dream/hallucination structure often associated with “film noir”, RW “gazes” at my mother’s favorite actor, Richard Widmark. Cab Calloway and Toshiro Mifune join in.
Hattie McDaniel: or A Credit to the Motion Picture Industry
Single-channel video, 2002, 5 minutes 38 seconds
“I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry,” McDaniel said as she accepted the 1st Academy Award given to an African-American for her performance in the film Gone with the Wind. “Analysis” of a continuity error in a clip from a film of the 1939 Oscars ceremony suggests that the “documentary” footage and McDaniel’s speech were re-staged.
Il Giallo Della Paine! (The Yellow of Paine)
Single-channel video, work-in-progress, 11 minutes 34 seconds
A “scary” montage about a vanished space 221 Paine Avenue,our home of 40 years in New Rochelle, that playfully uses the visual tropes and aural cues of American horror films of 1970s, British Hammer fright films and of the Italian thriller films known as “Giallo” (Yellow). The final section of my Giallo with the help of John Hustons “Reflections In a Golden Eye” evokes September of 1996 when I found my mother collapsed on the floor of an unused bedroom in the house. Houston’s film of Flannery O’conners novella that takes place on a military base, was shot in technicolor and then desaturated to a golden sepia color which was rejected by preview audiences and by the studio.
TrailHer
Single-channel video, 2014, 2 minutes 31 seconds
A trailer for “Her” (2013, Spike Jonze).
Mein Schatz no. 2 : Bête Noire
Single-channel video, 2003, 1 minute 47 seconds
A flirtation with wunderkind director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
7 & Deadly
By Ina Archer and Rob Taz, 16mm film to digital, 1991, 10 minutes
A nosy neighbor eavesdrops on her fellow apartment dwellers but each room is occupied by a personification of a deadly sin. With Taylor Mead and Michael J. Anderson.
Richard Harris Music Video
Single-channel video, 2002-2003, 6 minutes 20 seconds
What if Angry-Young Man, Thespian and rugby player, Richard Harris, made a music video?
Lubitsch Projections: “Lebensbejahend”
Single-channel video, 2004, 2 minutes 36 seconds
“Saying ‘Yes’ to life”. This confection, inspired by the Lubitsch film, “Monte Carlo” (1930), features a flirtatious black couple (both played by the video-maker) engaging in “affirmative acting”!
Blue Blur
Single-channel video, 2 minutes 39 seconds
A re-enactment and revisitation of Green’s 1965 “Patch of Blue”.
Still from “1/16th of 100%!?” (1996) by Ina Archer, HD video, color, sound, 23 minutes – Image courtesy of the artist
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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2019 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).