Monday July 13, 7:30pm
Artist Talk: “Two Russians in the Free World”
Erik Moskowitz & Amanda Trager
Joined by Peggy Ahwesh, Jordan Lord, Andrew McNeely, Keith Sanborn and Jessie Stead
Microscope is pleased to present in connection with “Two Russians in the Free World” by Erik Moskowitz and Amanda Trager — currently on view as part of the Platform section of our website featuring web-based projects — an artist talk with Moskowitz and Trager, as well as several actors, writers and other participants in the 13-part webisodic project.
Peggy Ahwesh, Jordan Lord and Jessie Stead appear as actors in the piece, with Stead’s dialogue based on her writing about her own work as an artist. Lord, Andrew McNeely, and Keith Sanborn contributed texts that accompany individual episodes. Jordan Lord re-edited the work, which previously appeared as a single-channel video and a multi-channel installation, to its current and final format for the web.
The live conversation will take place on this page starting on Monday July 13, at 7:30pm. A Q&A with the audience via live chat will follow the conversation.
More info about Two Russians in the Free World HERE
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Peggy Ahwesh is a media artist who got her start in the 1970’s with feminism, punk and amateur Super 8mm filmmaking and is recognized for using a palette of technologies and practices including Pixelvision, drone and heat-sensitive cameras, 16mm film, Machinima, and others to create the textures and aesthetics required for her subject matter. Her work is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s exhibition “Private Lives Public Spaces.” A large retrospective exhibition of Ahwesh’s work will take place in 2021 at Spike Island, Bristol, UK. Her work has previously appeared in exhibitions at The Kitchen, New York; Foxy Production, New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles; Maccarone, New York; Salon 94, New York; Murray Guy, New York; Chateau Shatto, Los Angeles, CA; Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK; Gasworks, London, UK; and Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona, Spain; among others. Her films and videos have been presented at the Whitney Biennial, New York; New Museum, New York; Film at Lincoln Center, New York; MoMA PS1, Queens, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Tate Modern, London, UK; British Film Institute (BFI), London, UK; Guggenheim Museum, Bilboa, Spain; Pompidou Center, Paris, France, among many others. Peggy Ahwesh was born in Canonsburg, PA and currently lives and works between Brooklyn, NY and the Catskills.
Jordan Lord is a filmmaker, writer, and artist, working primarily in video, text, and performance. Their work addresses the relationships between historical and emotional debts, framing and support, access and documentary. Their video and performance work has been shown internationally at festivals and venues including DOCNYC, QueerLisboa, Anthology Film Archives, Performance Space NY, Artists Space, and Camden Arts Centre, and they have been in study with the group No Total since 2012. They received an MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College, CUNY, and a BA in Film Studies and English Literature from Columbia University. Lord currently teaches at Hunter College in the Department of Film and Media.
Andrew McNeely is an independent curator who lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2019, he curated A NonHuman Horizon, a group exhibition that was presented at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). He is currently working on a project for the Bowtie Project — which is a partnership between Clockshop and California State Parks aimed at creatively activating an 18-acre post-industrial lot along the LA River.
Erik Moskowitz and Amanda Trager work in film, video, and installation. Their works are often derived from collective storytelling and grounded in extensive interview processes, while the tone is set by original music, ventriloquism, and atypical temporalities. Moskowitz and Trager’s collaborative partnership began in 2006. Their work has since been exhibited and screened internationally at venues that include Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume (Paris); IFFR (Rotterdam); The Showroom (London); Reina Sofia, (Madrid); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin); The Mexicali Biennial (Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, and Mexicali); 303 Gallery and Participant Inc., NYC. Art residencies include Montalvo Arts Center and Headlands Center for the Arts, both in California. They are recipients of numerous grants and awards including the Media Arts Assistance Fund, Wave Farm (NYSCA) and the Short Film Grand Prize, IndieLisboa (Portugal). The duo lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, New York.
Keith Sanborn is a media artist, theorist, and translator based in New York.
Jessie Stead (New York) works in overlapping patterns of installation, music, cinema, text, collaboration and other forms of cross-disciplined art. Her work has been presented widely in varied platforms, recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Jan Kaps (Cologne), Jenny’s (Los Angeles), 247365 (NY), and OCDChinatown (NY). Collaborative projects, group exhibitions and performances include the Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw, Poland), Fridericianum (Kassel, DE), the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and Performa 13 (NY). Stead’s earlier cinematic work has screened at The London Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives (NY), MoCAD (Detroit), and in Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (2010). She is the experimental percussionist in the art-band Hairbone (formerly Haribo). Hairbone’s debut LP Earth To Momma, produced by Stead, was released in 2018 by Blank Forms Editions. Recent work in moving image includes directing two music videos for Hairbone and the editing and sound design for the feature documentary George: The Story of George Maciunas & Fluxus, which premiered at MoMA in 2018.
