Monday March 23, 7:30pm – Thursday March 26, 7:30pm
Virtual Pool
Giuseppe Boccassini, Ana Buljan, Brenda Contreras, Heidi Elyce Cooper, Yeonu Ju, Christine Lucy Latimer, Sara Lovering, Michael Lyons, Carleen Maur, Ann Oren, Derek Taylor
Live chat Q&A at 9pm
We are excited to announce that we are moving our Event Series online — until further notice — to keep bringing you our weekly doses of events, and help us all fight through these extremely trying times.
The first of these online events, a short video program Virtual Pool, will go live on Monday March 23 at 7:30pm and will be available for the following 72 hours. The program will be preceded by a short pre-recorded introduction by co-directors Elle Burchill and Andrea Monti. A live chat with several of the artists and Q&A from the online audience will follow the program.
Virtual Pool — also the title of a 1995 video game among the firsts to bring the game of pool into the virtual world — is a online screening program of 11 new and recent short videos selected from the pool of submissions to our most recent Open Call. The works, made by artists living outside of New York, reflect upon our interconnectedness on this planet, among other themes.
We look forward to “seeing” you on Monday and to keeping intact this component of our already deeply changed lives, a series we have been bringing to you incessantly since opening our doors 9 1/2 years ago (yesterday).
Please, stay safe until we finally get to see each other off-line again.
TO WATCH:
A “WATCH NOW” link will become available at 7:30pm on Monday March 23 on this page (microscopegallery.com/virtualpool)
Passes for viewing can be purchased then, giving full access to the video program and live chat.
General admission $7 (Valid through March 26, 7:30pm)
Member admission $5 (Valid through March 26, 7:30pm)
Program:
By Ann Oren
HD single-channel video, sound, 2019, 4 minutes 30 seconds
In our ‘freelancer’ age, many find themselves domestically confined, using mostly a computer screen to branch out. This film brings nature, lunacy, emotion and humanity indoors, using the color blue as the main protagonist. It is the third installment in an ongoing series of Ann Oren’s Video Journals.
Ann Oren is a visual artist and filmmaker. Born in Tel-Aviv 1979, studied Film (BA) and Fine Arts (MA) at The School of Visual Arts, NY. Her works were exhibited at The Moscow Biennial for Young Art, WRO Media Art Biennial, B3 Moving Image Biennial, The Hammer Museum, The Tel-Aviv Museum, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Anthology Film Archives, Künstlerhaus Bethanien and Apexart. Film Festivals include: Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Dok Leipzig, New Horizons, Locarno and Ann Arbor. Oren is an award recipient from The New York State Council on The Arts, B3 Moving Image Biennial, Doker International Documentary Film Festival Moscow, Epos Film Festival and Seoul International New Media Festival. She lives/works in Berlin and Tel-Aviv.
By Ana Buljan
HD single-channel video, sound, 2019, 3 minutes 36 seconds
This video/film is an experiment in constructing a visual language based on the superimposition of images/feelings shot in the Atacama desert in the winter/Chilean summer of 2018. — AB
Ana Buljan (1978, Croatia) is an artist/filmmaker working with still and moving images. She holds Masters degrees in Alternative Cinema ( EICTV, Cuba), Fine Art & Design from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and Italian language and literature from University of Zagreb. She also works as a production designer, more in film and less in theatre. She currently lives and works between Rotterdam, Cuba and Croatia.
By Michael Lyons
Super 8mm film to video, sound, 2018, 5 minutes
Dancer Nonoko Sato at Gallery Kaos No Ma in Kyoto, Japan. Shot in Super 8mm on long expired Kodachrome and hand processed in Caffenol. Each frame of the film was exposed variably for up to a second, distorting Nonoko’s movements. Nonoko Sato is an independent artist based in Kyoto and a former member of Kiraza Butoh Company. Special thanks to artist/collector Sunamoto Matuo, Gallery Kaos No Ma. — ML
Michael Lyons (Canada/Scotland) is a researcher and artist based in Kyoto, Japan. He co-founded the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, and is active as a filmmaker and sound artist. He is currently Professor of Image Arts and Sciences at Ritsumeikan University.
By Sara Lovering
Single-channel video, sound, 2019, 13 minutes 25 seconds
A short documentary following CRU, a trans-masculine person from Portugal living in Berlin, as they investigate the ways in which their identity changes depending on the language they are speaking. They discuss the ways in which they (and others) have changed the Portuguese and German languages in order to make themselves visible and heard in languages that are organized in feminine/masculine binaries.
Sara Lovering is a Berlin-based filmmaker from Seattle. At the moment, they primarily make experimental documentaries exploring topics such as linguistics, binary structures of thought, LGBTQ+, sex work, psychoanalysis, vision, and technology.
By Brenda Contreras
HD single-channel video, sound, 2018, 7 minutes 16 seconds
In the same vein as the traditional Mexican folklore I grew up listening to, here I explore the themes of hopes and fears with stories of Death, the Devil, and baby mommas, using mixed media (16mm, super 8, and 4K drone). The title “From Brooklyn Ave to South Broadway” is a reference to the street that I was born on (Brooklyn Ave which was renamed to Cesar E. Chavez Ave in 1994) and the street I now live on. Hence, the film’s content is a journey from these two points — including street names, driving directions, and modes of transport — elements deeply rooted in the Los Angeles experience. — BC
Brenda Contreras (Los Angeles, 1984) is an artist, filmmaker, curator, and educator. She lives in a state of Nepantla or “In Between” – navigating through the constructs of imagined borders within Turtle Island. Contreras’ ideas center around geography, memory, trans-generational trauma & the body, language and lack thereof; utilizing primarily 16mm, super 8, and archival footage.
By Derek Taylor
Super 8mm film to video, sound, 2019, 2 minutes 50 seconds
An aerial survey of the filmmaker’s place of origin, the film is a frame intensive search for home, place and direction. Edited in camera on Super 8, changing position two frames at a time, the movements of lines and masses offer a renewed look at this once lost but now rediscovered locale in a continuing quest for a sense of provenance. — DT
Derek Taylor’s moving image work focuses on the intersection of documentary and experimental filmmaking, particularly as it relates to history and landscape. His work has been screened at a number of festivals both nationally and internationally. He studied film, video and new media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently lives and works in Connecticut (USA).
By Heidi Elyce Cooper
HD single-channel video, sound, 2019, 4 minutes 23 seconds
Exploration of the dysfunction of language and falsehoods of representation in both history and media reflecting on Iranian and American narratives. — HEC
Heidi Elyce Cooper was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1989. She has been an active filmmaker since 2012 with a focus on experimental shorts and documentary. Cooper lives and works in Portland, OR.
By Yeonu Ju
South Korea HD single-channel video, sound, 2019, 14 minutes 25 seconds
A crowd of people gathered to see something. Their eyes are busy confirming their beliefs. Belief and Crossroads is a combination of two works from A Crowd trilogy. A Crowd focuses on what we see. Each work of A Crowd trilogy features different types of crowd images and smoke images. Belief has concert crowds, football audience, and spectators at the monumental sites, etc. And Crossroads captures the numberless crowded streets of cities. This film uses a film scanner, but it is not a film. It is the assembly of images scanned frame-by-frame. — YJ
Yeonu Ju experiments and practices with camera-less filmmaking. She uses archival footage to explore the appropriation of images. She interested in the relationship between technology and human beings, especially filmmaking in the context of digital technology. Her works have been shown at museums, galleries, and festivals worldwide. She lives and works in Seoul.
By Carleen Maur
16mm film to video, silent, 2019, 4 minutes 7 seconds
16mm and hand processed film retracing movements between electric bills to coastal walks ending in almost more clarity than before. — CM
Carleen Maur is an experimental filmmaker in Columbia, South Carolina. Her films, videos and installations examine the intersection between gender, sexuality and camouflage.
By Christine Lucy Latimer
HD single-channel video, silent, 2019, 2 minutes 30 seconds
Years ago, my Mother sold her home. Hundreds of high dynamic range digital photos were taken to provide to the real estate agent for the online sale listing. The images were left on an SD card that was strangely stored and subject to environmental degradation. Disassembling each damaged, barely there high dynamic range photo into its light and dark component parts, I build a VHS cascade of house pieces (never quite reconstituting what was). — CLL
Christine Lucy Latimer is an interdisciplinary artist working with lens-based and time-based forms. Her work in the past decade has been featured across 5 continents in over 300 film festivals and gallery exhibitions. She currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
By Giuseppe Boccassini
Single-channel video, 2017, 11 minutes
Debris is a travelogue of a shipwreck which tries, through decomposed memories, to grab onto new flesh. — GB
Giuseppe Boccassini is an Italian filmmaker mainly working in Germany and Italy. He graduated in film theory at the University of Bologna and in film direction at The New University of Cinema and Television located in Cinecittà, Rome. His work has been shown at several international film festivals and exhibitions, including FIDMarseille, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Jihlava IDFF, Trentino History Museum, Pesaro Film Festival,among others His entire film production is distributed by Light Cone. By transforming and manipulating various sources of archival material, his work reflects upon the notion of the haptic proximity of contemporary media. He is in charge of the programme at Fracto, an Experimental Film Encounter at ACUD macht neu, Berlin.
TRT: 73 minutes
Microscope Gallery Event Series 2020 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).