Upcoming Screenings Online/Week of July 26th

Top Picks for Art Online Week of July 26th
(pardon the formatting, I do not know what is up w/blogger)

Factitious Imprints by Eva Papamargariti

the New Museum/Screens Series Online

July 23rd, 2020-Ongoing/Free

When watching Eva Papamargariti's Factitious Imprints online I became totally fascinated with trying to distinguish the differences in the images I was seeing. Some seemed like whole, computer-generated 3-D animations, others had the feeling of broken videogame landscapes, some felt like a camera was trained on a computer screen adding to the layered modes of digital visual existence lived each day. It becomes hard to parse what is real, what is not, and what is an imitation of a reality. Acidic colors and geometric splotches of footage move around one another, like observing multiple slides through a swirling, anxious microscope--  or a constantly shifting collage-- accompanied by a chilling warbled voice-over detailing the state of things. I won't lie, this one creeped me out in the best way possible, if you have a projector it might be worth pulling it out.

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Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution w/James Lebrecht & Nicole Newnham 

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Film at Lincoln Center/Lincoln Center at Home Online Panel 
July 28th, 2020/5pm (ET)/Free, RSVP

To honor the 30th Anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Lincoln Center is hosting an online series called ADA in the Arts. The series includes events like zoom workshops with members of the New York City Ballet and a virtual reading of the fantastical play Death Bites. Also as part of the series, the directors' of the acclaimed film Crip Camp will be part of a discussion, along with other disability advocates, to talk about the past and the future of disability rights. The passionate and purposeful film Crip Camp (which is now streaming on Netflix!) is a documentary about the campers of Camp Jened, a Catskills haven established in the 50s for adults, children and teens with disabilities. In the 1970s, many of the camp attendees went on to become leaders and activists in the fight for equality playing a pivotal role in the passing of the ADA. Captioning and ASL interpretation are available for this event. 

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Tea Time w/Jennifer Reeder, Pipilotti Rist & Maike Mia Höhne

Kunstverein in Hamburg/Online Discussion

July 28th, 2020/9am CT/ Free, limited RSVP

Maike Mia Höhne is the Artistic Director of the International Short Film Festival Hamburg following a long career as curator and head of Berlinale Shorts. Pipilotti Rist is a Swiss visual artist (who is most notable for having been pawned by Beyoncé and) whose work often offers colorfully dark musings on feminity. Jennifer Reeder is a Chicago-based filmmaker whose genre-influenced films are preoccupied with the blood, guts and grittiness of coming of age as a woman in America. These three will come together (I'm assuming with dainty teacups in hand?) to think about "the shift in culture, the framing of gestures, the replacement of the same and a new cooperation." The group represents the exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg titled Being Laid Up Was No Excuse For Not Making Art, an exhibition combining artists of Hamburg with other International artists as they think through contemporary issues. This event is in response to the issue "Humor post-#MeToo," a changing tide these women can perfectly speak to.

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LASER Boston: Exploring the Dream World w/Dr. Steven Brown, Dr. Deidre Barrett & Dr. Mark J. Blechner

swissnex Boston & SciArt Initiative/Talks Series Online

July 29th, 2020/12-1:15pm (EST)/Free w/Registration

"During this LASER talk you will hear from three experts in the arts and sciences on the biological basis of sleep, the theories on our need to dream, and how dreams enter our waking reality in visual art." Panelists include Professor of Chronobiology ("the branch of biology concerned with natural physiological rhythms and other cyclical phenomena" Who knew!?) and Sleep Research Dr. Steven Brown, Psychologist and Author Dr. Deidre Barrett, and Teaching Faculty & Clinical Consultant Dr. Mark J. Blechner. I came across this event due to Barrett's new publication, Pandemic Dreams, a book that surveys over 9,000 recent dreams to look at the patterns, themes and historical similarities to other psychologically damning events that humans are processing each night as they sleep during the Covid-19 crisis. Personally, my dreams have been anxiety-ridden and unrestful, I hope you are sleeping more soundly. You too Google's AI. And you too those having their dreams guided. Shudder. 

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Gerhard Richter: Painting After All (2011) by Corinna Belz

The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Online Stream

Ends July 31st, 2020/Free

Gerhard Richter is one of those artists who always haunts the edges of my waking life. I think I first saw his out-of-focus photorealistic paintings on the walls of a museum and had to stand within inches of it to accept that it was in fact a painting. Then, years later, I was enamored with a strange abstract painting with layers of color revealing themselves through jagged scrapes against canvas-- I almost didn't believe it was the same painter who made the figurative perfection I had previously seen. I started to watch this documentary and had to stop immediately upon realizing how deep and close the film gets into his process and studio life, just like his paintings the film deserves full attention. 

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The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011) by Chad Friedrichs

Unicorn Stencil Films/Online Stream

Ends July 31st, 2020/Free

In the mid-1950s a complex of 33 apartment buildings representing peak modern architecture rose in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. Hoping to revitalize rundown, overcrowded areas of the city, Pruitt-Igoe was a beacon of hope for many. The project almost immediately began to collapse upon its opening, the long list of reasons why--things like subpar maintenance, design flaws, rapid depopulation-- debated and studied for decades following. The film is made by Missouri-based documentarian Chade Friedrichs whose works are often deep dives into archival material revealing plain truths hidden in plain sight. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth dispells some of the rumors surrounding the housing project's demise while offering up the larger systemic and political issues that led to Pruitt-Igoe's ultimate 1972 implosion. 

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Culture Capture: Terminal Adddition (2019) by New Red Order: Adam Khalil (Ojibway), Zack Khalil (Ojibway), Jackson Polys (Tlingit), Bayley Sweitzer

Walker Art Center, Walker Cinema/part of INDIgenesis Film Series Online 

Ongoing/Free

INDIgenesis was a film series that was supposed to open at Minneapolis' the Walker in March, a showcase of contemporary "Native filmmakers and artists." The piece highlighted here, Culture Capture: Terminal Adddition, is one that deals with how the past is immortalized through art and contemplates the current trend of toppling the monuments of certain historical narratives. The film questions the growing movement to dismantle statues and wonders if maybe there is another approach. As stated in the film "Signs like these conjure realities and create national identities," image-making systems are the building blocks of communication, society, equality, this film another addition-- another crafted truth-- added to the chain of meaning instead of a quick-fix eradication (a process of disappearing ingrained in so many of the horrors of the past). The first time I heard of a defaced statue was when I was in Columbia, South Carolina. Perfectly chiseled into the stone below a bronzed Strom Thurmond (a racist senator against integration) were the names of his children. Someone said that vandals had added to the list, scratched in a rudimentary scrawl, the name of the hidden child he fathered with his family's 16-year old Black maid, his daughter Essie Mae. Essie Mae's name was officially carved into the red granite in 2005.  

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Please send recs for upcoming weeks to: donnak3[at]gmail[dot]com