Sunday, October 11, 2020

Upcoming Screenings Online/Week of October 11th

 Top Picks for Art Online Week of October 11th


Process & Performance, Pamela Z
Oct 15, 2020/ 6pm ET/ free


So I just went down a Pamela Z rabbit hole and am now a bit obsessed: this video is gorgeous & insane! Using a mix of software, gesture-controlled MIDI instruments & more, Pamela Z layers together musical phrases, performance, visuals with precision, beauty and even hints of humor. Watching this one video it felt like she became a sort of cyborg, enhancing the sonic space through movement-- like a theramin plus-- while singing with the heart of a very human person. When experimental music reaches the heights of Pamela Z's work one truly feels like they are living in a futuristic world, one where creativity and art are existing in a whole new universe full of endless, multi-displinary possibilities. Pamela Z is doing a residency at EMPAC (the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center@RPI), this talk will speak on the new work she is creating there and her visionary process as a whole. 



The 28th Annual Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival
October 15-17, 2020/ free, some registration for limited events

The first time I read Tennessee Williams was in high school, The Glass Menagerie. When reading that play something hit me, something that felt familiar and tangible, much more human than the stale Shakespeare or the 20 millionth production of The Wiz that my school put on. There was some kind of stage direction for a screen to project the images of Blue Roses (OMG! David Lynch, my teenage brain exploded) on stage, an erasure of the four-walled space, an augmentation of what was possible, possibly my first introduction to performance art and straight line to my first love, cinema. When I saw this event come up on my feed one presentation on Saturday (October 17 from 2:15-3:15pm CT) reminded me of that sharp distant memory: Thomas Keith (William's editor for New Directions since 2002) will speak on the fest's featured play, Summer & Smoke, focusing on "Williams’ inherent and natural inclination toward experimental, visual, spatial, plastic and presentational aspects of theatre that defied and expanded the bounds of traditional realism, with some focus on early drafts of the play, which included elements of film"-- oh hell yes! 


Postcolonial Film and the Archive: History, Theory, Practice
C21 Media Studies Research Collaboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, UWM Moving Image Society + UWM College of Letters and Science/ online symposium
October 16, 2020/12-4pm CT/ free w/registration



From the event page: "Bringing together scholars to examine media from across the globe, this event will explore the historical, cultural, and political value and use of colonial and ethnographic films in connection to cultural heritage, preservation, and appropriation. From reexamining the ways in which archives and their materials are mobilized to tell certain narratives and not others, and the complexity of preserving and researching these materials in varying contexts, to interrogating the ontological and indexical status of film as memory artifacts, this symposium will raise questions about cultural heritage, ownership, historiography, and gaps and exclusions in classical film history approaches to the study of 'postcolonial' film." The line up of presentations is overwhelming but the two that quickly stood out to me were films from Polish settlements in the Brazilian Wilderness in the 1930s and also a talk on the state's role in the preservation and/or destruction of archives using the largest collection of films in Ghana as a case study. The event will explore "the history, theory, and practice of postcolonial film and archives" from a broad array of visual pasts whose implications and frames are forever burnt into the present. 







Mikio Sakabe
Tokyo Fashion Week/online fashion show
October 17, 2020/12am CT (3pm Tokyo?)/ free


Won't lie, I do not know much about the brand Mikio Sakabe, or Tokyo fashion week for that matter, but ever since glimpsing the label's collaborations with the footwear company grounds I've followed them on Instagram with a cult-like fervor. Their clothes have a delicate feel (think sheer, lacey, florals) but with a restricting edge (a tight buckle, a bounding tie-back, arms of a formidable length). The shoes though, the shoes! Baubles of round plastic, breathy looking knits, translucent rubber, streetwear ready sneakers (and sandals!?) that scream at me on the internet asking to transport me into some cloud-like headspace where I can float ethereally through the greys and chaos of a cityscape....ahhh...I am totally aware of the frivolity of fashion but, I tend to treat it like I do most art: dreaming is a needed escape, creativity is a form of resilience, the senses can define and change lives. Also: donate to your local food bank...it's all about balance.


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