Reconsolidation

RECONSOLIDATION
Bruno Carnide – Peter Freund – Nino Fournier
Anna Gimein – Amelia Johannes – Jonathan Moss
Angelo Picozzi – Gábor Szűcs – Rhayne Vermette
11 MAY 2016 — 8PM at Comfort Station Logan Square — Chicago, IL

MIA presents Reconsolidation, an hour-long program of short format artists’ moving image works from around the world. Referring to a therapeutic technique where memories are reactivated, reconsolidation functions by confronting past trauma to affect positive change. The artworks in this screening relate a range of histories from a deeply personal confession at the heart of a failing marriage to the legacy of colonialism in a Black South African family, and into the unexpected convergences of meaning surrounding the word “camp” in the post-war period. A moving selection of works, each finds a different way of showing how re-examination of the past can lead to transcendence.


Carnide 3 Bruno Carnide (Portugal), Hushed. Left. Jumped. (2014) 5:00. Three quietly devastating conversations whose pathos hinges on miscommunication are overlaid with evocative b&w super 8 footage of the domestic environment in which they occur.

camp_img4 Peter Freund (US), CAMP (2011) 7:15. An essay musing on the intersections of meaning of the word “camp,” weaving quotations of text and image to unpack the dualism of the term in the post war era. The film’s central conceit aims not to diminish the horror of the Holocaust but to investigate the role of fantasy in traumatic historical memory and the ethical root of flamboyant enjoyment.

anonymous workers - nino fournier 03 Nino Fournier (Switzerland), Anonymous Workers (2015) 10:44. A tribute to workers, this piece builds a meditative intensity with the formal repetition of footage synchronized to a dramatic soundtrack. Built entirely from clips pulled from classic films, the piece functions simultaneously as a tribute to early 20th century filmmakers who used allegorical scripts to promote awareness of labor issues.

Gimein_La Foto Anna Gimein (Spain/US), The Photograph (2010) 6:30. A study of a gesture captured by the artist’s photojournalist grandfather during WWII, this performance searches for a universal experience through a deeply personal story.

Johannes_2 Amelia Johannes (Australia), Family Crockery (Whiteness) (2011) 1:46. Edited from the artist’s family videos, images of white porcelain objects are choreographed to reveal the significance of repetition in defining tradition and family history. The video emphasizes the influence of colonial traditions around occurrences of food in her South African family.

jonathan_moss_NV1_still2 Jonathan Moss (UK), NV1 (2016) 3:28. A contemplative piece made up of frozen moments woven together in kaldeidoscopic geometry that becomes a space to lose oneself within and enter into a dialogue with the subconscious.

060308b Angelo Picozzi (UK), 00:06:03:08 (2007) 6:03. Footage of water is reduced to its digital essence, a series of pulsating patterns of light on the surface of the screen, a digital degeneration of sound and image.

Szucs_2 Gábor Szűcs (Slovakia), Almost 1.0 (2015) 4:14. A completely glitched sample from a VHS tape using analog video mixers, Almost 1.0 functions as an abstract landscape.

Vermette_2 Rhayne Vermette (Canada), Full of Fire (2013) 2:15. Found footage and audio are torn apart and reassembled to form a portrait of loss and displacement.


11 MAY 2016 — 8PM
Comfort Station Logan Square
2579 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60647

Posted in: Chicago, screening

Irene Lusztig – The Motherhood Archives

IRENE LUSZTIG
THE MOTHERHOOD ARCHIVES
15 APRIL 2015 – 8PM at Comfort Station Logan Square – Chicago, IL
22 May 2015 – 8PM at the Armory – Pasadena, CA


MIA is pleased to present The Motherhood Archives (2013), an essay film on the complicated history of maternal education and childbirth by filmmaker Irene Lusztig.
newgeneration1

Assembled from a fascinating range of educational, industrial, and medical training films in homage to 70s feminist filmmaking, Lusztig traces the implications of postmodern birthing suites and natural birth movements back to the first emergence of anesthetic ether in the 19th century. Revealing a world of intensive training, rehearsal, and performative preparation for the unknown that is ultimately incommensurate with experience, The Motherhood Archives is a meditation on the maternal body as a site of institutional control, ideological surveillance, medical knowledge, and nationalist state intervention.

psychoproph4 naissance2 mothersandchildren1


A film by Irene Luszig
THE MOTHERHOOD ARCHIVES

presented in collaboration with ComfortFilm
15 APRIL 2015 – 8PM
Comfort Station Logan Square
2579 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60647

22 May 2015 – 8PM
the Armory
145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103

Posted in: Chicago, screening

Imaginal Fiction

IMAGINAL FICTION
Cornelia Eichhorn – Giulia Grossmann – Shambhavi Kaul
Solimán López – Marcantonio Lunardi – Santiago Parres (EZO)
Elliot Storey – WE (Kye Wilson- Helena Eflerová)
29 Oct 2014 – 8pm @ Armory, Pasadena, CA
12 Nov 2014 – 8pm @ Comfort Station, Chicago, IL

MIA is pleased to present Imaginal Fiction, a diverse selection of eight recent artists’ videos linked by a style of story telling that is akin to the process of active imagination. Each video uses enigmatic imagery and an oblique approach to create new, emotionally communicative mythologies.


VD_02 72p copie copie Ved’ma (2012) by Cornelia Eichhorn [France] is a 3-channel installation which follows three women simultaneously as they experience wildly dream-like situations rooted in Russian fairy-tales.

NA_Native American Native American (2012) by Giulia Grossmann [France] hovers on the edge between art film and documentary, following the inhabitants of a French resort where guests dress and behave as if they were living in the fabled American West.

chikaroot 21 Chitrakoot (2012) by Shambhavi Kaul [NC] is a landscape film which uses backdrops pulled from a mythological Indian television series to trace a narrative.

theArrival_2 The Arrival (2013) by Solimán López [Spain] is an allegorical piece working with our collective relationship to communications technology.

choir_84 The choir (2013) by Marcantonio Lunardi [Italy] features a group of choral singers who perform in a church with monitors over their faces which simultaneously broadcast images of their own heads singing the same piece.

dove Dove (2011) by Santiago Parres aka EZO [Spain] is a review and appropriation of a classic Spanish song.

AN_1b ANXIETY (2013) by Elliot Storey [NY] plays with dancers, sculpture, and architecture to illustrate the emotional state.

Hunter-Hunted_single-channel_still_01 Hunter/Hunted (2012) by WE (Kye Wilson and Helena Eflerová)[UK] is a two-channel installation, which follows the performance of Eflerová as both the huntress and the prey.


IMAGINAL FICTION

Wednesday, 29 Oct 2014 – 8pm
the Armory
145 N Raymond Ave
Pasadena, CA 91103

presented with the Logan Square International Film Series
Wednesday, 12 Nov 2014 – 8pm
Comfort Station Logan Square
2579 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60647

Posted in: Chicago, Pasadena, screening

Peak-End

PEAK-END
Ana Rodríguez León – Marija Linciute
Leah Lovett – Abinadi Meza – Evalajka Pervin
Josh Weissbach – Julia Weissenberg
3 September 2014 – 8pm – Comfort Station, Chicago, IL
13 September 2014 – 8pm – The Armory, Pasadena, CA

Peak-End is an international selection of recent short film and video projects organized around a theme of memory. Each piece finds a different path to exploring the ways in which memories are formed and recounted.


Ana Rodríguez León, Memorais (2012) Ana Rodríguez León [Spain], Memorais (2012) An evocative film set at the moment before the end of the world. A woman remembers her relationship with a man as the boundary between reality and what might have been begins to collapse.

Marija Linciute, CCCP (2012) Marija Linciute [France], CCCP (2012) Family photographs interweave with historical footage in this remembrance of the fall of the USSR seen through the eyes of a young Lithuanian girl.

Leah Lovett, still from Hardcore (2013) Leah Lovett [United Kingdom], Hardcore (2013) An intensely intimate piece with the camera focused on men’s mouths as they reenact a series of noises, heavy breathing and a few curt phrases. The unsettling sounds evoke sex and violence but are actually the men remembering the sounds they heard their partners make while giving birth.

Abinadi Meza, Hour Between Dog and Wolf (2013) Abinadi Meza [Texas], Hour Between Dog and Wolf (2013) Beginning with a journey by train, an ambiguous digital woman’s voice describes your experience to you. Composed of found mid-century footage, the viewer is at once a participant and a voyeur—she tells you, “It is amazing, and almost grotesque how things demand to repeat.”

Evalajka Pervin, my childhood katekismus (2012) Evalajka Pervin [Denmark], my childhood katekismus (2012) An evocative document of diaspora and acculturation, the artist performs the first verse of the Koran as recalled from her childhood in Pakistan.

Josh Weissbach, 106 River Road (2011) Josh Weissbach [Wisconsin], 106 River Road (2011) A court protection order read in a dead pan voice over footage of a home which slowly disintegrates into abstraction as the violent history of that address becomes clear.

Julia Weissenberg, Snowstorm (2012) Julia Weissenberg [Germany], Snowstorm (2012) An allegorical piece depicting a memory athlete who specializes in binary numbers.


The MIA [Moving Image Art] program of screenings and exhibitions was founded by video artist Alanna Simone in 2012. Originally based at the Armory in Pasadena, CA, the program is now expanding to present artists’ moving image to audiences in multiple cities. PEAK-END is the first of regular quarterly screenings in Chicago.

PEAK-END

Wednesday, 3 September 2014 – 8pm
presented by the Logan Square International Film Series
COMFORT STATION
2579 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60647

Saturday, 13 September 2014 – 8pm
The ARMORY
145 N Raymond Ave
Pasadena, CA 91104


Posted in: Chicago, Pasadena, screening

Paul Barrios

MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
presents
PAUL BARRIOS
15 MAY – 13 JUNE
TRES TIEMPOS – NUDO DE NUDOS

Barrios_NudoDeNudos_Wilson Colombian artist Paul Barrios created Tres tiempos (Three Times), the title of which refers to visual transformation through material, deconstruction, and construction; in this piece, symbolic objects are seen being ritually buried in three different walls. Nudo de nodos depicts a curious mechanism that transports symbolic items to create relationships between different people. Objects appear as codes, but their interpretation becomes transformed.


MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
15 FEBRUARY – 15 JUNE, 2014
four month-long exhibitions
Evelin Stermiz – Andrew Ellis Johnson
Vienne Chan – Paul Barrios

Posted in: exhibition

Vienne Chan

MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
presents
VIENNE CHAN
15 APRIL – 13 MAY
ATTEMPTS AT IMMUTABILITY – V’LA’IR

Chan_Vlair_5Hong Kong-born, Tel Aviv-based Vienne Chan created Attempts at Immutability, which depicts video images of objects and cycles of movement being projected back onto themselves. A second video, V’la’ir, was made in response to recent protests over the rising cost of housing in Tel Aviv. Chan learned Hebrew Sign Language in order to do a manual reading of a line from David Avidan’s poem “Harechovot mamirim l’at” (“and to the city, there is no beginning and there is no end.”), the signing of which she videotaped and projected onto the walls of the city’s buildings.


MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
15 FEBRUARY – 15 JUNE, 2014
four month-long exhibitions
Evelin Stermiz – Andrew Ellis Johnson
Vienne Chan – Paul Barrios

Posted in: exhibition

Andrew Ellis Johnson

MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
presents
ANDREW ELLIS JOHNSON
15 MARCH – 13 APRIL
DESCENSION – SUSPENSION

Johnson_Descension still 2_ The second installment in MIA’s residence with Outpost@Armory presents two video pieces by Andrew Ellis Johnson in the Armory’s Pasadena Art Alliance Gallery.

In Fayoum, Egypt, just after the revolution of January 25, 2011, Andrew Ellis Johnson filmed DESCENSION, a work that places the audience in a suggested majlis, an Arabic meeting room. Suspension, reads like a visual parable. With an ever-changing light source, a single human foot suspended above a heavy block takes on qualities that suggest conscience, martyrs, and the suspension of time.

The exhibition will be open for ArtNight Pasadena on March 14 from 6-10pm and thereafter during gallery hours, Tuesday through Sunday, noon – 5pm.


MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
15 FEBRUARY – 15 JUNE, 2014
four month-long exhibitions
Evelin Stermiz – Andrew Ellis Johnson
Vienne Chan – Paul Barrios

Posted in: exhibition

ArtNight

ARTNIGHT
14 MARCH 2014 – 6-10PM
MARY BAUM – SALVATORE INSANA
ALEX PACHON – MILLEE TIBBS

Join us for a special MIA pop-up exhibition just for Spring ArtNight in Pasadena— a city-wide art party that takes place from 6-10pm on March 14th:
Screen shot 2014-03-05 at 11.24.56 PM Mary Baum’s Crystal Paragon (2013) explores the idea of escapism and the power that art can have to transport the viewer to another place.

Fill up still3 Nervous spidery spirits looking for a body (language) move along in space- a time lapse without any shape, without any edge or borderline, in liquefaction— in Salvatore Insana’s Fill Up The Space (2012).

Cracks_02 Alex Pachon’s Cracks (2013) dances with music produced by the dance itself and, with a certain sarcasm, the source of the relationship between dance and music.

Screen Shot 2014-03-03 at 4.54.15 PM Virgin Land, Wyoming (2012) explores the desire to make the imaginary into the real, where artist Mille Tibbs fitted prosthetic unicorn horns to horses.

Posted in: exhibition, special event

Evelin Stermitz

MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
presents
EVELIN STERMITZ
15 FEBRUARY – 13 MARCH
WATER PORTRAITS I-IV

Stermitz_Water_Portrait_I_by_Evelin_Stermitz_ntsc_300dpi The first installment in MIA’s residence with Outpost@Armory presents four video portriats by Evelin Stermitz in the Armory’s Pasadena Art Alliance Gallery.

Austrian artist Evelin Stermitz created Water Portrait I-IV (2010), in which women’s faces are reflected in the ripples of the Ljubljanica River in Slovenia. Their words, dedicated to the water, reveal experiences of violence against women.

Please join us for an opening celebrating all of the Armory’s current exhibitions on Saturday, February 15 from 7-9pm. The exhibition will be on view daily during gallery hours, Tuesday through Sunday, noon – 5pm.


MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
15 FEBRUARY – 15 JUNE, 2014
four month-long exhibitions
Evelin Stermiz – Andrew Ellis Johnson
Vienne Chan – Paul Barrios

Posted in: exhibition

MIA in residence at Outpost

MIA IN RESIDENCE AT OUTPOST
15 FEBRUARY – 15 JUNE, 2014
four month-long exhibitions
Evelin Stermiz – Andrew Ellis Johnson
Vienne Chan – Paul Barrios

This spring, MIA is excited to be in residence with Outpost@Armory, a program initiative of Armory Center for the Arts, from February 15 to June 15, 2014. The residency will consist of MIA programming four sequential, month-long, video based, solo exhibitions, screened daily in the Armory’s Pasadena Art Alliance Gallery, by international artists who work in moving image. The works may be seen during gallery hours, Tuesday through Sunday, noon – 5pm.

Stermitz_Water_Portrait_I_by_Evelin_Stermitz_ntsc_300dpi Austrian artist Evelin Stermitz created Water Portrait I-IV (2010), in which women’s faces are reflected in the ripples of the Ljubljanica River in Slovenia. Their words, dedicated to the water, reveal experiences of violence against women. This work will screen from February 15 through March 13.

Johnson_Descension still 2_ In Fayoum, Egypt, just after the revolution of January 25, 2011, Andrew Ellis Johnson filmed DESCENSION, a work that places the audience in a suggested majlis, an Arabic meeting room. A second work, Suspension, reads like a visual parable. With an ever-changing light source, a single human foot suspended above a heavy block takes on qualities that suggest conscience, martyrs, and the suspension of time. These works will screen from March 15 through April 13.

Chan_Vlair_5 Hong Kong-born, Tel Aviv-based Vienne Chan created Attempts at Immutability, which depicts video images of objects and cycles of movement being projected back onto themselves. A second video, V’la’ir, was made in response to recent protests over the rising cost of housing in Tel Aviv. Chan learned Hebrew Sign Language in order to do a manual reading of a line from David Avidan’s poem “Harechovot mamirim l’at” (“and to the city, there is no beginning and there is no end.”), the signing of which she videotaped and projected onto the walls of the city’s buildings. These works will screen from April 15 through May 13.

Barrios_NudoDeNudos_Wilson Colombian artist Paul Barrios created Tres tiempos (Three Times), the title of which refers to visual transformation through material, deconstruction, and construction; in this piece, symbolic objects are seen being ritually buried in three different walls. Nudo de nodos depicts a curious mechanism that transports symbolic items to create relationships between different people. Objects appear as codes, but their interpretation becomes transformed. These works will screen from May 15 through June 13.

About Outpost@Armory

In late 2011, the celebrated artist- and neighborhood-centered organization Outpost for Contemporary Art was at a critical financial and administrative juncture. Rather than see the organization close, Armory Center for the Arts invited Outpost into the Armory fold with the aim of maintaining Outpost’s well-regarded programmatic vitality while augmenting Armory’s spirit and capacity to invent. Through focused planning and collaboration, a vision is emerging for melding Outpost’s international and community-based programs with Armory’s respected gallery and arts education programs.

Posted in: exhibition