Temp.Files in Screenslate and Creatrix

Stills from projects by Rah Eleh, Kara Hearn and Rachel Stevens

In March Screenslate published An Interview with Temp. Files by Shelby Shaw on its sexy, newly redesigned site. Thanks Shelby for your thoughtful interview!

This month, Creatrix published a profile on us: TEMP. FILES ON RESIDING IN THE DIGITAL SPACE. So great to have our new experimental video coop out there in the world (in digital space!).

Visit us at temporaryfiles.net. This month check out Michelle Levy’s awesome video Scenes from an Apartment and read the interview with her conducted by temp.files member Emily Brandt. Come back for Tusia Dabrowska’s video and interview in July and Sunita Prasad’s in August.

Stills from projects by Tusia Dabrowska, Michelle Levy and Emily Brandt

Temp. Files video cooperative

So pleased to participate in the inaugural group of Temporary Files! We just launched Kara Hearn’s fantastic new video, “Self modulation for a new age.” My new video (*cough*) will be live in April.

Initiated by new media /performance artist Tusia Dabrowska and interdisciplinary artist/curator Michelle Levy, Temp. Files is a video publishing cooperative, online publication, streaming site, and remote residency. We are a group of seven female-identifying artists working between text, social engagement, and performance, who have committed to supporting each other in the process of creating experimental streaming video work. In a moment where we can no longer rely solely on established IRL spaces to see, discuss, make, and disseminate art, we must create our own platforms and opportunities for each other where they don’t exist.

How it works: Each video, resulting from a challenge to the artists to experiment with something new, will be accessible for one month and then disappear. Video releases are staggered throughout the year. Each artist gets two months of feedback and support from the cooperative, followed by one month where the new video is streaming. An interview with each artist, conducted by another member of the group, is published alongside the video. This month’s interview with Rah Eleh was conducted by Michelle Levy. There will be rotating Instagram takeovers and intermittent programming led by each month’s featured artist.

Videos are released on the first of each month in the order of the names above.

We are: Rah Eleh, Kara Hearn, Rachel Stevens, Emily Brandt, Michelle Levy, Tusia Dabrowska, and Sunita Prasad.

This marks the first season of Temp. Files. New artists will be invited to participate in the seasons to come.

To receive announcements of future video releases, please subscribe to the Temp. Files list so you can catch all the videos. And follow us!

https://temporaryfiles.net/

World Records Vol. 4 – Our Violent Commons \ The Territory of Listening

I am so pleased to have contributed a short piece to this issue of WORLD RECORDS Vol. 4: “IN THE PRESENCE OF OTHERS,” edited by Nicholas Gamso and Jason Fox, published by Union Docs.

My essay Our Violent Commons \ The Territory of Listening is one of the responses to a chapter from Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s new book Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism and I discuss the wonderful film A Magical Substance Flows Into Me by Jumana Manna through this lens.

About this issue via Union Docs:

Our latest issue of World Records investigates how documentary film and video, performance art, curatorial frameworks, digital social media platforms, genetic mapping, and photojournalism can provide the grounds for collective action in the pursuit of a world worth having. 

Featuring an incredible lineup of contributors including: 

Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, Arab Image Foundation, Tania Bruguera, Nitasha Dhillon, Rayya El Zein, Irmgard Emmelhainz, Kareem Estefan, Jason Fox, Nicholas Gamso, Josh Guilford, Bonnie Honig, Jonathan Kahana, Helene Kazan, Toby Lee, Martin Lucas, MTL Collective,The Nakba Archive, The New Negress Film Society, Mariya Nikiforova, The Noncitizen Archive, Jenny Reardon, Warren Sack, Gregory Sholette, Cecilia Sjöholm, Rachel Stevens, Miriam Ticktin.

The Hoosac Institute Journal #5

Screenshot_2020-07-03 journal 5 — The Hoosac InstituteIf you haven’t encountered The Hoosac Institute, you are in for a treat. I am delighted to be included in Journal 5. 😄 “The Hoosac Institute is a curated platform for text and image focusing on pieces that don’t fit conventional disciplinary narratives.” Girl, do I feel at home in that genre category. So many in-between and not-quite-realized ideas by brilliant folks can be found here. My contribution is a new film trailer (Trailer II, 2020) for Survivalist Cinema, made from fragments of 1970s eco disaster and survivalist films processed with analog tools at Signal Culture. More on the trailers here.

Deep thanks to Jenny Perlin, Director and mastermind, of course. I am a true fan of her work.

Also take note of the excellent hashtag navigation:

Body Memory at Union Docs

Screen Shot 2020-07-03 at 4.10.39 PM

MFJ70_COVER_FRONTSo fun to introduce and facilitate this discussion with Faith Holland and Seth Barry Watter of their essay on work by Shana Moulton paired with Jennifer Reeder’s terrific film A Million Miles Away on the occasion of the launch of Millennium Film Journal #70, Body Memory. So many thanks to Union Docs in Brooklyn, one of my favorite venues for independent and experimental cinema, for hosting and co-presenting this evening on December 15th. Having grown up surrounded by “New Age” influences I particularly enjoyed delving into Shana Moulton’s work and remain a big fan. Faith and Seth sparkled with brilliance.

 

From Union Docs:

Among the common tropes of the New Age healing narrative is that the self must be dismembered before it can be made whole. Visualization and channeling, aromatherapy and crystals are aids to that labor of self-excavation. Moulton’s deft use of the video medium has often gone far to portray such experience—to make graphically manifest the metaphysics of feeling-good. […] The riddle posed by Whispering Pines as a whole is: what’s wrong? Each episode attempts in some way to solve it. Moulton offers one clue in Whispering Pines 7 (2006) when she sings in the form of a cubistic sphinx: “Now that I’m a woman, everything is strange.” —Faith Holland & Seth Watter “From Picture Plane to Astral Plane: Shana Moulton’s Whispering Pines”

We are excited to host a festive evening dedicated to the latest volume of Millennium Film Journal, BODY MEMORY. In celebration, we have invited featured writers from this volume, Faith Holland and Seth Barry Watter, to unpack and walk us through their essay “Picture Plane to Astral Plane” that examines Video Artist Shana Moulton’s video performance series Whispering Pines. We will share a program of Moulton’s videos alongside Jennifer Reeder’s film A Million Miles Away, also featured in this volume of the journal to open up a conversation around contemporary feminist filmmaking perspectives and practice. Millennium Film Journal’s Editor Grahame Weinbren will be in attendance with Rachel Stevens to introduce this volume and the program. Following a presentation from Seth Watter and Faith Holland, Stevens will lead a conversation with them on the films and their work.
https://uniondocs.org/event/2019-12-15-body-memory/