The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College announces the fall programs in the screening series Whole Grain: Experiments in Film & Video. The variety of subjects explored across the season's the three programs include the relationship between text and image (September 26), the work of Tibetan-American artist Tenzin Phuntsog (October 16), and the work of the late Harry Smith (November 16).
The Whole Grain series, which presents classic and contemporary work in experimental film and video, is programmed by Assistant Director for Engagement Tom Yoshikami.
All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Visitors Services Desk at 518-580-8080 or visit https://tang.skidmore.edu.
Tuesday, September 26, 6:30 pm
Whole Grain Experiments in Film & Video: Moving Words
In conjunction with the exhibition Unset Texts, the evening's program features short films that explore the relationship between text and image. Associate Professor of English Paul Benzon, who co-curated the exhibition, will introduce the screening and lead a discussion afterward.
The program includes:
- Waterworks (A Clear Day and No Memories), Rick Hancox, US, 1982, 6 min., 16mm
- Measures of Distance, Mona Hatoum, Palestine, 1988, 16 min., video
- Gently Down the Stream, Su Friedrich, US, 1981, 14 min., 16mm
Monday, October 16, 6 pm
Whole Grain Experiments in Film & Video: Four Films by Tenzin Phuntsog
Tenzin Phuntsog is a Tibetan-American artist living and working between San Francisco and New York and working with film, installation, multimedia, and performance. His work is on view in the exhibition Forms of Awakening: Selections from the Jack Shear Collection of Himalayan Art.
The program includes:
- A Singing Blade (US, 2014, 15 min., digital)
- Film Poem II (US, 2013, 10 min., Super 8mm Kodachrome film scanned to digital)
- Four Rivers (US, 2010, 67 min., digital)
- Hug (US, 2023, 3 min., digital)
Phuntsog will also be a guest artist taking part in the Tang's Dunkerley Dialogue series, in conversation with Mary Kate Donovan, Skidmore College Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of Media and Film Studies, on Thursday, October 19, at 7:30 pm.
Thursday, November 16, 6 pm
Whole Grain Experiments in Film & Video: Heaven & Earth Magic and Early Abstractions
A screening of Harry Smith's seminal film Heaven & Earth Magic (US, 1961, 66 min., 16mm) and Early Abstractions (US, 1946-1952, 23 min., 16mm) a collection of seven short works. William Lewis, Skidmore Professor of Philosophy, who has written on avant-garde filmmaker/mystic Harry Smith, will introduce the screening and lead a discussion afterward.
About Unset Texts
The exhibition Unset Texts focuses on books as aesthetic objects. Through sculpture, photographs, collage, painting, prints, and artist's books from the Tang collection and Scribner Library's Special Collections, Unset Texts considers how experimentation with printed text and the book as an object poses new possibilities for storytelling and artistic exploration and for engaging with questions of history, representation, and justice. The exhibition is curated by Skidmore Associate Professor of English Paul Benzon, with Tang Associate Curator Rebecca McNamara, and is in conjunction with the Scribner Seminar course "Weird Books," which Benzon is currently teaching.
About Tenzin Phuntsog
Tenzin Phuntsog is a Tibetan-American artist living and working between San Francisco and New York and working with film, installation, multi-media, and performance. His works have previously exhibited and screened at The Rubin Museum, New York; Anthology Film Archives, New York; The Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Galerie Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil; Video Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil; among others. Recent Fellowships and residencies include a Marble House residency (2022), NARS Residency (2021), and a Flaherty Fellowship (2019). Tenzin Phuntsog received a BA in Media Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in New York.
About Harry Smith
Harry Smith (1923–1991) was an artist whose activities and interests put him at the center of the mid twentieth-century American avant-garde. Although best known as a filmmaker and musicologist, he frequently described himself as a painter, and his varied projects called on his skills as an anthropologist, linguist, and translator. He had a lifelong interest in the occult and esoteric fields of knowledge, leading him to speak of his art in alchemical and cosmological terms. Read more about him at harrysmitharchives.com.
About the Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College is a pioneer of interdisciplinary exploration and learning. A cultural anchor of New York's Capital Region, the Tang's approach has become a model for college and university art museums across the country—with exhibition programs that bring together visual and performing arts with interdisciplinary ideas from history, economics, biology, dance, and physics, to name just a few. The Tang has one of the most rigorous faculty-engagement initiatives in the nation, and a robust publication and touring exhibition program that extends the museum's reach far beyond its walls. The Tang Teaching Museum's award-winning building, designed by architect Antoine Predock, serves as a visual metaphor for the convergence of art and ideas. The Museum is open to the public on Tuesday–Sunday, noon–5pm, with extended hours until 9 pm Thursday. https://tang.skidmore.edu
