Conversations at the Edge: Spin/Verso/Contour
An Evening with Hannes Schüpbach
Thursday, April 4 2013, 18h
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Hannes Schüpbach in person!

The films of renowned Swiss artist Hannes Schüpbach are lyrical, often transcendent portraits of people, spaces, and everyday life. A painter, performance artist, and expert on textile art, Schüpbach weaves together light, gesture, and a keen attentiveness to the material world into meticulously structured compositions. His films, notes curator Haden Guest, open onto “a multi-layered world, where superimpositions and reflections suggest the hidden depths of the places and people evoked within them.” For this program, he presents Spin/Verso/Contour (2001-2011), an affecting trilogy about his parents, and L’Atelier (2008), a portrait of an artist’s studio in Paris.

Organized with the support of SWISS FILMS–The Arts Council of Switzerland.

Hannes Schüpbach (b. 1965, Winterthur, Switzerland) is a painter, performance artist, filmmaker and curator of artists’ films. Schüpbach is best known for his 16mm films, which have been shown at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur; the Centre Pompidou; the Biennale de l’image en mouvement, Geneva; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Tate Modern, London; and the Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Conversations at the Edge: Gregory Markopoulos' Eniaios II
Thursday, November 3, 18h
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State, Chicago, IL, USA

Remembered as the “supreme erotic poet” of the American avant-garde, Gregory Markopoulos spent decades creating his monumental film Eniaios, an eighty-hour composition of twenty-two cycles. Eniaios (meaning “unity” or “uniqueness”) was originally conceived for screening at Temenos, Markopolous’s open-air theater in the hills overlooking Lyssaraia, Greece. Silent yet sensuous, the film journeys through a host of imagery, including pulses of white light, passages of black, fragments of earlier works, and images of sacred places. Markopoulos died before Eniaios could be printed and his partner, filmmaker Robert Beavers, has spent the last two decades restoring the work. Only six of the twenty-two film orders have been printed thus far. Tonight’s screening of Eniaios II — the second cycle in the piece and an epic film in its own right — affords a rare opportunity to view Markopoulos’s magnum opus in the making. Gregory Markopoulos, 1949-1991, Greece/USA, 16mm, 125 min plus discussion.

Eniaios VI – VIII will premiere June 29 – July 1, 2012 at the Temenos in Lyssarea (Arcadia) Greece.  For more info, visit: www.the-temenos.org.

Conversations at the Edge: The Wild Triumphs of Martha Colburn
Thursday, February 10, 18h
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State, Chicago, IL, USA

Martha Colburn in person!

Martha Colburn’s wickedly witty animations are assemblages of stop-motion puppetry, multi-layered glass painting, and all forms of pop cultural detritus. Drawing inspiration from the histories of the American West and more recent narratives of methamphetamine use and environmental catastrophe, Colburn’s outrageous pastiches offer incendiary commentary on our contemporary condition. Writes Jonas Mekas: “Martha Colburn’s films are naked testimonials of our times, and of her generation.” This evening, she will present a range of works from across her oeuvre—including early favorites like Evil of Dracula (1997) and Cosmetic Emergency (2005)—and the Chicago premiere of two brand-new projects, in addition to an in-depth discussion about her process. 1994-2010, Martha Colburn, Netherlands/USA, multiple formats, ca. 75 mins plus discussion.

Conversations at the Edge: Rosa Menkman - Glitched
Thursday, September 30, 18h
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 North State St.,Chicago, Illinois 60601

Rosa Menkman in person!

Every technology possesses its own inherent accidents. Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist and theorist whose focus is on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media specifically. She describes these as “the uncanny, brutal structures that come to the surface during a break of the flow within a technology; they are the primal data-screams of the machine.” Working at the experimental junction of glitch, noise, and new media art, Menkman creates glitch work and writes texts about codecs, interpolation, and compression going awry. This evening, Menkman will introduce a selection of videos followed by a real-time performance. Rest assured, the equipment is working, though it may not look like it is. This presentation coincides with GLI.TC/H, an international noise and new media conference taking place from September 29 to October 3 at various locations around Chicago. Visit http://gli.tc/h. Rosa Menkman, 2006–10, Netherlands, multiple formats, ca. 75 min (plus discussion).

Rosa Menkman (1983, Arnhem, Netherlands) is the leading international theory-practitioner of glitch art.  She has written extensively on digital artifacts and noise, including the Glitch Studies Manifesto (2010). Her videos and real-time performances have been included in festivals like Blip, Europe and U.S.; Haip, Ljubljana; Cimatics, Brussels; Video Vortex, Amsterdam and Brussels; and Pasofest, Ankara. She has collaborated on art projects together with Alexander Galloway, little-scale, Govcom.org, Goto80 and the Internet art collective, Jodi.org.  Menkman received her Master’s degree in 2009 and is currently a PhD student at KHM Cologne, writing on the subject of Artifacts.