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William
Wegman and Carolee Schneemann to Attend 13th Annual Virginia Film
Festival
The Animal Art of Sam Easterson, Leah Gilliam,
Beatrix Ost and "Animal Charm" to be Presented
Oct.
20, 2000 -- The 13th annual Virginia
Film Festival, scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 26, through Sunday,
Oct. 29, is proud to announce that Festival guest artists William
Wegman and Carolee Schneemann will display photographic works at
the Bayly Art Museum, located on the University of Virginia Grounds.
This year's Film Festival has an unusually large number of visual
artists, including Sam Easterson, Leah Gilliam, Beatrix Ost and
"Animal Charm," whose experimental media art will be exhibited and
demonstrated. The exhibitions all develop the theme of this year's
Festival, Animal Attractions, on representations of animals in the
media.
From
fairy tales to fashion, in photographs and film, William Wegman's
talented Weimaraners are among the most recognizable art images
of the twentieth century. Wegman will present his films and videos,
including Hardly Gold and Reel 9, on Saturday, Oct. 28, at 7 p.m.
at the Regal 6 Cinemas on the Downtown Mall. Wegman will also deliver
the Museum's annual Gladys S. Blizzard Lecture at 2 p.m. on Sunday,
Oct. 29 in Campbell Hall. In addition, several photographs by Wegman
will be on display in the Museum's major Charlottesville Collects
exhibition.
On
Sept. 26, the Bayly Art
Museum opened "Infinity Kisses: II, 1981-1987," a photographic
installation by noted multimedia and feminist artist Carolee Schneemann,
on view through Nov. 26. The show consists of 24 laser images, each
8 x 10 inches, printed from 35mm color film. The photographs will
be displayed in the stairwell of the Museum and are best viewed
from the second-floor landing.
"Infinity
Kisses" continues Schneemann's dissolution of the boundaries between
human and animal reason and the irrational. The images capture the
expressive self-determination of her cat in recurring sequences
as he ritually and ardently kisses Schneemann on the mouth. Photographed
over an eight-year period with a hand-held 35mm camera using available
light with uncertain focus, the images raise questions of interspecies
communication as well as triggering unexpected cultural taboos.
Schneemann,
a featured artist sponsored by the McIntire Department of Art during
the Festival, will present a rare screening of Kitch's Last Meal.
This dual-projector Super 8mm work is the final film in her autobiographical
trilogy and features her cat, Kitch, an artistic collaborator on
the classic film "Fuses" and other artworks. Schneemann's screening
is on Friday, Oct. 27, at 10 p.m. at the Vinegar Hill Theater.
Since
the 1960s, Schneeman has exhibited her paintings and kinetic sculpture
while extending the boundaries of performance, video and film. A
1993 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, her work has been shown
most recently at the Whitney Museum of Art; Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris; the Venice Biennale; The Museum of Modern Art and Exit Art
in New York; and the Walker Art Center. Schneemann is also a recognized
writer and lecturer. Her books include More Than Meat Joy: Performance
Works and Selected Writings (1979), Early and Recent Work (1983)
and Video Burn (1991).
Animal
Art in the Ix Building
A
mammoth art exhibition entitled "Animal Attractions" will feature
works dealing with the fears, memories, dreams and reflections concerning
animals by the faculty of the McIntire Department of Art, including
William Bennett, Dean Dass, James Hagan, Suzi Fox, Elizabeth Schoyer,
and William Wylie as well as hundreds of their students in works
including everything from drawings to digital media.
Sculptor
Sam Easterson will be presenting a new piece at the Ix Building
entitled "Animal, Vegetable, Video: Arachnida" The exhibit will
feature video footage that has been captured from the point of view
of a spider and a scorpion. It will also feature taxidermic specimens
of a spider and a scorpion that will 'model' the micro video cameras
that he placed on the live arachnids in the field. Using extension
cords, he will also create two large topographic maps on the floor
of the gallery (each map will depict the region where he did his
videotaping). Easterson's "Animal, Vegetable, Video" series collects
video footage from the point of view of animals and plants, and
videos from this series will be screened and discussed by Easterson
at Vinegar Hill Theater in the Film Festival's "Animal Other" program
at 4 p.m. on Oct. 27.
Also
exhibited will be new human-animal sculptures and paintings by Charlottesville-based
artist Beatrix Ost, collectively titled ANIMAL HOUSING, or: The
Domesticated Human. Ost is creating a room filled with animal-related
objects seen through transparent sheets, including fur shoes, a
tiger fur rug, and chairs with buffalo horns, interspersed with
new paintings and drawings.
"Animal
Attractions" will be on display in the Frank Ix Building, just two
blocks from the Downtown Mall, during the Festival weekend. The
show will be open from Thursday, Oct. 26, through Sunday, Oct. 29,
from 1 to 7 p.m. The Ix Building is located on Elliott Street between
Ridge and Avon Streets.
Animal
Charm
Animal
Charm, media artists who perform live video sampling of mass media
products, will give a live video performance on Friday, Oct. 27,
at 7 p.m. at the Vinegar Hill Theatre. Through appropriation and
reassemblage, their works upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing,
exposing the tragic underbelly of corporate message-making -- in
particular, the way it suppresses nature and preys on human vulnerability.
In
addition to their live video mixing performance, Animal Charm will
demonstrate their mixing techniques at a "Cabaret" in the Downtown
Artspace, located under the Jefferson Theater on the Downtown Mall
on Saturday, Oct. 28, at 3 p.m. A collaborative project of Chicago
sound and media artists Rich Bott and Jim Fetterley, Animal Charm
are asking audience members to bring in home videos of pets to throw
into the mix.
Graduates
of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bott and Fetterley
dive into the dumpsters of video production companies and go through
countless hours of industrial, documentary and corporate video footage,
often editing the tapes in a live mix session before an audience.
By re-editing images derived from a wide variety of sources, they
scramble media codes, creating a kind of tic-ridden, convulsive
babble, often reinvesting conventional forms with subversive meanings.
Leah
Gilliam's Split and Other New Media
Leah
Gilliam's CD-ROM Split, based on her research into primatology and
science fiction, exploits footage from an obscure 8mm trailer for
The Planet of the Apes to highlight the unstable relationship between
the real historical past and the distant imaginary future. Gilliam's
work in new media obsessively looks back at outmoded media technologies,
and has earned her growing acclaim as a major new artist. She was
recently given the 1999 Creative Capital Foundation Award, as well
as having a lengthy record of other awards and residencies after
receiving an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in
1991. Gilliam will present and navigate through her works, including
her new Web site, at the Robertson Media Center in Clemons Library
on the U.Va. Grounds on Friday, Oct. 27, at 2 p.m.
The
complete program for the Virginia Film Festival is available at
www.vafilm.com. Tickets are
available online. Call 1-800-UVA-FEST for more information.
Contact:
Anne Hooff at Payne, Ross & Associates: 804-977-7607 (phone), 804-977-7610
(fax), or email annehooff@aol.com
Cara White, 843/881-1480, e-mail: carapub@aol.com
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