Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Presents Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema and Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema

Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema delves into the essential role of color in cinema, featuring film clips, technological equipment, and objects, including the legendary ruby slippers designed by Gilbert Adrian from The Wizard of  Oz (1939), the green dress designed by Edith Head and worn by Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958), a blue ensemble worn by Jamie Foxx as Django in Django Unchained (2012), and a Wonka chocolate bar from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) . Interactive installations invite visitors to engage with color in innovative ways. A comprehensive catalogue will accompany the exhibition, offering deeper insights into the legacy of color in film.

Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema is curated by Senior Exhibitions Curator Jessica Niebel with Assistant Curator Sophia Serrano, Research Assistant Alexandra James Salichs, and former Curatorial Assistant Manouchka Kelly Labouba.

Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema explores the global impact of the cyberpunk subgenre on film culture, showcasing iconic films like Blade Runner (1982), The Matrix (1999), and international titles such as Sleep Dealer (2008) and Akira (1988). At its core, an immersive installation will trace the genre's origins and its evolution into 21st-century themes like Afrofuturism and Indigenous futurism. Visitors can also experience a mixed-reality (MR) installation, and the exhibition includes a catalogue with rare behind-the-scenes images and exclusive merchandise.

Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema is curated by Vice President of Curatorial Affairs Doris Berger, with Assistant Curators Nicholas Barlow and Emily Rauber Rodriguez. 

 

Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Photo by: Josh White, JWPictures ©Academy Museum Foundation

 

Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema runs through July 13, 2025, and Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema runs through April 12, 2026.

The Academy Museum exhibition galleries and store are open six days a week from 10am to 6pm and are closed on Tuesdays.

In conjunction with the exhibition Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema, the Academy Museum proudly presents The Wonders of Technicolor, a screening series that celebrates the vibrant and indelible impact of Technicolor on Hollywood productions and audiences. From shaping narratives to evoking emotions, color transcends logic, resonating deeply with audiences. Introduced in the 1930s, Technicolor IV became the dominant color technology in Hollywood, defining the look of studio films with its crisp images and vibrant hues. This series highlights Technicolor's profound influence on filmmaking, showcasing its contributions to production design, costume, and cinematography, as seen in classics like Vertigo (1958) and Cabaret (1972).

Tickets to the Academy Museum are available only through advance online reservations via the Academy Museum’s website and mobile app.

Catherine Corman's "Lost Explorer" Is A Prosaic Observation of Beauty Hiding In Plain Sight

written and directed by Catherine Corman
based on the novel Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano
Jean: Roger Corman
Annette: Sally Kirkland
“Song of the Sea” written and performed by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

Jean (Roger Corman), an undersea explorer and documentarian, has begun to question his life’s work. Skipping a flight to Rio for his next expedition, he returns instead to the city, revisiting the places that inspired his quest for adventure, hoping to rediscover the longing that drove him to the ends of the earth, and which now pulls him back to his own past.

A statement from the artist:

“Years ago, I wrote a book about the Surrealist sculptor Joseph Cornell. His enchantment with the sea led to portraits of the mythical water nymph Undine, an homage to Descartes made of driftwood, and variations on Chardin constructed out of seashells. The sea became a sort of metaphor for art, each visible and knowable, and yet a mystery.

Another kindred spirit of the Surrealists was the undersea filmmaker Jean Painlevé, whose slow motion underwater ballets starring seahorses, starfish and seashells, illuminated the secrets of the depths of the sea. His mute, lyrical images are a poetic ideal that inspired Lost Explorer.

Painlevé and Cornell explored ways of creating art by of observing objects in the world, things as they are — sea creatures drifting along ocean currents, old postcards of mermaids, faded slides of white seashells - and revealing their natural, inadvertent beauty. 

In this film I have tried to observe the world and gently arrange it into poetry. I shot existing locations, unaltered. There was no crew — no set dressing, no lighting, no costumes. All the clothes my father wears are his own, all the props were found around our house.  

This is the simplest sort of filmmaking, more an observation of the world, with careful attention to all of its latent poetry, and openness to the mystery and beauty, barely hidden, waiting to be discovered.”

Object (Soap Bubble Set) (1941), Joseph Cornell

Still from The Seahorse (1931), Jean Painlevé

Catherine Corman's short films Lost Horizon and Little Jewel, based upon the work of Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano, were long-listed for the Academy Award. Little Jewel was also invited to the Cannes Film Festival. Her short film Les Non-Dupes screened at the Berlin Biennale. Her book of photographs, Daylight Noir, was exhibited at the Venice Biennale and is included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. She was educated at Harvard College and Oxford University.

Roger Corman is an Academy Award winning filmmaker who has been honored by the Cinémathèque Française, the British Film Institute, and the Museum of Modern Art. He has made over five-hundred films, including a series of Edgar Allan Poe films, and a number of films chronicling the 1960s counter-culture. His film The Wild Angels was the opening night film at the Venice Film Festival. He received the first Producer’s Award at the Cannes Film Festival. He distributed films by Ingmar Bergman, François Truffaut, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa in America.

Patrick Modiano received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his citation, the Nobel Committee highlighted “the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation." He has also received the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française and the Prix Goncourt. He is the author of more than forty books.

Sally Kirkland was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Anna, for which she also received a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, and a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress. A former member of Andy Warhol’s Factory, she has appeared in over two-hundred films.

A Memory: Tabaimo’s Nest at GL Strand in Denmark

Tabaimo, aitaisei-josei, 2015 Video installation ©Tabaimo. Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi and James Cohan Gallery GL STRAND Photo by David Stjernholm

text by Lara Schoorl

Walking into, Nest, Tabaimo’s first retrospective in the Nordic region, is like walking into someone’s subconscious mind, half asleep, half awake, half dream, half real; each film a vignette into an absurd fusing of desired or criticized aspects of society; each painting and installation a remnant of that. Spread across three floors of Copenhagen’s GL Strand––an eighteenth century aristocratic house designed by the Dutch-Danish architect Philip de Lange that has housed the almost hundred-year old art association for the past five decades––Tabaimo turns the interior of a home into the interior of a psyche; using the architecture of the exhibition space as well as the architecture in her works as a lattice that let the realms of inside and outside, private and public seep through and into each other. 

“haunted house” (2003), one of five hand-drawn and then computerized stop motion animation videos in the exhibition, is the first work on view and a gateway from the outside to the inside, into which one will be pulled deeper and deeper as one dwells through the show. On a curved wall we follow a moving peephole or telescope-like lens across a cityscape filled with apartment buildings; only seeing as much as the round lens reveals, while the rest of the wall remains in the shadows, blocked from our vision and awaiting its turn to be gleaned over. Our eyes move across windows and inevitably the scenes behind it. We see people standing, walking, eating in their homes; we imagine their moods and relationships; and then imagination begins to blend with reality when the (made up) life stories behind these people are suddenly taking place in blown up proportions atop buildings. In this video work, Tabaimo uses an amalgam of childhood memories and adult daydreaming to peer into the lives of others. While we are still looking from an outside perspective, a longing for the inside is instilled.  

Tabaimo, haunted house, 2003 Video installation ©Tabaimo. Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi and James

As one continues up a floor, we enter “public conVENience” (2003) and stand at the edge of a public bathroom. Installed across three wall-sized screens positioned in a U-shape and built on an inclining ramp, this public yet intimate space starts out as larger-than-life, but grows smaller towards the end of the slope. A concoction of perspectives both realistic and fantastical presents itself depending on where one chooses to stand. We are inside a shared space, a unique liminal space where public and private meet. Women walk into the screen and into the stalls, peeing, disposing of sanitary napkins, re-applying makeup. Then, here too, Tabaimo allows for fictional narratives to insert themselves into our shared reality. One of the bathroom visitors takes off her clothes, and dressed in a bathing suit, ties a rope to her waist before diving into one of the squat toilets; later on, a giant moth flies into the space, and a turtle is flushed in one of the bowls. For the majority of the video we stand separately, as one of the possible bathroom visitors, but occasionally a zoom-in occurs across three screens and we are staring at what could be our own feet squatting above a toilet. Slowly, we are roped into the narratives of the works.

Tabaimo, public conVENience, 2006 Video installation ©Tabaimo. Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi and James Cohan. GL STRAND Photo by David Stjernholm

The further we enter the exhibition, the more the space between us and the works blur; with each floor interior spaces protrude more outward. On the second floor, in the only room lit by natural light, as though to encourage growth, drawings of hybrid plant body parts are drawn directly upon the walls as well as on papers held in wooden frames. Technically perfect, to the likening of botanical and anatomical drawings for research and documentation purposes, the medium of drawing (here and in the videos) refers to Japanese woodblock printing and anime––the latter became a popular genre in the 1960s in Japan in which the border between real and imaginary lives also became porous––and form a formal undercurrent in Nest. The humanoid flowers lead us into the adjacent room in which an interpretation of Tabaimo’s studio is installed. Its presentation in an exhibition, in an art institution, in which touch is discouraged, emphasizes the installation is a rendering, a recollection (instead of a reality) of this place elsewhere, where it is used by the artist and so presumably holds an aliveness of materials and movement. Here, where the studio is in stasis, the viewer becomes a time traveler sharing the room with a frozen temporality. We are now fully inside one of the most intimate places of the artist, yet kept at a small distance by way of temporal and institutional boundaries. An anchor in our singular, physical, reality in the shape of systemic space or time, and its friction with alternative realities is a trope that recurs throughout the exhibition.

In the final gallery, after which no throughway or exit is available, only a way back through the previous rooms and tracing our steps down the other two floors, we land in “aittaisei josei” (2015), a video of a corner of a room without a ceiling. Or, a room for which the night sky poses as plafond, a full moon hanging directly above the meeting point of the cornering walls that disappear into a dark infinity. The scene spans one wall covering projection of said corner in which just a couch and a table are placed, with their sides closest to the edge of the image coming out of the screen and continuing into the space as real objects, cut out of furniture matching to the drawing in the video. The interior space in the video and the interior of the gallery space are literally connected as such and form a backdrop for the imaginary outside spilling in. A moth reappears on the screen, from behind the walls a tree grows high and into the room, and from its branches a head of hair appears, locks sweeping and reaching to the ground. In “aitaisei josei” all matter comes to life, moves, and turns not only spaces but meaning inside out.

Tabaimo, aitaisei-josei, 2015 Video installation ©Tabaimo. Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi and James Cohan Gallery. GL STRAND Photo by David Stjernholm 

Although the longest video is little over 6.5 minutes, it is easy to continue watching each of them for much longer; the addictive quality of the bizarre that creeps into the everyday but also the slightly quivering texture of the countless succeeding animated drawings that compose the videos have a hypnotizing effect. And, simultaneously, it is the medium of drawing that functions both as a barrier between reality and the work, and one that prevents us from fully falling into a shared imagination between the artist and viewer. Nest, in nature a complex and built structure that nurtures new life, entices us to open those drawers in our minds for which there may be no space in our day-to-day life, and provides a place where our fantasy, fears, desires and anxieties are acknowledged and given a response.

Read A Conversation Between Paul Reubens & Nadia Lee Cohen From Autre 15: Losing My Religion →

 

Autre Magazine, Vol. 2 Iss. 15 F/W 2022: Losing My Religion

 

Paul Reubens is one of the most brilliant comedic talents of our era. His character, Pee-wee Herman, a maniacal man child with a famous red bowtie, hypernasality, and a predilection for mischief, is a Saturday morning cartoon come to life. Invented on the stage of The Groundlings, Pee-wee Herman is equally iconic and archetypal as Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. Socially defective with the decency to wear a suit, both characters are rife with hilarious contradictions, and both characters are perfect representations of their respective zeitgeists. Whereas the Tramp was a silent and prophetic emblem of the forthcoming economic devastation of two global wars, Pee-wee may as well have been a louder-than-bombs manifestation of the late-capitalistic dreamscape of the 1980s. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton’s directorial debut) and later Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which aired on CBS and saw an average of ten million viewers per episode, was a fantasy of talking furniture in a supersaturated world that harkened back to 1950s diners and primetime dance competitions, a satirization of Post-War Americana as a frenzied pastiche. This pastiche was a siren call for rising artist and photographer Nadia Lee Cohen, who also trades in the currency of alter egos and the milieu of consumerist reverie through the lens of humor. Raised in the English countryside, a self-professed wild child, the technicolor stagecraft of Hollywood had an irresistible allure. Her solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, which was an unabashed sensation, included two large bodies of work from two sold out monographs published by IDEA Books. Women includes over 100 portraits of a diverse cast of female characters fictionalized by Cohen, at work and at play, all under the banner of Los Angeles’ disparate socio-economic milieu. Reminiscent of movie stills, the images are freeze frames in moments of action, repose, or seductive enchantment. In her most recent series,  HELLO, My Name Is, Nadia utilizes extensive prosthetics and makeup to embody a vast array of characters inspired by found corporate name tags—each character has an invented story, thoughts, dreams, and desires. It is a Hitchcockian character study of self-portraiture. Jean Baudrillard talked about this escape from the self in an age of simulation and hyperreality: "Never to be oneself, but never to be alienated: to enter from the outside into the form of the other." Both Paul Reubens and Nadia Lee Cohen take immense pleasure in this metamorphosis. Currently in production is a two-part HBO documentary on the life of Paul Reubens, directed by Matt Wolf (Spaceship Earth) and produced by the Safdie Brothers. In a time of shapeshifting realities and alternative facts, a time when we don’t even recognize the reflection in our mirrors, what can two masters of disguise teach us about who we really are? Read more.

Read Our Interview of Actor Benny O. Arthur on His Role in the Series Adaptation of Django →

Benny O. Arthur lounges in the grass. sweater by Dries Van Notenjeans by Y/Projectbelt by Saint Laurent

sweater by Dries Van Noten
jeans by Y/Project
belt by Saint Laurent

CAMILLE ANGE PAILLER: Tell me about Django and your role as Kevin.

BENNY O. ARTHUR: Django was a really special project. The series is a reimagining of Sergio Corbucci’s classic Spaghetti Western character. The series tries to show more perspectives of different people in that period—the minorities, and the world they created for themselves after the American Civil War. I played the role of Kevin Ellis, son of John Ellis, who is the visionary founder of an idealistic city called New Babylon. It’s a community that welcomes all outcasts and people of different races and creeds as equals. When we meet Kevin, he is his father’s number one advocate. He believes uncompromisingly in his vision. Our parents are often like superheroes to us when we’re kids, and it’s only as we get older that we recognize their humanity and their flaws. As John’s youngest son, Kevin has a youthful and hopeful worldview, which eventually brings him into conflict with the harsh realities of the Wild West. The idealistic image he has of his father begins to crumble as he comes to terms with the fact that even our heroes harbor darkness. Read more.

Leave Your Thoughts On Boobs After The Tone: Read Our Interview of Carly Randall On Her New Short Film "TITS" →

Carly Randall is a visual artist, filmmaker and creative producer. Her work explores issues and themes that specifically impact women in modern society. These include knife crime, online bullying  and filter culture, as seen in her multi-award-winning dance film, FILTERFACE: Double Tap to Like, which examines how social media filter culture affects the mental health of young women. 

In 2022, Carly was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England to create a 2-minute-long, educational art film that exposes the language men use to talk about women’s breasts, highlighting the ubiquitously misogynistic and objectifying attitudes. Carly set up a hotline for teenage boys and young men to share their honest opinions on women’s breasts via voicemail. She created posters to promote the hotline, strategically placing them in prime locations around London’s East End Borough of Hackney (sometimes up to 200 a go), and shared with universities, colleges and friends who posted them in city centres nationally to ensure a diverse response that fairly depicts the breadth of the UK. To accompany the voicemails, Carly worked with a casing agent to bring together a selection of women from around the UK to shoot and film their breasts—those which our patriarchal society have deemed “undesirable": too flat, too big, odd nipples…

Carly has created a unique social experiment that creatively dramatizes the disparity between the ‘fantasy’ and the ‘reality’ of women’s breasts as a result of unrealistic representations created by the porn industry, perpetuated across social media and reaffirmed by patriarchal conditioning. I spoke with Carly about her motivations behind the art piece, how Playboy inspired her backdrop for the art film, and her main takeaways from listening to the voicemails. Click here to read more and watch the film.

Hedi Slimane Photographs Featured In Poster For Rock Documentary "Meet Me In The Bathroom" Premiering In Theaters This November

Utopia and Pulse Film’s official Sundance Selection documentary Meet Me in the Bathroom—directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern and based on the successful oral history released by author Lizzy Goodman in 2017—has partnered with photographer and Grand Couturier Hedi Slimane to celebrate the film’s official US theatrical release. The collaboration joins still-life images taken by Slimane during the book’s eponymous era of rock n’ roll revival between the years of 2001 - 2011 into a limited release concert poster to celebrate the film’s upcoming NYC and LA premiere events. The film features legendary bands such as The Moldy Peaches, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem and more as it covers their come up amongst the backdrop of Lower East Side dive bars and gritty city streets.

Hedi Slimane became synonymous with this era while at the helm of Dior Homme leading as its Creative Director and dressing rock musicians such as The Strokes, The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers, among others. Slimane’s intimate relationship with music has remained a creative force in his work as he continues to set the tone for a relationship between fashion and underground musical talent. 

The upcoming premiere events in LA (October 27 at The Fonda Theater) and NYC (October 30 at Webster Hall) will feature a special screening of the documentary with special guest panel Q&A and the first-ever reunion performance by The Moldy Peaches with additional surprise performances TBA.

“Meet Me in the Bathroom” will be released in theaters on November 4th at IFC, NY and Los Feliz, Los Angeles followed by a national theater opening expansion the week of November 11th. 

"Presley Gerber" The New Video By Hedi Slimane for Celine Haute Parfumerie "Eau de Californie"

Presley Gerber, directed by Hedi Slimane in California in December 2021

The memory of palo santo, that magical essence of wood, with fresh, smoky, and creamy facets.
In the background, the powdery notes of orris and tree moss give this Californian dream the signature of a Parisian Couture House.

Soundtrack: Girls - My Ma

Watch CELINE 15 "DYSFUNCTIONAL BAUHAUS" Men's SS23

CELINE 15
Palais De Tokyo
Paris, France
June 26th, 2022
DYSFUNCTIONAL BAUHAUS

Artworks by David Weiss, Alyss Estay, and Renata Petersen


Original soundtrack for Celine
“Design” Performed, written, and Arranged by Gustaf and produced by Chris Coady
Commissioned and co-produced by Hedi Slimane

Casting, Styling, and Set Design by Hedi Slimane

Hair Stylist
Esther Langham

Hair Colorist
Alex Brownsell

Makeup
Aaron De Mey

CATALOGUE OF DISGUISE Presents Their New Collection & Fashion Film @ TRAUMA BAR UND KINO In Berlin

art direction, styling and fashion by Tanja Bombach
photography by Laura Schaeffer 
makeup by Viktoria Reuter
hair by Kosuke Ikeuchi
nails by Camilla Volbert
modeled by Peer Liening-Ewert, June, Susanne Engbo Andersen, Yi-Wei Tien, Alistair Wroe

On Wednesday, June 22, CATALOGUE OF DISGUISE will be premiering ALOW, a 28-minute film that captures the pervasive anxiety, loss of control, and trepidation lurking under the surface of three separate escapist encounters. It is an underground tale of slow horror.

Collections made for the film by Laura Gerte, Don Aretino and Tanja Bombach blend with choreography by Phoenix Chase-Meares and Jos McKain developed with ten dancers.

The exclusive screening will be hosted by CATALOGUE OF DISGUISE at TRAUMA BAR UND KINO, where the film was shot.

During the event, there will be an immersive sound installation inspired by the film and after the screening a DJ-set by the sound artist Simone Antonioni, who scored the film. The soundtrack will be released under the independent Berlin-based record label Verlag later this year including a remix by ZIúR.

Date: June 22
RSVP via CATALOGUE OF DISGUISE

Watch PLAYSCAPE: Woolmark Finalists' Collection Reveal Film Directed By FKA Twigs

FKA twigs’ collective ‘Avant Garden’ launches its new era in film for the 2022 International Woolmark Prize in special partnership with the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum. Inspired by the famed landscape artist and architect’s vision of play as a creative catalyst, PLAYSCAPE merges influence from fashion, art, dance, and music. 

Choreographed by classically trained dancer Juliano Nunes, the film opens with an empty gallery of Noguchi’s play sculptures, which becomes populated by a diverse ensemble cast of characters. In the second part, the cast enters an imaginary landscape, where a ballet sensibility is combined with elements drawn from hip hop, modernism, contemporary dance and punk aesthetics. With creative direction by Zak Group, the short film showcases the merino wool looks from the International Woolmark Prize finalists Ahluwalia, EGONLAB, Jordan Dalah, MMUSOMAXWELL, Peter Do, RUI, and Saul Nash.

Director: FKA twigs⁠
Creative Direction: Zak Group⁠
Choreographer: Juliano Nunes⁠
Production Company: Object & Animal⁠
Producer: Jen Gelin⁠
DOP: Rina Yang⁠
Stylist: Matthew Josephs⁠
Still Photographer: Jules Moskovtchenko⁠
Edit: Dave Davis & Trim Editing⁠
Colourist: Luke Morrison⁠
Post: Electric Theatre Collective
Casting: HUXLEY⁠
Featuring: kiddysmile, Princess Julia, Kai Isaiah Jamal, Alex Thirkle, Dmitri Gruzdev, Ève-Marie Dalcourt, Hannah Raynor, Meschach Henry, Salomé Pressac, Tania Dimbelolo, and maycie⁠

The Finalists

Ahluwalia

EGONLAB

Jordan Dalah

MMUSOMAXWELL

Peter Do

RUI

Saul Nash

Watch Barbara Kruger's "In Violence" (2011) On The Occasion Of Her Survey @ LACMA & Solo Exhibition @ Sprüth Magers In Los Angeles

In Violence (2011) was presented in Commercial Break, a group exhibition curated by Neville Wakefield at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art during the opening week of the 54th Venice Biennial. Eleven years later, in the midst of a continuing war in Ukraine and numerous global humanitarian crises, Kruger’s use of novelist, critic and political activist, Mary McCarthy’s quote: “In violence we forget who we are” is an increasingly potent reminder.

Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You is on view through July 17 @ LACMA 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Her solo exhibition, Barbara Kruger, is on view across the street through July 16 @ Sprüth Magers 5900 Wilshire Blvd.

Watch The Premiere Of "The Performance" By Avery Wheless

shot & directed by Avery Wheless
art direction & styling by Kari Fry
choreography & movement by Cami Árboles
music "I Left My Juul in Monterey" by Niia Bertino
clothing by SUBSURFACE

What does it mean to be a performer? The Performance explores the connection between fabric and figure, self and body, perception and performance. As humans, we are always in a kinetic state; always moving, shapeshifting, and grappling with the impermanence of the human experience. To be human is to be the sculpture and the sculptor—we are being passed around to, for, and from each other, molding and being molded along the way. This piece is an embodiment of these sentiments through an intentional synthesis of garment, body, movement, and form. It represents a return to self—a self that embraces the beauty in evolving, sculpting, and shedding. We are forever performers on our own stage.

Embodied Resonance: Read Our Interview Of Pop Sensation Mandy Harris Williams →

 
 

Mandy Harris Williams is a renaissance woman working across more media than one could reasonably hyphenate. On social media, in her monthly #brownupyourfeed radio hour on NTS, and with her myriad published essays, she challenges us to consider critical theories on race, gender, sexuality, and above all, privilege. She dares us to meet the most divisive aspects of our charged political culture with a caring ethic that prioritizes those most deprived of our love and compassion. Offline, her DJ sets are like a blast of Naloxone to the automatic nervous system with the power to reanimate the rhythm in even the shyest of wallflowers. After studying the history of the African diaspora at Harvard and receiving a masters of urban education at Loyola Marymount, Harris spent seven years as an educator in low-income communities. From there, she expanded her educational modalities to include a conceptual art practice, musical production informed by years of vocal training, and a lecture format of her own dialectic design. These “edutainment” experiences are one part college seminar, one part church sermon, and one part late-night talk show with a heavy dose of consensual roasting. It’s a Friar’s Club for an intellectual, intersectional, and internet-savvy generation. These performances draw us in with their vibey bass lines and hooks before they throw us under the quietly segregated bus that we’re still struggling to rectify. Mandy and I sat by the fire one lovely winter night in Los Angeles to talk about the contours of fascism, algorithmic injustice, her latest film for the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and her upcoming residency at MoMa PS1.Read more.

Read Our Interview Of Photographer and Filmmaker Lewis Khan → →

 
Blurry image of a dark street with a blue haze over the image. In the foreground is a bright lamp with a passer-by a few steps ahead.
 

British Photographer and filmmaker, Lewis Khan, uses London as one of his many creative resources. The city has great sentimental importance to the native South Londoner, who has lived on Bonnington Square for most of his life. Tucked away behind the traffic of Vauxhall, the square is one of 300+ housing cooperatives in London, owned and run by its tenants. It has a unique and fascinating history that owes much to the squatters who moved in during the 80s as a preventative measure to avoid demolition of the residential buildings. The community set up a wholefoods shop and vegetarian café, which is still there to this day. Read more.

Watch Faith Wilding's Performance Of "Waiting" From Her 1974 Film Womanhouse

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Faith Wilding’s vanguard art installation and performance space, Womanhouse, Anat Ebgi in partnership with LAND (Los Angleles Nomadic Division), is presenting an eponymous solo exhibition with the artist. Seen here is a performance of “Waiting” from the documentary film Womanhouse produced by Johanna Demetrakas (1974). Below is an excerpt from Hans Ulrich Obrist’s interview with Wilding in our forthcoming BODY issue.

“HANS ULRICH OBRIST: You did two very legendary works at Womanhouse. You did the “Waiting” performance—an almost Beckettian performance about waiting, but very different from Beckett. And then, you also did an installation called “Womb Room.” Can you tell me about these two works? What kind of reaction did they get? 

FAITH WILDING: Yeah, well we had a performance group that Judy Chicago led. Because that was our plan from the beginning—that we would do some performances as part of the house. I was at dinner with Arlene [Raven] and Judy one night, and suddenly I was like, I wanna do something about waiting—about what we've waited for, what I've waited for all my life. And so, we started making a list. I still have that list. Out of that, I crafted the “Waiting” monologue, which we worked on as a group; other people tried out how they would perform the piece. But you know, I have given permission to anybody who wants to perform it, and lots of people have performed it all over the world in all different kinds of ways, which I think is really cool…”

Womanhouse is on view through April 16 @ Anat Ebgi 4859 Fountain Avenue, Los Angeles

Read Our Interview Of Filmmaker Jim Longden On His Debut Short Film →

TEAC STILL AUTRA 5.jpg

The London-based artist Jim Longden has released his debut short, To Erase a Cloud. Shot on 16mm film, the twenty-minute piece is “a sort of crash-course to the introductions of filmmaking.” To Erase a Cloud delves into the harsh realities of grief, as well as the uncomfortable realities of our social media-driven culture. The poet and actor Sonny Hall, a good friend of Longden, plays the painfully tormented, reckless and broken main protagonist, John Little.

The opening scene shows Little living a depressing existence in his dirty apartment; drinking dregs of empty beer cans and lighting half smoked fags as the early morning sun seeps in. We catch Little staring at his reflection in a cracked mirror; a symbol for his fractured state of mind and the result of his self-inflicted isolation spurred on from the loss of his mother. Read more.

[FILM REVIEW]: My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To

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The heart is a lonely hunter in Colombian-American Jonathan Cuartas’ new film about two siblings, Jessie (Ingrid Schram) and Dwight (Patrick Fugit), who stalk, kill and spill the blood of unassuming and easily forgotten victims to feed their younger vampiric brother, Thomas—expertly played by Owen Campbell. Much has been made of the biblical lengths that a family will go to survive, which makes My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To an especially pertinent allegory during the dark days of a pandemic when the pallor of death and disease has swept across the world. In the canon of vampire films, this one belongs at the top of the most eerie and brilliantly crafted, with an insouciant blackness that continually makes these characters with a predominantly blood-based diet so fascinating. Like F. W. Murnau’s iconic 1922 silent film, Nosferatu (released at the tail end of another deadly pandemic), or Tomas Alfredson’s Swedish classic, Let the Right One In (2008), and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To is an instant cult gem that seethes with uncanny pathos, despite the unrelenting physical and psychological violence. The film’s pacing, while creeping at times, like a slow penumbra, makes for a vivid and gripping filmic experience, and each scene is cast in a domestic, near-Gothic painterly glow, thanks to cinematographer Michael Cuartas (the director’s brother).

My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To opens today in theaters and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms.

Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic Is A Virtual Performance Space Of Embodied Liberation

In 2016, choreographer and educator, Suchi Branfman, began a five-year choreographic residency inside the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium-security state men’s prison in Norco, California. The project, dubbed “Dancing Through Prison Walls,” developed into a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and ways for surviving restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. The dancing abruptly ended in March 2020, when the California state prison system shut down programming and visitation due to Covid-19. The work was rapidly revised, and the incarcerated dancers began sending out written choreographies from their bunks to the outside world. The resulting collection of deeply imagined choreographic pieces, written between March and May of 2020, became Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic.

Guided by the written and choreographic direction from inside the prison walls, the performers effectively dance these works into the “free” world. Highlighting six of the dances written/choreographed inside the prison by Brandon Alexander, Richie Martinez, Landon Reynolds and Terry Sakamoto Jr., this event includes a film of the written work transformed into embodied dances in sites throughout the Santa Monica civic center area, drawing focus to the nation’s school to prison nexus (Meiners, 2007), followed by a conversation with the eleven artists involved.

With artistic direction by Suchi Branfman and cinematography by Tom Tsai, the dances are powerfully narrated by Marc Antoni Charcas, Ernst Fenelon Jr., Richie Martinez and Romarilyn Ralston (formerly incarcerated movers and organizers) and choreographically interpreted by a group of brilliant choreographers: Bernard Brown, Jay Carlon, Irvin Gonzalez, Kenji Igus, Brianna Mims and Tom Tsai (all of whom have joined Branfman dancing inside the Norco prison). Each team was entrusted with bringing one of the written dances to action. Between them, they are steeped in hip hop, tap, breaking, performance art, quebradita, spoken word, Butoh and contemporary dance forms. Released from prison during the summer of 2020, Richie Martinez joins the cast as he narrates and performs in “Richie’s Disappearing Acts” which he wrote while incarcerated at the Norco prison during the pandemic.

In December 2020, Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic was published by the inimitable Sming Sming Books. Benefiting the authors, Critical Resistance and California Coalition for Women Prisoners, the 2nd edition of the sold out book is forthcoming. This project was made possible by Art of Recovery, an initiative of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs.

Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic is a free virtual event produced by 18th Street Arts Center that can be joined via Zoom April 16, 2021 6:30pm PDT (Spanish translation available)