EL AFFAIRE MIU MIU, directed by Laura Citarella, Argentine film director and producer, is the 28th commission from Miu Miu Women’s Tales. The acclaimed short-film series invites today’s most profound and original female directors to investigate vanity and femininity in the 21st century. Citarella continues to explore her ongoing interest in “female Sherlock Holmes” figures who try and solve the puzzle of “women that, for different reasons, run away.”
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.
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.
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.
Patrisse Cullors' New Short Film Whispers: Pray for LA is a Meditation on a City Reeling from Compounded Crises
Whispers: Pray For LA is Patrisse Cullors’ latest work developed amidst an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles this past winter. As part of a larger ongoing project entitled ‘Pray for LA’ launched by her artist collective The Crenshaw Dairy Mart at the beginning of 2021, the initiative and forthcoming works are an offering to the thousands of Angelenos and their families suffering from the intersections of COVID-19, racism and the ultimate neglect of a county, state and country that has deliberately focused on profit over people.
Cullors’ Whispers specifically calls us to the ocean to offer up our hearts, our grief and our fight to see the death and sickness that surrounds los angeles county as it fights to keep afloat amongst the terror of COVID-19.
Whispers asks all of us to call for a world where every family has access to healthcare, to food, to shelter.
Whispers asks us to dream and practice this vision through abolition.
This video project was commissioned by Tilt West, a denver-based arts nonprofit. It will be included in the third volume of the Tilt West journal, devoted to the topic of art and labor, scheduled for release on september 2, 2021. You can check out the second volume of the Tilt West journal, on art and community here.
Directed and produced by: Patrisse Cullors
Edited by: Giovanni Solis
Scored by: Meshell Ndegeocello
Brooke Wise's Aloha From Hell Is An Apt Short Film Festival To Conclude A Nightmarishly Long Year
text by Avery Wheless
As we wrap a year of the unpredictable and frightening, it’s clear that comedy serves as a good access point to observe the macabre in life. This is no new approach for curator Brooke Wise, who is notorious for utilizing humor while approaching complicated topics. Wise reasons, “You can get so much across with humor, especially with so much darkness happening at the moment, it’s the best tool we have.”
Luckily, Wise has blessed us once again with her fourth round of Aloha From Hell, a film festival calling together creatives of all kinds with proceeds benefiting Planned Parenthood LA in partnership with Depop.
Aloha from Hell is typically a Halloween festival, but in a year where schedule is neither here nor there, Wise delivers her satirical and spooky cinematic experience right in time for the holidays.
Unlike most film festivals, submissions are open to all creatives, musicians, artists, comedians, and more. The resulting selection features traditional filmmaking, experimental video, narrative and performance art— proving you don’t need to be an actual filmmaker to make a video.
This year features creatives such as Chloe Wise, Benny Drama, Mia Kerin, Kate Jean Hollowell, Mark Indelicato, Miles McMillan, Dinah Rankin, Ew Yuk! And musical guests, Okay Kaya and Kacy Hill. The festival’s common thread of uncanny and outlandish opens conversations through a visually experimental context, while addressing raw and diverse topics in regards to gender and sexuality.
Known for combining her curatorial work with raising funds for charitable organizations, Wise chose Planned Parenthood specifically for Aloha from Hell, as an open expression of gender and sexuality is rooted at the core of many of the showcased films.
Reasoning that the best way to face all things scary is through a lens of playfulness, Aloha from Hell delivers just the right amount of the obscene, kooky and irreverent, brightening the quarantine and making us all feel a little less fucked up.
Aloha From Hell will be screened virtually on December 22 from 5-8pm PST.
Art Of The Divine: Kilo Kish and Rikkí Wright In Conversation →
Film still from A Song About Love by Rikkí Wright
Rikkí Wright and Kilo Kish are two of the eight artists exhibiting in this year’s edition of Womxn in Windows, a socially distant group show that clearly presaged the conditions of our current moment in its first edition last year. Visitors are invited to walk along the storefronts of Chung King Road in Chinatown and watch short films through each window with scores that can be accessed via QR code. Founded and curated by Zehra Ahmed, this year’s artists were invited to exhibit work that examines the intertwined relationships between culture, religion, and society. These films remind us how womxn have relied on faith and on each other as well as on a desire for equality, understanding, and the power to make the right choices for ourselves. In both Wright and Kish’s films one observes an intimate relationship with the spiritual, however from highly contrasting perspectives and with completely unique aesthetics. Click here to read more.
Watch "Dirty Girls" A Short Documentary About Teenage Angst In The 1990s
Shot in 1996 and edited in 2000, this is a short documentary about a group of 13-year-old riot grrrls in Los Angeles who were socially ostracized at their school by their peers and upperclassmen. Everyone in the schoolyard held strong opinions about these so-called "dirty girls," and meanwhile the "dirty girls" themselves aimed to get their message across by distributing their zine across campus. Directed by Michael Lucid. Music: "Batmobile" by Liz Phair.
Brooke Wise Teams Up With Comedy Central & Sexy Beast To Host Aloha From Hell Film Festival
This Halloween, curator Brooke Wise teamed up with Sexy Beast and Comedy Central on a special third installment of her short film festival, Aloha From Hell, with proceeds benefitting Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. All of the wild, comedic, satirical and spooky videos selected for the festival are under 5 minutes in length, chosen via open online submission, and crafted in response to this year’s theme: SHE DEVILS.
Lorraine Nicholson's Tribeca-Nominated Life Boat Is Now Available Online
A group of students are brought together to play a real-life game called “Life Boat.” After the customary “get to know each other” exercise, their counselor Mr. Drexler (Stephen Dorff) poses a difficult question: if this classroom were a sinking ship, who in the group deserves to be saved?
Mr. Drexler’s tactics are far from textbook, which immediately becomes clear to our protagonist, Elsa (Elizabeth Gilpin). Mr. Drexler, a survivor of a similar program, gets caught up in the emotions of his exercise. As the game and stakes heighten, he successfully demonstrates his apathetic students’ real desire to save their lives. But at what cost?
Opening Of Torbjørn Rødland's Backlit Rainbow @ David Kordansky Gallery In Los Angeles
Backlit Rainbow marks Torbjørn Rødland's first solo exhibition with David Kordansky Gallery. The exhibition features an installation of new medium- and large-scale color photographs, as well as the U.S. debut of Between Fork and Ladder, the artist’s first moving-image work in more than a decade.
Over the last twenty years, the Norwegian-born, Los Angeles-based photographer has produced a body of work remarkable for its cultural reach, its awareness of photographic history and technique, and its ability to press up against psychological, moral, and philosophical boundaries. Rødland’s images pointedly address their viewers and evoke a wide range of contradictory emotional and intellectual states. Curiosity, humor, pathos, criticality, artifice, reverence for the natural world, and romanticism appear throughout his work and often in the same photograph.
Autre is also pleased to announce that Rødland's work is featured on the cover of our spring 2018 issue, featuring a double interview of the photographer by both legendary art critic and Serpentine Galleries' director, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Autre editor, Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Click here to order your copy while supplies last! Backlit Rainbow will be on view through July 7, 2018 at David Kordansky Gallery 5130 W. Edgewood Place Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Kupper
Read Our Interview With Christian Coppola On The Value Of Short Cinema →
Christian Coppola is an LA-based filmmaker and photographer with a few short films already under his belt. Informed by an early fascination with The Wizard of Oz, Coppola’s personal style incorporates dreamy colors and the ever-present dichotomy between home and away. His short film debut, Heartbreak Hotel and his upcoming short, Daddy, explore the complicated nature of hotels, and the opportunities offered by the short film genre. Fixated on the process of creating his personal style, Coppola’s own viewing process is predicated on the question, “could anyone else have made this?” We had a chance to catch up with the burgeoning filmmaker and discuss his upcoming film, development as an artist, and his desire to create a universe through film. Click here to read more.
A Special Screening of Becky Johnston's 1979 Featurette Sleepless Nights With Maripol @ MoMA
New Cinema cofounder (and Hollywood screenwriter) Becky Johnston recently described her little-seen featurette Sleepless Nights as “an East Village reinvention of the Otto Preminger movie Laura” that plays “fast and loose with the noir detective genre.” The film was screened at MoMA along with a short discussion between Johnston and Maripol on the making of the film and it's lasting cultural almost 40 years later. photographs by Annabel Graham
Watch "Spend Time, Pay Attention" A New Film By Julian Feeld Born Out Of Rage, Frustration and Powerlessness
Spend Time, Pay Attention is a new film by artist and filmmaker Julian Feeld, shot on 16mm film. Feeld describes the film with cynical nihilism, "Shot a few years ago, this video only really went through the puberty of writing and editing when the monstrous face of The Abuser rose, reddening above the oozing body of our planet. Rage, frustration, sadness, powerlessness — all the feelings in the last month went into this exploration of BEING A MAN and PAYING IN COLD HARD POWER at the cash register of life. I hope people misinterpret this video as much as I do. I hope people turn it off and look at themselves and ask themselves what they've become, like I do. I hope someone co-opts it and makes it into a line of t-shirts and sells it back to me, the oppressor. Remember, your eyeballs actually belong to me while you watch it. And you know what they say about eyeballs: they're the gelatinous, fragile windows to the soul."
Ballet Parking: Watch A Mesmerizing Dance Film Set In A Parking Lot At Night by Nacho Alvarez
The movie "Faraway, So Close!” tells the story of an angel who comes to earth to live as a human. What is heavenly, imprecise and volatile descends to fully stamp against the earthly, the concrete. These two worlds, distant and contradictory are bound by a new atmosphere that allows movement, pulse, life. What it far is close. Ballet Parking is directed by Nacho Alvarez, with a performance by Vicente Etcheverry. Shot in Montevideo, Uruguay
The FOMO Is Real: Read Our Interview With Photographer and Filmmaker Yulia Zinshtein On Her New Short Film →
Click here to read the interview.
Watch The Premiere Of Yulia Zinshtein's Sardonic New Short Film "Girls Going Wild" Shot In Miami During Art Basel
Girls Going Wild is a short film directed by Yulia Zinshtein in Miami during Art Basel. For those of us that grew up on early reality TV - shows like The Real World and Road Rules, which were usually punctuated by late-night infomercials for Girls Gone Wild – this portrait of young adults looking for the ultimate party in Miami is at once familiar, but all too honest and a sad and strange reflection of our times. Zinshtein says, "Girls Going Wild is about searching for the best party. This video aims to show how awkward that search can be...and that the very process becomes the best party you could ever find." Click here to read our short interview with Yulia Zinshtein.
Watch Nadia Lee Cohen's Kitschy Short Film 'When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth' Starring a Convincing Divine Lookalike
First Look: See Gregg Araki's Short Film For Kenzo's Fall 2015 Collections
Kenzo creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon have tapped American independent filmmaker Gregg Araki, one of the leading lights of the New Queer Cinema movement, to write and direct an original short film featuring the brand’s fall collections for men and women. “Here Now” features a cast of young actors including “Glee” alum Jacob Artist, “Suburgatory” star Jane Levy, Grace Victoria Cox, Jake Weary and Canadian actor and singer Avan Jogia. The film also stars Nicole Laliberte, who appeared in Araki’s 2010 film “Kaboom.”