2-Channel Video Installations
and VR
Friday - Sunday
Canady Creative Arts Center
Slab Practice Room
Friday, April 11. 5:00 - 11:30 pM
Wherever Street Piece
Panu Johansson | Finland
Run time: 15:00 min.
Year: 2024
Synopsis:
“Wherever Street Piece” is a found footage piece that describes impersonal and fragmented memories that cannot be directly linked to the life of one particular individual. Simultaneously the film documents the way these past realities – forgotten people in forgotten situations – blend together from the perspective of the present. Obviously not everything can be stored and passed on, but if we neglect the lessons of the past, are we also bound to repeat its mistakes?”
Panu Johansson is a media artist and an experimental filmmaker from Finland. He works with moving image, photography and sound. His works have been exhibited in various festivals, exhibitions and microcinemas since the year 2000.
Reoccurring themes in Johansson's work are memories, landscape, the history of experimental film and cultural history. When working with moving image he prefers analogue film, though he is open to all materials. Johansson collects images and sounds eagerly and also likes to use "found footage” materials whenever possible. His works could be described with terms such as landscape film, diary film or personal film.
Saturday, April 12. 10:00 AM - 10:00 pM
Infinite Infants
Tianming Zhou | United States
Run time: 5:22 min.
Year: 2024
Synopsis:
"When the goddess of life embraces the love of humanity, she relinquishes her immortality. She imparts the wisdom of spirituality and reincarnation to human beings, and together they walk to the other side."
This film is inspired by the live performance of Zhixuan Zhu and Nicole Schwartz in 2023. The original 40-minute performance is based on the interpretation of Buddhist mythology on reincarnation. “People have previous lives and might live with entirely different identities, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and physical forms, such as bodies, voices, and looks. Yet, every previous life is erased from the memories of the deceased when they reincarnate at the River Styx. To cross the river, they have to drink a bowl of Mengpo soup that obliterates all the memories. However, Infinite Infant believes that people still carry the traces of previous lives in their deep souls and can mobilize their bodies in movements for evocation.”
This dance film highlights the affection between two female spirits in the original work. By bringing embodied movement into a non-theater environment, the film allows the body to transition freely between the spiritual and real worlds, bridging the realms of the living and the dead. Through the voice of the goddess and the evocative sounds of the underworld, we are guided to experience various forms of life, ultimately freeing ourselves from physical bodies and emotions in the process of reincarnation.
Tianming Zhou (Alaric) works with lens-based media. He collects fleeting and personal feelings, thoughts, and experiences of individuals and expands them across boundaries of places, cultures, and realms of existence. His works have been or will be showcased at Oxford Film Festival, Experiments in Cinema, Non-Syntax, Wide Open Exp. Film Festival, CICA Museum, etc. Tianming completed his undergraduate studies at The University of Hong Kong and earned an MFA from Duke University. He is also a recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Artist Support Grant 2024.
Saturday, April 12. 10:00 AM - 12:00 pM
Fragments of Space [WaterLab]
VR Exhibit
Barry Anderson | United States
Synopsis:
This video animation captures the claustrophobia of endlessly traversing non-sensical maze-like ruins, like some brutalist video game.
Sunday, April 13. 12:00 - 5:00 pM
Sultry Afternoon
Jeanne Stern | United States
Run time: 3:34 min.
Year: 2025
Synopsis:
This imagery is part of an investigation into the horrific beauty of extreme weather, inspired by the deadly tornado that hit the university at which I teach, St. Edward's (Austin, TX), on a humid afternoon in 1922. Materials include cyanotypes and stop-motion animation on a light box using materials including sand, sea salt, and debris.
FOUNTAIN (left): This animation of a fountain is made of light and shadow. It is comprised of a series of cyanotypes intercut with back-lit stop-motion animation. WINGED STATUE (right): This animation of a statue was made by animating sand on a light box. The background and cloud elements are composed of cyanotypes.
(Original Music by Saint-Yves)
Jeanne Stern is an animator, artist, and filmmaker who experiments with tactile materials. She creates bizarre cinematic worlds that combine elements of playfulness with darker more complex themes. She holds an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Studio Art from Connecticut College. Her work has been showcased internationally at venues such as the Smithsonian, Heather Henson's "Handmade Puppet Dreams," South by Southwest, PBS, the Toronto Film Festival, the Athens Video Art Festival, and the Moving Things Festival in Cape Town, South Africa. She has also animated several independent films, notably Ruth Fertig’s award-winning documentary "Yizkor," which won the CINE Gold Eagle Prize and Student Academy Award Gold Medal.
Jeanne Stern is an animator, artist, and filmmaker who experiments with tactile materials. She creates bizarre cinematic worlds that combine elements of playfulness with darker more complex themes. She holds an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Studio Art from Connecticut College
Her work has been showcased internationally at venues such as the Smithsonian, Heather Henson's "Handmade Puppet Dreams," South by Southwest, PBS, the Toronto Film Festival, the Athens Video Art Festival, and the Moving Things Festival in Cape Town, South Africa. She has also animated several independent films, notably Ruth Fertig’s award-winning documentary "Yizkor," which won the CINE Gold Eagle Prize and Student Academy Award Gold Medal.
Jeanne has completed artist residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Elsewhere Artist Collaborative. Her teaching repertoire includes experimental animation at the UT Austin-Portugal Summer Institute, "Victorian Gothic Animation" at the Austin School of Film, and a workshop at the Futureplaces Digital Media Festival in Porto, Portugal, titled "Ghosts of Spaces," where artists investigated and interpreted the memories embedded in different environments. She is now Assistant Professor of Animation at St. Edward’s University.
