| Archispectrals |
| 7:00 PM | Friday, March 3, 2023 |
| Woodland Pattern Book Center |
| 720 E Locust St | Milwaukee, WI |
If you are not local to Milwaukee, or cannot make the screening, please continue to support Woodland Pattern by browsing their online bookstore!
Recitative [Shir Handelsman]
4 min 59 sec, Video
Synopsis:
An opera singer stands on a lifted platform, singing a Martyr's wish for redemption. A counterpoint between the human voice and mechanical sounds of machinery moving up and down. The music, taken from one of J.S Bach's cantatas, is the Recitative Movement which describes the ascension of Christ and expresses the desire to become one with god.
Artist Bio:
Shir Handelsman (Israel, 1989) is an interdisciplinary artist from Tel Aviv. He graduated with honors his BA studies in Literature and Philosophy at Tel Aviv University (2013) and his BFA studies at the Department of Multidisciplinary Art of Shenkar College (2018). Handelsman's work has been screened and exhibited in institutions such as Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art; Kunsthal Charlottenborg Gallery, Copenhagen; Jerusalem Artists House; Eretz Israel Museum; Les Abattoirs Museum of Contemporary Art, Toulouse; Museum of Fine Arts Osijek; Contemporary Art Center Winzavod, Moscow; Out_Sight Gallery, Seoul; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan; Momus Experimental Center for the Arts, Thessaloniki; Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York; Jerusalem Film Festival; Video Art & Experimental Film Festival, NY. Handelsman is a recipient of The Pais Council for Culture and Art Grant (2021), The Independent Artists Foundation's Grant of the Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport (2021), The Grand Prix of 27th Slavonian Biennial, Museum of Fine Arts Osijek (2020), Best Experimental Film Award at the Budapest Independent Film Festival (2020) and an Excellence Grant from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation (2018).
Ubi Sunt [Garush Melkonyan]
21 min 32 sec, Video
Synopsis:
In a more or less near future, two women try to preserve what seems to be left of the world: nature, luxuriant but fragile, their relationship, necessary but precarious. The threats that weigh on this environment explode into inner conflict; gestures and words become the only recourse - the last resort to regain the harmony of the world.
Artist Bio:
Garush Melkonyan [Born in 1993 in Abovyan, Armenia. Based in Paris, France] is a visual artist working predominantly with moving images, installation, and sculpture. He graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2017 and San Francisco Art Institute in 2016. His MFA diploma installation entitled “The Interview'' received the Thaddaeus Ropac Prize.
Much of his work delves into the invisible codes that structure communication, discourse and language. His works have been exhibited in group exhibitions, screenings and festivals in venues such as Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); La Panacée, Montpellier (2018); Nordenhake Gallery, Mexico City (2021); La Villette, Paris (2018); , Aggregate Space Gallery, Oakland (2016), Salon de Montrouge (2018), Museum Romeinse Katakomben, Valkenburg (2016). He had solo exhibitions at Jean Claude Maier Gallery, Frankfurt (2022) and Lasecu in Lille, as a part of Lille3000 (2019).
In 2021 Melkonyan benefitted from “À l'œuvre !” residency at Lafayette Anticipations and in 2023 he will be working at Martell Foundation in Cognac. He is currently working on a new film project produced by Mondes Nouveaux program of support for young artists by the French government.
His projects have been previously produced and supported by French organizations such as the Ministry of Culture and Ateliers Médicis. His works have been included in the Lusadaran Armenian photography foundation’s collection.
The Dark Season [Jillian McDonald]
12 min 30 sec, Video
Synopsis:
Filmed in Svalbard during the polar night. A dark presence looms as Elsa, clowns, and ecotourists roam. Coloured shapes, inflatables, and swimmers linger at the end of the world, and the landscape imagery bends, breaks and glitches.
Artist Bio:
Jillian McDonald is a Canadian artist living in Brooklyn and Troy, NY
Exhibitions include Undercurrent and FiveMyles in Brooklyn, The Art Gallery of Regina in Saskatchewan, Esker Foundation in Calgary, and AxeNéo7 in Quebec. A CBC IDEAS documentary profiles her videos, which were also reviewed in The New York Times and Canadian Art. Critical discussion appears in The Transatlantic Zombie by Sarah Lauro. Awards include grants from The New York Foundation for the Arts and The Canada Council for the Arts, and residencies at Glenfiddich in Scotland and The Arctic Circle in Svalbard.
Any Road [Boris Labbé]
10 min 4 sec, Video
Synopsis:
"- so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
(Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
Artist Bio:
Having studied at the École supérieure d’art de Tarbes and then at the École de cinéma d’animation d’Angoulême, his work soon spread around the world, whether at contemporary art exhibitions, international film festivals, or during audiovisual concerts. He has received some fifty international distinctions. He is currently developing a virtual reality project (Mono no aware, Sacrebleu Productions) and a video scenography with composer Lucas Fagin (Glass House, produced by Ensemble Cairn).
Tracing Granite [Rachael Jones]
24 min 15 sec, Video
Synopsis:
Tracing Granite (2018) follows a field trip that took place in October 2017. Led by sculptor and cultural geographer, Dr David Paton, Tracing Granite: In Search of a White Cross took its participants on a tour of the six granite districts in Cornwall and Devon. Over four days, filmmaker Rachael Jones joined a group of artists, geologists, archaeologists and writers and recorded their discussions, research and discoveries. The experience of the quarries and multiple insights are interpreted using mixed methods and formats, from Super8 to digital collage.
Artist Bio:
Rachael Jones is an artist-filmmaker and postgraduate researcher based in Cornwall. Her work aims at challenging traditional methods of documenting and recording for a socially engaged sensory practice. Often working with archive images, she blends old photographs with newly created visuals, incorporating both analogue and digital formats to create a playful tension in her films.
Rachael’s current work involves workshops using experimental filmmaking and sustainable arts-based techniques such as collage and alternative photography to engage participants with the Cornish landscape.
Daydreaming Devices [Anne MacMillan]
4 min 19 sec, Video
Synopsis:
Simple paper tools that flatten being in the world. That lower dimensions through a language of apertures. A sequence that cuts though layers of cloud, of entoptic phenomena, and passes though the pursed lips as a perfunctory tune. The ghost of microsaccades leaves a momentary mark on the minds eye, on the drifting atmosphere.
This work was supported by a Canada Council for the Arts research grant. It was completed during a residency with the School of Visual Art in NYC.
In the video Day Dreaming Devices, the view cuts between three modes. Hands. The sky. Eyes closed.
I was thinking about losing the natural ability to daydream, of relying on assists. Of devices to burn the after-image of a kind of visual language into the mind’s eye, to stir the clouds, as a way to bring continuity where it doesn’t belong, to force an empty meaningfulness into oneself and out into the world.
Artist Bio:
Anne Macmillan is currently based in K'jipuktuk (Halifax). She makes digital animations and drawings to consider relationships with what is unknown, and the appearance of things. She received her masters degree from MIT on a Fulbright scholarship, and a BFA from NSCAD university. Her practice has been supported by numerous awards, grants and residencies.
She has been awarded residency to work at la Cité Internationale Des Arts in Paris, France and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Hnatyshyn Foundation, Arts Nova Scotia, and the Council for the Arts at MIT.