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May Virtual Program
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Full program notes below
wham pass intact (iteration iii)
kelechi agwuncha • 8 min 30 sec • digital video
Synopsis:
in wham pass intact (iteration iii) cos-players reference fencing in a street performance. This video is a part of the wham pass intact, a three part series that explores fencers, capoeria players, and cos-players as filmic characters who use spatial resistance to (re)contexualize their traditional sporting conditions.
Artist Bio:
kelechi agwuncha is a Chicago & San Diego based visual artist. They harmonize video, film, and photography to migrate vague childhood memories into tethered, athletic movements of black bodies. This pulses towards Igbo-Nigerian heritage. Their work has circulated through OpenTV, MoMA PS1, Toronto International Film Festival x Instagram Festival, and Black International Cinema Berlin. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego.
Inauguration
Peng Zuqiang | 彭祖强 • 13 min 33 sec • Super 8mm & HD
Synopsis:
Through a series of anachronistic travels and narratives between Texas, California, and Havana, the film offers an assemblage of two disparate events at the margins of Chinese revolutionary history: The forgotten story of an unsuccessful assassination attempt in 1910 by George Fong, a member of the Young China Association, who aimed to eliminate a royal prince of the Qing Empire while he was traveling in the United States. The film intertwines this failed assassination with the story of two Chinese- Cuban activists who travelled to the United States for the Young China Association's inauguration one year prior in 1909. Movements, geographies, and events do not follow a linear arch but rather are scattered across memories and places, only to be treated as residues, witnesses or simply discards of the history. What happens when the premise of the story is, in fact, the assurance of its erasure?The film narrates a forecast of the past, wherein it renders visible the processes of erasure, remembrance, and archival anchors of the early overseas Chinese revolutionary politics and its aftermaths.
Artist Bio:
Peng Zuqiang makes moving images. Zuqiang’s works have been shown at exhibitions and festivals internationally including UCCA Beijing, Open City Documentary Festival, IDFA, Antimatter, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has received fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell, Skowhegan, the Core Program and the Lighthouse Works. He received the ‘Jury Special Prize’ from the 8th Huayu Youth Award, and a ‘Special Mention’ from Festival Film Dokumenter, Yogyakarta for his first feature film.
Time to Leave
Léwuga Benson • 16 min 56 sec • video
Synopsis:
Time to Leave is a cine-poetic, experimental documentary-essay, found footage project that has many layers and a powerful, activist message, all guided by a personal story. On the surface, it is a film about the risks, dangers, and consequences of wanting to be seen. But much deeper, it is a film about justice, courage, and self-determination. Oscillating between the past and the present, the film confronts, questions, and, through many aesthetic interventions, challenges assumptions about power and privilege. Namely, the idea that one has to be of a certain race and of a certain class to have the right to access and occupy a given space. Through the use of archival footage, photographs, and other source materials, Time to Leave invites the viewer to consider how the past is always present. In addition, it reminds the viewer, not by finger-wagging, but through the presentations of certain truths and historical testimonies, that no matter how far society has come there is always room for improvement.
Artist Bio:
Léwuga Benson is a Nigerian-born American artist-filmmaker currently pursuing an MFA in Media Study at the University at Buffalo. He has worked with many local arts organizations; such as Shea’s Performing Art Center, where he is currently a member of the Spotlight Committee; Squeaky Wheel, The Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology, WNED, Albright Knox, City of Night, to name a few. A recipient of the Gregory Capasso memorial award for outstanding creative work in film and writing. As such, Léwuga’s short films and writings are concerned with personal stories that reveal larger histories about identity, cultural acquisition, and society. His films, well-received and congratulated for their strong, poetic, and visual language, have been screened at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, The Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology, and The Center For The Arts at the University of Buffalo.
Synopsis:
NEW ERA (1.996) is an audiovisual project that reflects on the laws, rights and freedom in the internet by rescuing the manifesto on the Independence of Cyberspace that was published in 1996 by John Perry Barlow. The relevance of the virtual world and cyberspace in this technological age makes the existence of a parallel reality much more evident. “New Era (1.996)“ ponders on the impact of the internet in our day to day and on how we are using and constructing it. Therefore, I recall John Perry Barlow's statement twenty-three years later to replace the same issues that are addressed in it: the importance of the exchange in a place of freedom that can be inhabited and shared by all outside the political systems and economic that exists in the real world. J. Perry was ahead in time anticipating the magnitude and potential that the net was going to be. The declaration has clear social and political connotations about the value of freedom, respect and the exchange of information that should be part of the network. And it alerts of the possible censorship and control of the data that can circulate.
CREDITS:
3 channel video installation, FHD, color, stereo sound, spanish.
8 minutes 48 seconds
Direction: Ana Esteve Reig
Performer: Carla Paucar
D.O.P: Jaime Venegas
Script: Maria Plamenova
Sound: Igancio Pardo
Camera assistant: Hugo Prieto
Production: Ana Esteve Reig
Production assistant: Gustavo Ruiz
Music: Da Rocha
Madrid 2020
Artist Bio:
Agres, Spain, 1986. Ana Esteve Reig studied Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. In 2008 she moved to Kassel, Germany, where she studied Freie Kunst in the Kunsthochschule Kassel and ends up doing a postgraduate year as Meisterschülerin of the teacher and artist Bjørn Melhus. Since then her work was focused on video, becoming it as her art medium by excellence. She currently lives and works in Madrid (Spain). She has won spanish prizes such as the Injuve 2011 in Visual Arts, the 2014 Young Award Accesit, 2017 Circuitos and the BBVA Multiverso Videoart 2017 Scholarship. Her work has been exhibited galleries or art institutions in London, Kassel, Berlin, Madrid or Vienna and in museums such as the Kasseler Kunstverein Museum and at the Moca Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.