Notes for a Future Ecology
Tuesday, November 15, 2022 | 7:00 PM
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
273 E Erie St | Milwaukee, WI | 53202
This screening is being held at MIAD in conjunction with the current exhibition
THEN AS NOW: Woodland Pattern 1980 - 2022
which celebrates the COVID-delayed 40 year anniversary of our host venue
Woodland Pattern Book Center
Please join us in celebrating Woodland Pattern Book Center! We will have screening artists Kim Kielhofner (in-person) and Kim-Sanh Châu + Lydia Moyer (virtual via Zoom) available for a Q&A following the program!
As always, please support Woodland Pattern Book Center by browsing their store on 720 E Locust St in Milwaukee, or beyond via their online store.
Reverie At Noon | 03:13
Melina Kiyomi Coumas
Synopsis:
An experimental short inspired by the summer heat and a newfound obsession with ASMR. Shot on 16mm.
Artist Bio:
Melina Kiyomi Coumas is an award-winning experimental filmmaker from the island of O'ahu, now based in the Pacific Northwest. With a BA in Film Studies, her focus is in filmmaking while also pursuing interests in photography and writing. Her works have screened both locally and internationally. She shoots primarily on celluloid film formats, exploring themes surrounding memory, identity and perception.
The Decameron I | 03:09
Kim Kölle Valentine
Synopsis:
Made during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, The Decameron I brings together many short collage videos documenting thoughts, dreams and anxieties. They were made in the style of The Decameron, the collection of 14th-century Italian novellas by Giovanni Boccaccio. This is part of an ongoing project and also includes selections created for 2GatherApart, a video exquisite corpse project.
Artist Bio:
Kim Kölle Valentine works in video, drawing, and collage. She is interested in how we understand narratives - personal and historic - and how we place ourselves into them. Her process is based on interests in layered narrative, cinema, and literature through which she has developed an archive of images and ideas. Her work has been presented in solo shows at Dazibao (Montréal, CA), LUX (London, UK), VOX (Montréal, CA), Sporobole (Sherbrooke, CA) and k48 (Vienna, AT). Her work has also been shown widely in group exhibitions and screenings including Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, WRO Biennale, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, Buenos Aires. She has been an artist in residence at KulturKontakt (Vienna, AT), Aberystwyth Arts Centre (UK), The Red Mansion Foundation (Beijing, CN), and International Studio and Curatorial Program (Brooklyn, US)
The Well-Prepared Citizen’s Solution | 04:45
Lydia Moyer
Synopsis:
An account of life among those preparing for the end of the world. A report from the garden.
Artist Bio:
I am a media maker and visual artist based in central Virginia, USA.
My work is a transpersonal response to a sense of crisis in the world. It casts the individual amidst the collective, wrestling with the overwhelming social, political, and environmental concerns that are the shadow of capitalism. I bear witness to these concerns alternately by conflating one with another, speaking from the past or future in order to address the present, and playing with the absurd and uncanny amidst melancholy and grief. Moving equally and sometimes seamlessly between self-created and existing materials, I hope to evoke a felt-sense of unshielded – and unheroic – awareness through image, sound, and text.
Inner Smoke | 11:39
Kim-Sanh Châu (in collaboration with Ray Lavers)
Synopsis:
In Hoa Binh, rural area in Northern Vietnam, large expanses of white smoke can be observed every day. Whether at roadsides, in fields, or even backyards, local light fires every night around 5 p.m. Whether fire is lit in the idea of cleaning, purifying or honouring the deceased, this omnipresent phenomenon becomes obsessive. Inner Smoke is a dance-embodiement of the fire and smoke process, following the Vietnamese cult of the dead culture. This film deals with the space left for renewal after one’s disappearance, while questioning what remains from the past, what we can not see, like ashes that we are no longer paying attention to. Inner Smoke is also an intimate diary of the two protagonists’ journey in Vietnam. It follows Kim-Sanh Châu (choreographer/dancer) and Ray Lavers (filmmaker) into their creation process. Images depict their different perspectives regarding creation and experience in a foreign land.
Artist Bio:
Kim-Sanh Châu is a dance artist. Her practice comprises choreographic installation and video making – with an interest for the emergence of imaginary landscapes through the body – distilled from far away dreams, imaginary memories and psychotropic reminiscences. Her creations have been presented locally at l'Arsenal, Tangente, MAI, l'Écart, Accès Asie; as well as internationally at SIDance (Korea) and Krossing-Over (Vietnam), among others. Châu is Artistic and General Co-director at Studio 303 and an associated artist at Equivoc'. She graduated in Dance (MA UQAM), finance (MA ASB Denmark / Harvard USA) and international business (BA ACU Australia).
Call Me Back | 02:38
Melina Kiyomi Coumas
Synopsis:
Originally made just for family, the filmmaker uses the last voicemail left on her phone by her Grandmother in this experimental short that becomes a meditation on loss and haunted spaces. Footage was shot on Super 8mm one summer upon returning home to Hawaii, a few years after her Grandmother's passing.
Artist Bio:
Melina Kiyomi Coumas is an award-winning experimental filmmaker from the island of O'ahu, now based in the Pacific Northwest. With a BA in Film Studies, her focus is in filmmaking while also pursuing interests in photography and writing. Her works have screened both locally and internationally. She shoots primarily on celluloid film formats, exploring themes surrounding memory, identity and perception.
What’s Best (part 2) | 03:15
Lydia Moyer
Synopsis:
A series of unanswered questions are posed amid scenes of inter-species care and a poetic accounting of inaction in this piece of cosmic agitprop.
Artist Bio:
I am a media maker and visual artist based in central Virginia, USA.
My work is a transpersonal response to a sense of crisis in the world. It casts the individual amidst the collective, wrestling with the overwhelming social, political, and environmental concerns that are the shadow of capitalism. I bear witness to these concerns alternately by conflating one with another, speaking from the past or future in order to address the present, and playing with the absurd and uncanny amidst melancholy and grief. Moving equally and sometimes seamlessly between self-created and existing materials, I hope to evoke a felt-sense of unshielded – and unheroic – awareness through image, sound, and text.
MIDLAND | 06:59
Kim-Sanh Châu
Synopsis:
It’s at the edge of the woods that satellites and bodies intersect.
Their inaudible dialogues steep the stones in purple ink.
Gleams of dawn. Cold sun.
Capture the intangible. Dance the invisible.
MIDLAND is a screendance project celebrating forgotten satellites, enlivening their ghosts through a sensitive and ritualized dance. Beings dialogue, and answers are given but never understood.
MIDLAND was created in deep solitude. In the shadow of dawn I travelled through Quebec on my small motorbike from 1976 in order to capture these images. Through an intimate lens, this video addresses land ownership, troubled by the simultaneous beauty and violence that stems from the feeling of belonging, of ownership, and their opposites.
Artist Bio:
Kim-Sanh Châu is a dance artist. Her practice comprises choreographic installation and video making – with an interest for the emergence of imaginary landscapes through the body – distilled from far away dreams, imaginary memories and psychotropic reminiscences. Her creations have been presented locally at l'Arsenal, Tangente, MAI, l'Écart, Accès Asie; as well as internationally at SIDance (Korea) and Krossing-Over (Vietnam), among others. Châu is Artistic and General Co-director at Studio 303 and an associated artist at Equivoc'. She graduated in Dance (MA UQAM), finance (MA ASB Denmark / Harvard USA) and international business (BA ACU Australia).
The Coldest Day Of The Year | 08:46
Kim Kölle Valentine
Synopsis:
The Coldest Day of the Year takes place in a future where a cataclysmic event has made tracing a coherent meaning of the past and recounting a narrative of the present impossible. The narrator believes she has seen another being in this destroyed landscape. She attempts to find this figure and recounts a journey that traces the shadows of her presence. Using temporary sets, props and collaged images, The Coldest Day of the Year recounts an attempt to understand an ever shifting horizon and the possibility of dwelling.
Artist Bio:
Kim Kölle Valentine works in video, drawing, and collage. She is interested in how we understand narratives - personal and historic - and how we place ourselves into them. Her process is based on interests in layered narrative, cinema, and literature through which she has developed an archive of images and ideas. Her work has been presented in solo shows at Dazibao (Montréal, CA), LUX (London, UK), VOX (Montréal, CA), Sporobole (Sherbrooke, CA) and k48 (Vienna, AT). Her work has also been shown widely in group exhibitions and screenings including Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, WRO Biennale, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, Buenos Aires. She has been an artist in residence at KulturKontakt (Vienna, AT), Aberystwyth Arts Centre (UK), The Red Mansion Foundation (Beijing, CN), and International Studio and Curatorial Program (Brooklyn, US)