anticipated artists in person: Zachary Epcar, Erin Espelie, Brett Kashmere, Christina C Nguyen, Vicky Smith, Andrew Norman Wilson
presented by San Francisco Cinematheque and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
in association with the Canyon Cinema Foundation
Admission: $12 general/$10 Cinematheque and SFMOMA members with member code
Advance tickets available on May 1 here.
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Solids melt. Liquids become gas. Molten forms congeal. All becomes data, organized yet ephemeral. The entropic physical world succumbs the platonic grid and web. Alternately fascinated with and fearful of the fluidity of capital and the eternity of objects, the films on this program flirt—with highly ambivalent (yet unabashed) thrill—with the allure of the plastic, the eternity of youth, the electro-kick of glitch and game and the eternal/infernal joy of the perfect pop tune.
SCREENING
视网膜 (A Net To Catch the Light) (2016) by Erin Espelie; digital video, color & black and white, sound, 8 minutes, exhibition file from the maker bay area premiere
With a nod to Wallace Stevens (“the light is like a spider”), the digital world clashes with hand-processed 16mm footage of an orb-weaver. Our varying senses of time are altered, often homogenized, by certain pervasive wavelengths of light, and our surroundings are sonically defined by the natural world in competition with a human world, here defined by spider vibrations, the voice of a young Steve Jobs, and a chorus of Mac/Apple computer start-ups from the 1980s to now. (Erin Espelie)
Primal (2016) by Vicky Smith; 16mm, color, sound, 6 minutes, print from the maker U.S. premiere
Primal is an abstract animation made directly onto unprocessed fogged negative by rubbing and scraping the film and releasing its light. Similarly the sounds are made by rustling materials against the microphone. The process is one of rawness and inchoate urgency and the film is a meditation upon light, energy, matter and the animating principle. (Vicky Smith)
Formations (2016) by Brett Kashmere; digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes, exhibition file from the maker world premiere
The exemplary spectator has his occasional lusts, but not for warfare, hardly at all for that. No, it's details he needs—impressions, colors, statistics, patterns, mysteries, numbers, idioms, symbols. Football, more than other sports, fulfills this need. It is the one sport guided by language, by the word signal, the snap number, the color code, the play name… (Don DeLillo, End Zone)
Pattern Language (2016) by Peter Burr; digital video, black and white, sound, 11 minutes, exhibition file from the maker
“Pattern Language” is a term coined by architect Christopher Alexander to quantify the aliveness of certain human ambitions through an index of structural patterns. Some advocates of this design approach claim that ordinary people can use it to successfully solve very large, complex design problems. In this film, highly organized and richly layered patterns move in accordance with audio frequencies and rhythms, towards the construction of an endlessly mutating labyrinth. (Peter Burr)
Night Watch (2014) by Danaya Chulphuthiphong; digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes, exhibition file from the maker U.S. premiere
Watching through an ordinary night, under the “situation normal,” during the coup d’etat.
An ordinary night during the coup d’état. The 2014 Thai coup d’état on May 22, which was declared after months of anti-government protests, is warmly welcomed by the middle class in Bangkok but seriously reduces the rights and the freedom of expression. (Danaya Chulphuthiphong)
Return to Forms (2016) by Zachary Epcar; digital video, color, sound, 10 minutes, exhibition file from the maker bay area premiere
A constellation of objects, each emerging into the soft peach-light void of an indeterminate condominium space. (Zachary Epcar)
You Don't Own Me (2014) by Christina C Nguyen; digital video, color, sound, 6 minutes, exhibition file from the maker bay area premiere
An obsession with Lesley Gore's T.A.M.I. Show performance of "You Don't Own Me.” (Christina C Nguyen)
Ode to Seekers 2012 (2016) by Andrew Norman Wilson; digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes, exhibition file from the maker bay area premiere
Ode to Seekers 2012 is an infinite loop that celebrates the existence of mosquitoes, syringes and oil derricks via a translation of the formal techniques of John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn from printed text to video. (Andrew Norman Wilson)
Pictured above: Pattern Language (2016) by Peter Burr
CROSSROADS 2017 is generously supported by: National Endowment for the Arts, Fleishhacker Foundation, Grants for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Foundation, George Lucas Family Foundation, Owsley Brown III Philanthropic Foundation and the Willow Foundation.
With thanks to our festival sponsors:
