Cross Cuts, a SoEx screening in Cinema by the Bay

Cross Cuts, a SoEx screening in Cinema by the Bay

Cross Cuts
A screening of experimental video and film by Bay Area artists
Presented by Southern Exposure and The San Francisco Film Society

Sunday, November 7, 2010, 9:00pm

Tickets: On sale at sffs.org

A leading light, Southern Exposure consistently supports Bay Area artists and serves as a vital hub for the arts community. The organization’s new Mission District gallery is a dynamic venue for the presentation of diverse, contemporary art, and for this night of video work by several of the leading local artists working with video and film.

Artists include Melissa Day, Anthony Discenza, Kota Ezawa, Jonn Herschend, Desiree Holman, Packard Jennings, Rebekah May, Chris Sollars, Richard T. Walker, Anne Walsh and Chris Kubick, and Lindsey White.

WORKS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

Jonn Herschend
Self Portrait as PowerPoint Proposal for an Amusement Park Ride, 2009
(5:49)
Self Portrait as PowerPoint Presentation for an Amusement Park Ride is a corporate PowerPoint Proposal for a new roller coaster based entirely on an illicit inter-office affair between the presenter and Linda Cole (who is currently Mark’s girlfriend). It includes ideas for a “Make Your Own Sandwich Shop” (which is not such a great idea, in the opinion of the writer of this paragraph) and a secret password for having sex in the supply closet (only to be revealed to those watching the film). The proposal, which is created entirely in PowerPoint, takes the viewer through the very basic planning stages for the ride but then transitions to actually becoming the ride a little over half-way through. Sit back with your loved one and get ready for the presentation of your life!

Packard Jennings
The End of Everything (Part One), 2007
(2:40)
A series of vignettes depicting different ideological end-game scenarios.

Melissa Day
Between Believing (work in progress), 2010
(8:20)
Early one morning, two priests, two scientists and one rogue gospel singer meet in an abandoned tunnel in a secluded forest. They begin to chant and sing back and forth. Two very different stories — stories about believing and not believing.

Lindsey White
Clouds, 2007
(1:47)
Watching the clouds roll by. For as long as I can remember, my dad has claimed to know the secret of the world. However, every time he is about to whisper it in my ear, he lets out a giant laugh and says, ‘Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re a little bit older.’ Through my artwork, I’ve been searching for this secret, studying the random events, actions, and visions that are forever unfolding in my everyday encounters. My photography and video explorations, combine elements of both humor and wonderment, creating a gateway for the viewer into the secret of this world, using everyday objects — a book, a flashlight, friends.

Anthony Discenza
Overture from News Cycle, 2006
(4:55) 
Overture is an excerpt from News Cycle #2, a 2006 collaboration with electronic composer Michael Zbyszysnki. This work was a commission by the Montalvo Arts Center, and was presented at the Getty Center in October 2006 as part of the Distributed Memory screening program curated by Julie Lazar. Continuing the themes investigated in earlier works such as November, Backscatter, and News Cycle #1, the work takes an entire day’s worth of news broadcasts from all of the major cable news networks, and reprocesses this information into a suite of seven discrete “passages” that takes us from early morning, midday, afternoon and into late evening. This excerpt, Overture is the opening sequence to News Cycle #2, which is also intended to function on its own as a stand-alone work.

Kota Ezawa
Beatles Über California, 2010 
(3:27)
A Beatles performance re-animated and highjacked to become the video for a San Francisco punk hymn.

Desiree Holman
Troglodyte, 2005
(7:10)
The term ‘troglodyte’ describes a simpleton or brute who is emotionally reactive and potentially dangerous; s/he is without acute powers of reasoning. The word is also part of the scientific name for a chimpanzee, Pan troglodyte. The video, Troglodyte (2005), features multiple actors pretending to be chimpanzees. They all wear latex, hair and fabric, chimpanzee-like forms that Holman sculpted. Whether in the spotlight of academic investigations or popular culture, the chimpanzee has often been the focus for human projection. Holman’s video falls into this tradition and uses the chimp acting as a metaphor that points to the primal urges and basic needs that motivate much human emotion and behavior.

Chris Sollars
Sollars’ selections for Cross Cuts are videos that are concerned with figure ground opposition. Through found material, inanimate figures and patterns are animated, rolled or blocked in relation to physical or psychological space.
Pipe Roll, 2009
(2:03)
Wide shot of landscape with a pipe rolling into and out of frame. 

Colon Pattern, 2010
(0:42)
Pattern portrait of Ian Colon through crash zooms on his clothes with Quadrospazzed by Thee Oh Seesfrom their album The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In played through a car stereo.

Sheet, 2009
(2:51)
1970’s sheets changing positions in Marin, California.

Abu Ghraib, 2004-2006
(0:48)
Undressed Apple ipod commercial figures with uncovered images from Abu Ghraib.

Packard Jennings
The End of Everything (Part Two), 2007
(3:00)

Rebekah May
Out My Bedroom Window, 2009
(1:03)
I took a photograph out my bedroom window every night at 3:00 am for 3 months (left side of video). I also took a photograph every hour for 24 hours (right side of video).

Lindsey White
The Whole Wide World, 2007
(5:23)
A look at both the constructed and found moments of everyday life.

Kota Ezawa
Color Combination, 2000
(2:00) 
4 colors, 3 voices and some Casio keyboards.
Music by the Helen Lundy Trio.

Anne Walsh and Chris Kubick
Lincoln in Tijuana, 2008
(4:34)

Lincoln in San Diego, 2008
(5:20)

Lincoln in San Diego and Lincoln in Tijuana were made in 2008 for the online exhibition Twenty-first Century Abe, produced by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. In our research for this commission, we were surprised and interested to discover that there are three monumental statues of Lincoln in Mexico, all of them given to Mexican cities by the U.S. during the early years of the OAS, and the Cold War. In exchange, the U.S. also received statues of Benito Juarez, who was in many ways Lincoln’s equivalent in Mexico during the same years. Tijuana and San Diego have these sister-statues. In the video Lincoln in Tijuana, we asked Nemonico, a professional mentalist and magician working in Tijuana, to meet us at the Lincoln statue there. Nemonico took us through a thought experiment on the essence of Lincoln, and the site we were standing in. Lincoln in San Diego is a short portrait of William Peck, a Lincoln presenter, who we asked to speculate on the relationship between Lincoln and Juarez, who never met. Peck moves in and out of character, in and out of the present, past and future.

Packard Jennings
The End of Everything (Part Three), 2007 
(2:00)

Richard T. Walker
The Hierarchy of Relevance, 2010
(7:58)
A series of shots depicting boulders, bushes, trees and cacti from the Californian desert are presented to the viewer as a story is heard about someone becoming overwhelmed by the individual beauty of such objects. The video culminates into a ‘song of distraction’; a multi-layered piece of music whereby the artist plays various instruments and sings, individually addressing each ‘part’ of the landscape.

Packard Jennings
The End of Everything (Part Four), 2007
(3:20)