Skip to main content
Donate

Media Arts Preview: The Experimental Edition

By Holly Willis
May 5, 2011
Support Provided By

Experimentation is this week's buzz word in the LA media arts scene, from experimental animation to technological experimentation to post-experimental autobiography...

CalArts

Thursday, May 5
The CalArts Film/Video annual Showcase presents a program of experimental animation tonight at REDCAT, starting at 8:00 p.m. The showcase continues with film and video screenings Friday and Saturday evenings.

DEEP

The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art presents Deep, a group show curated by Grace Kook-Anderson featuring work by artists "who persist in trying to express the intangible." The show includes self-reflexive videos, internet-based new media explorations and more. The show opens today, but the opening reception is Saturday, May 7, 6:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.Experimental filmmaker Beth Block will present four recent short projects at Cinematheque 108 at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, beginning at 7:00 p.m. The LA-based artist has worked in photography, installation and optical effects, and recently began working with a digital camera, "lending a new technologically-informed experimentation to her work." The screening is free.

Hadewijch

Friday, May 6
The extraordinary French filmmaker Bruno Dumont is known as "an austere stylist" with an almost obsessive attention to detail. LACMA presents his new film, Hadewijch, which is a story about "martyrdom, fanaticism, faith and delusion." It screens tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. Human Resources, an art and performance space in Chinatown, features Pauline presenting Owen Land's film Dialogues, or a Waist Is a Terrible Thing to Mind at 8:00 p.m. Described as "postexperimental, oneiric, mythopoetic autobiography," the film is the latest project by the experimental filmmaker who contributed to the avant-garde cinematic experiments of the 1960s and 1970s. The venue will also feature a screening of Chris Kraus's 1997 feature film Gravity and Grace tomorrow night. Kraus is a critic, artist and educator, and her film "explores the complicated responses of intelligent people to the need for faith."

Machine Project presents Carmina Escobar and Theresa Wong in Tensions, a performance for voices, cello and electronics. Escobar's voice is magical, and gets all the more intriguing as she uses voice processing during her performances. Machine Project promises a surprise, too, as part of the night's activities. The show starts at 9:00 p.m.

Brambilla


Saturday, May 7
Marco Brambilla's video projectionFlashback (POV) opens tonight at the Christopher Grimes Gallery in Santa Monica at 6:00 p.m. The show precedes the larger retrospective of the artist's work coming up later in May at the Santa Monica Museum. On his website, Brambilla notes, "This piece weaves together Film Noir imagery to create a kinetic video canvas visualizing the spectrum of human emotion and recall using the principles of cognitive psychology." The piece is among a series of remix videos in which Brambilla understands cinema as part of a collective consciousness. The piece will be on view through July 2.

Noirscapes

The Architecture and Design Museum presents an exhibition called Noirscape(s), which examines nocturnal illumination as part of LA's visual make-up. The project features illuminated aerial images of LA alongside lithographs of GPS "night trips." The noirscape is "a faint-space of sulfur halide traces, scaleless sweeps of red brake lights, and luminous artificial electro-atmospheric horizons." The show is open until June 3.
Wednesday, May 11
The Academy's tribute to outstanding work in recent documentary filmmaking continues tonight with Soundtrack for a Revolution, which explores the music that helped inspire the civil rights movement, and Every Little Step, about dancers auditioning for a role in A Chorus Line. The screening starts at 7:00 p.m., and the directors will be in attendance to answer questions following the screenings.

Support Provided By
Read More
An oil pump painted white with red accents stands mid-pump on a dirt road under a blue, cloudy sky with a green, grassy slope in the background.

California’s First Carbon Capture Project: Vital Climate Tool or License to Pollute?

California’s first attempt to capture and sequester carbon involves California Resources Corp. collecting emissions at its Elk Hills Oil and Gas Field, and then inject the gases more than a mile deep into a depleted oil reservoir. The goal is to keep carbon underground and out of the atmosphere, where it traps heat and contributes to climate change. But some argue polluting industries need to cease altogether.
By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters
Gray industrial towers and stacks rise up from behind the pitched roofs of warehouse buildings against a gray-blue sky, with a row of yellow-gold barrels with black lids lined up in the foreground to the right of a portable toilet.

California Isn't on Track To Meet Its Climate Change Mandates. It's Not Even Close.

According to the annual California Green Innovation Index released by Next 10 last week, California is off track from meeting its climate goals for the year 2030, as well as reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters
A row of cows stands in individual cages along a line of light-colored enclosures, placed along a dirt path under a blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds.

A Battle Is Underway Over California’s Lucrative Dairy Biogas Market

California is considering changes to a program that has incentivized dairy biogas, to transform methane emissions into a source of natural gas. Neighbors are pushing for an end to the subsidies because of its impact on air quality and possible water pollution.
By Emma Foehringer Merchant, Inside Climate News