Six of one, half a dozen of the other
The Idea Fund Screening
Saturday, June 28, 7PM
Location: Aurora Picture Show, 2442 Bartlett Street
Free Admission with RSVP
Aurora Picture Show screens a retrospective of selected moving image works funded by The Idea Fund over the past six years. The Idea Fund is a a re-granting program established by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and administered by three Houston partners: Aurora Picture Show, DiverseWorks, and Project Row Houses. Aurora will be screening works from selected past Idea Fund Awardees: Kara Hearn, Madsen Minax, Potter Belmar Labs, Stephanie Saint Sanchez, and Walley Films.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other is a three part presentation, which not only includes this screening, but also an exhibition and public installation of projects that have received awards from The Idea Fund. The Idea Fund has supported the creation of 60 Texas-based projects, ten annually since its inception in 2008, that exemplify interventionist, entrepreneurial, or guerrilla activities. Six of one, half a dozen of the other surveys some of these projects through a series of co-organized events across Houston, including an exhibition at DiverseWorks (June 28 - August 9), film and video screening at Aurora Picture Show, and an installation at Project Row Houses (Saturday, June 28, 2PM). Representing a diverse group of artists and collectives from across the state, Six of one, half a dozen of the other brings together bold new ideas about artmaking, social engagement, and community involvement.
The screening at Aurora Picture Show will include the following works and artists:
Angela and Mark Walley (Walley Films)
Justin Boyd: Sounds and Time
About The Project:
Justin Boyd, Department Chair of Sculpture and Integrated Media at Southwest School of Art, shares his connection with sound and how he uses it to create original works of art. Inspired by his sensitivity to sound at a very young age, Boyd has been recording and working with sound and music since the mid 90s. Boyd actively captures field recordings for integration of sound with found objects.
About The Artists:
Husband and wife filmmaking team Mark and Angela Walley have been collaborating as artists and filmmakers for over a decade. Their film work has received over 2 million views online and recognition with features on Roger Ebert's Journal, NPR Picture Show, The Atlantic, and Vimeo Staff Picks. Mark and Angela have worked as video series producers for Glasstire.com, Rice University Art Gallery, Southwest School of Art, and Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (of dynamic short documentary films following the work of contemporary artists.) They had their most recent art exhibition, Creation to Consumption at Sala Diaz and are currently in pre-production on Tia Chuck, a documentary film following the life and work of the late artist Chuck Ramirez. Mark and Angela Walley live and work in San Antonio, Texas.
Kara Hearn
The Need for Grand Emotion
About The Project:
In this series of staged dramas reminiscent of classic anxiety dreams, 30-year old Will inexplicably finds himself back in high school trying to win the approval of a group of girls. In scenarios ranging from mundane and pathetic to violent and absurd, the character and the video work together self-consciously to squeeze authentic experience and emotion from the most artificial and mediated of circumstances.
About The Artist:
Kara Hearn is an interdisciplinary video artist. Working sometimes with actors and a crew and sometimes completely alone, she makes videos about the way dramas are staged and produced in the head. She hopes to degrade mainstream cinema by using its language against itself in a way that is too sincere, too simple, telling too many stories with very little stuff. Hearn's work has been screened, exhibited, and performed nationally and internationally at such venues as MoMA, SFMOMA, Recess, DiverseWorks, New Orleans Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, White Columns, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Walker Art Center, and Dallas Video Festival. She received an MFA from the University of California at Berkeley in 2007 and was a Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 2007-2009. She currently works and resides in Brooklyn, NY.
Madsen Minax
My Most Handsome Monster
About The Project:
My Most Handsome Monster is a short experimental film that documents two separate BDSM scenarios and morphs the landscapes in which they take place. Drawing attention to notions of the real and the imagined, the scenarios collide with archival family footage, landscape meditation, and voice-over narration to create a state of suspended engagement, a state of waiting, a gesture toward both collective histories and imagined futures.
About The Artist:
Madsen Minax was born and raised in rural Northern Michigan and has called Chicago a home base for the last 12 years. Madsen received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005, an MFA from Northwestern University in 2012, and is currently a Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX.
Potter-Belmar Labs
Thirteen Views in Arid Lands
About The Project:
Move through the untamed backcountry to the outer fringe of civilization through quiet, empty spaces in subdued pursuit. This series of 360-degree scrolling Southwestern American landscape videos was shot in time lapse, using an intervalometer and a robotic tripod head designed by PBL. Revealed in these vistas, clouds spread through the sky, winds shake plants, humans and animals dart almost imperceptibly. Text that appears in the videos was borrowed from and inspired by the reports and journals of the last free Apaches and the U.S. soldiers looking for the U.S./Mexican borderlands in the 1880s.
About The Artists:
Potter-Belmar Labs is Leslie Raymond and Jason Jay Stevens, collaborating artists since 1999, with award-winning, internationally-exhibited work, including live cinema performance, single-channel video, and installation art. PBL were 2010 artists-in-residence at Experimental Television Center. The duo was commissioned to perform a new live cinema composition and performance, I Am Curious (Remix), as part of the 2010 Aurora Picture Show Media Archaeology Festival in Houston. Potter-Belmar Labs was awarded the 2010 Idea Fund in support of their Panorama video project, which culminated in a 2011 exhibition at San Antonio's Art Pace. In 2011, McNay Art Museum presented a retrospective of their video work. The duo has toured extensively, weaving postmodern narratives in sound and image for audiences from New York's The Lab for Performance and Installation Art to San Francisco's Other Cinema.
Stephanie St. Sanchez
Señorita Cinema
About The Project:
Señorita Cinema is a weekend celebration of Latina made films from anywhere. Screenings events include an open Mercado featuring community organizations, artists' booths, workshops, refreshments, Q and A's with filmmakers and an award ceremony. Our aim is to showcase the rich tapestry of different choices, styles, and ideas unique to the Latina experience. Samples of works that will be screened from Señorita Cinema include: Through the Water by Tonanzin Canestraro Garcia, Delusions of Granduer (Trailer) by Iris Almarez, The Moon Song of Assassination by Dolissa Medina, and Tonita Runs Away by Teri Carson.
About The Artist:
Stephanie Saint Sanchez is a by-any-means-necessary media artist, moviemaker, and instigator. As founder of La Chicana Laundry Pictures, she has made over 25 award-winning, genre-bending shorts. She also started the Senorita Cinema film festival, the only all Latina Film Festival in Texas. She is a recipient of a S.W.A.M.P. Emerging Filmmakers Fellowship, The Idea Fund, and Lawndale Artist Studio Program. www.lachicanalaundrypictures.com
For More Information Please Visit:
The Idea Fund website: http://www.theideafund.org
DiverseWorks website: http://www.diverseworks.org
Aurora Picture Show website: http://www.aurorapictureshow.org
Project Row Houses website: http://www.projectrowhouses.org