Film & Video Screening
featuring 17 national artists with an opening live performance
May 31, 2024
Friday 8:30-11:00
FilmScene at Chauncey Swan Park (405 E. Washington)
Free and open to the public.
If you need any accommodations in order participate in this event, contact gallery@publicspaceone.com.
opening live performance
Jessica Tucker, “Possession” ~ 20m00s
in order of appearance
Eric Souther, “Deep Time of Latent Space” - 9m59s
Karl Erickson, “Know No Now” - 5m02s
Manny Orozco, “EARTHBURNER” - 1m00s
Laura Iancu, “// Current state = true;” - 3m00s
Oona Taper, “This Train is Invisible until it Crashes” - 5m30s
Auden Lincoln-Vogel, “Its Unbroken Marvelous Curve” - 3m32s
Lynn Kim, “CONDUIT” - 5m25s
Auden Lincoln-Vogel, Stephanie Miracle, & Philip Rabalais, “Three Wall Serve” - 7m00s
Johanna Winters, “HOWW TO WAYT” - 8m16s
Kamari Carter, “Ligature/Signature” - 2m00s
Lorelei d'Andriole, “The Instrument is a Body and My Instrument is a Brick” - 8m42s
David Bennett, “Casual Stroller” - 1m38s
Abinadi Meza, “Tlaloc (Lines Drawn in Water)” - 8m42s
Jacklyn Brickman & Sharon Gill, “Speculative Speciation, Honeycreeper” - 6m01s
Billy Friebele, “Inversion / Submersion” 1.2 - 2m23s
Laura Iancu, “The Amber Gates” - 4m00s
Allison Leigh Holt, “Stitching the Future with Clues” - 11m05s
Karl Erickson, “Infinite Choices of Latent Space” - 2m34s
2024 Screening Curators:
Stephanie Dowda DeMer is an American photographer and experimental media artist. Dowda DeMer uses the materiality of photography to address grief, climate catastrophe, and insurmountable power. Recently, Dowda DeMer was named the inaugural Iowa Idea Fellow in Photography at The University of Iowa. DeMer holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a Hambidge Fellow, Idea Capital grantee, and her work has been published in Dialogue, Bad at Sports, MuseA, ArtsATL, BurnAway, among others. She has shown at White Space Gallery-Atlanta, Grizzly Grizzly-Philadelphia, MART-Dublin and others. Currently. Dowda DeMer is Assistant Professor of Photo + Video at Wesleyan College. She is based in Atlanta & Macon, GA.
Katina Bitsicas is a Greek-American new media artist who utilizes video, installation, projection mapping, AR, photography, and performance in her artworks to explore grief, loss, trauma and memory. She has exhibited worldwide, including The Armory Show, Candela Books + Gallery, Plexus Projects, the Wheaton Biennial curated by Legacy Russell, CADAF: Digital Art Month Paris, Torrance Art Museum, Hatch Art Center, Eye’s Walk Festival, 57th Dimitria Festival, HereArt, Art in Odd Places Orlando, Digital Graffiti Festival, Indie Memphis Film Festival and the St. Louis International Film Festival. Katina received her MFA from the University of South Florida and is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Digital Storytelling at the University of Missouri.
Open Air 2024 is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts, the City of Iowa City Public Art Program and festival partners, FilmScene and KRUI.FM
“Possession”
Jessica Tucker
Possession is a performance with live face-tracking augmented reality, video feedback, and improvised music for voice and electronics. The artist performs interactively with an augmented reality apparatus that alters their projected image with distorted digital masks. Possession disrupts the digital self, exploding and enveloping it in a decentered process of fission and recursion.
Jessica Tucker is an American and Dutch artist, musician, and educator. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and previously studied at Wellesley College, MIT, and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. She has performed and exhibited her work throughout Europe and the USA, including Rewire Festival, FOAM Museum of Photography, Goethe Institut, the Van Gogh Museum, and Mana Contemporary. She has been supported by the Chicago Artists Coalition, Thoma Foundation, DCASE, and the Mondriaan Fund, among others.
Eric Souther, “Deep Time of Latent Space”
“Deep Time of Latent Space” relates the strata of human activity within large language models as another layer of the Anthropocene, which places AI into the realm of geological thinking that spirals into deep time and broadcasts into the future.
Eric Souther holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an BFA in New Media from the Kansas City Art Institute. His creative research draws from a multiplicity of disciplines, including new materialism, anthropology, ritual, deep time, and toolmaking. His work has been featured nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Art and Design, NYC, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, and the Museum of Art, Zhangzhou, China. Souther is an Assistant Professor of Kinetic Imaging at Western Michigan University.
Karl Erickson, “Know No Now”
Two puppets work through fear (of language, of the other, of time, and of the self), to arrive at a mental space in which they imagine themselves outside of time, no longer ego driven, and having a long view of existence. Know No Now was created in collaboration with Artificial Intelligence and is part of an ongoing project to create absurd educational programming inspired by A.I.s’ (mis)understandings of children’s television shows.
Karl Erickson’s animation Know No Now has been screened at the 2023 LINOLEUM Animation and Media Art Festival in Kyiv, Ukraine, Chroma Art Film Festival in Miami, FL, and the 2023 West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festiva. He has been an artist in residence at Loop Art Critique, The Arctic Circle, Plyspace and Signal Culture. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts and his BFA from Wayne State University. He lives in Memphis, TN where he is an Assistant Professor of Digital Art at Rhodes College.
Manny Orozco, “EARTHBURNER”
“EARTHBURNER” is about coping with generational trauma and climate anxiety derived from oppressive systems rooted in colonization and capitalism. This work takes inspiration from depersonalization/derealization, a foggy state of mind that presents the world and self as being detached from reality.
Manny Orozco (they/he) is a Tagalog-Indigenous American new media artist based in San Diego, California. Their practice involves heavy internet consumption and repurposing contemporary cyberculture and digital artifacts. With moving images and gamification, their work investigates themes of identity politics, mental health, decolonization, and the climate crisis. As an advocate of the open source model, they often distribute their work for free via the internet as a way of contributing to decentralized communities that continue to support their self-teaching orientation.
Laura Iancu, “//Current state = true;”
“//Current state = true;”. Some memories are password protected. Others always run without asking. Phantom sound bits loop around the kitchen table, inside a house, in space.
Iancu is a visual artist working primarily in experimental video forms and immersive 3D animation & gaming, with an expanded practice of installation and photography. Originally from Romania, she has been teaching, and making images in the US for more a decade. Currently Laura is an assistant professor of film production at Virginia Tech, School of Performing Arts.
Oona Taper, “This Train is Invisible until it Crashes”
An animation inspired by train delay messages and their poetic potential. An examination of all the things that can go wrong: on the train, in the urban environment, and in our lives. All drawings done while riding the Chicago metro system.
Oona Taper creates films, installations and animations that are invested in the materiality of moving images to create tactile and embodied experiences for the viewer. Her work responds to current and historical events with whimsy and daydreams to contend with the constant mundane apocalypses of the modern world.
Auden Lincoln-Vogel, “Its Unbroken Marvelous Curve”
A film about skateboarding after ten years of not skateboarding.
Auden Lincoln-Vogel is an American filmmaker whose work spans both animation and live action. His films have been screened at festivals including the Cannes Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Black Nights Film Festival, Filmfest Dresden, and the European Media Arts Festival.
Lynn Kim, “CONDUIT”
A running body powers the cycle between states of being. CONDUIT is a tribute to Korean musical rituals and the wonder of locomotion, both spiritual and physical.
Lynn Kim is a Korean American filmmaker and educator who uses live-action and animation techniques to create short films that explore the social conditions and realities of the human body. Her films serve as inquiries about how people perceive and understand bodies (intellectually and spiritually) and are based on her personal and lived experiences of gender, race, health, and sexuality. Lynn’s work exists as hybrid, chimeric fusions of drawing, animation, and video, and function as ongoing searches for alchemic transformation of her own body through frame-by-frame film processes.
Auden Lincoln-Vogel, Stephanie Miracle, & Philip Rabalai, “Three Wall Serve”
Filmed in the UI Fieldhouse racquetball courts, this site-specific dance piece re-imagines the rules of sports, and the relationship between body and environment, exploding the viewer's sense of space into a kaleidoscopic collage.
Stephanie Miracle (choreographer) and Auden Lincoln-Vogel (cinematographer) have collaborated on several site-specific dance films in Iowa City, including 'Mammal Hall' at the UI Museum of Natural History, and 'Hyperdistanced' at the IMU parking garage. Philip Rabalais (sound design) is a Fairfield-based filmmaker and electronic musician joining the collaboration.
Johanna Winters, “HOWW TO WAYT”
A puppet-protagonist readies for an encounter with an imagined romantic interest while engaging in tenderly erotic actions. A motel room’s interior trappings – twin beds, wall trim, pink bathroom tiles – become her staging grounds in a rehearsal for being desired.
Johanna Winters is an interdisciplinary artist whose work engages puppetry, printmaking, video, and performance to confront expressions of female pleasure and disappointment. At the center of Winters’ current work is a puppet-protagonist who self-consciously performs her sensuality for the camera. Winters has been awarded residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo, Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, Lawrence Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts – with upcoming residencies at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University and the Women’s Studio Workshop residency in Malmö, Sweden. She has exhibited and performed her work nationally and is a recipient of the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award (Kansas City, MO), and the Grant Wood Fellowship at the University of Iowa School of Art & Art History. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Creative Core at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University.
Kamari Carter, “Ligature/Signature”
This suspenseful video displays a close-up scene of hands grasping a strand of rope and trying to spell a name. The sound is stark—one hears the friction of rope rubbing against skin and the sound of heavy rope dropping onto a surface. As two unidentified hands struggle with the piece of rope, off-screen someone throws more twine, increasing the level of duress.
Kamari Carter is a New York-based artist working primarily with sound, video, installation, and performance. His practice circumvents materiality and familiarity through a variety of recording and amplification techniques to investigate notions such as space, systems of identity, oppression, control, and surveillance. Driven by the probative nature of perception, Carter’s work seeks to expand narrative structures through sonic stillness. His work has been exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence, RI; Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ; Flux Factory, Long Island City, NY; Wave Hill, New York; Fridman Gallery, New York; and Automata Arts, Los Angeles, among others, and has been featured in publications including Artnet, Flash Art, and Whitewall, among others. Carter holds a BFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and an MFA from Columbia University.
Lorelei d'Andriole, “The Instrument is a Body and My Instrument is a Brick”
This expanded cinema work is about transgender embodiment. As the artist injects the snare drum with estrogen and hammering in used estrogen needles by the artist, she hopes to (trans)form her drum into a transsexual musical ally. The background footage is from a tour the snare drum and the artist went on in 2018, before either had transitioned.
Lorelei d’Andriole [lore-ah-lie dee-ann-dree-ole] (she/her/hers) is an American queer trans* woman, artist, and musician. As an assistant professor in Electronic Art and Intermedia at Michigan State University, d'Andriole produces art and research within intermedia, sound, and transgender studies. Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, d’Andriole earned her MA and MFA with honors from the University of Iowa’s Intermedia program. d’Andriole has completed artist residencies at Wave Farm and the Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University and was a Visual Arts Fellow at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in New York City from 2021-2022. d’Andriole is currently serving as a board member for the International Alliance for Women in Music where she advocates for queer and trans* composers and musicians. d’Andriole has presented her art and research across the United States and Canada at Universities, arts conferences, festivals, and galleries; most recently including the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (East Lansing, MI), the Light Matter Film Festival (Alfred, NY), and the Landmark College Fine Arts Gallery (Putney, VT).
David Bennett, “Casual Stroller”
“Casual Stroller” is a drive by video of tourists captured in the streets serves as a vessel for identity deconstruction in a continuous glitchy cycle of loops within loops.
David Bennett is a digital artist, motion designer, and creative director, whose work is centered on the moving image. Drawn to immediacy and impermanence, he explores hyper-saturated visuals that oscillate between abstract and figurative digitized glimpses of daily life and random ephemera. Juxtaposing the deliberate use of pattern, color, and rhythm with automatic, generative, and procedural techniques, the works themselves are frequently deconstructed and remixed as digital seeds for subsequent iteration. Music and sound are an inspiration and guiding force that often drives his rhythmic and sequencing decisions. He lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee.
Abinadi Meza, “Tlaloc (Lines Drawn in Water)”
Handmade cameraless 16mm film; Tlaloc is the deity of waters, rain, lightning, and growth in the Aztec pantheon. This film is a space of transformation, light, and water - an enigmatic evolving otherworld.
Abinadi Meza is a Latinx-Indigenous sound artist and experimental filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. He studied art, creative writing, and architecture; he primarily makes film/video, sound art, and live performances. His films have been shown in festivals, galleries, museums, and other spaces around the world.
Jacklyn Brickman & Sharon Gill, “Speculative Speciation, Honeycreeper”
“Speculative Speciation, Honeycreeper” ponders what could have been, by employing AI to generate new species descended from the extinct ones, highlighting what has been lost in the past, what continues to be lost in the present and may be lost for future generations.
Jacklyn Brickman is a visual artist and educator whose work entangles science fact with fiction to address social and environmental concerns by employing natural entities, processes, and technology. Fellowships include The National Academy of Sciences, Chaire arts et sciences, Jentel Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Erb Family Foundation. She has exhibited her work internationally. Brickman resides in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the ancestral and contemporary territory of the Council of the Three Fires – the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi. Indigenous nations of the Great Lakes region are also known as the Anishinaabe. She is an Assistant Professor of Kinetic Imaging at Western Michigan University.
Sharon Gill is a sound ecologist and educator, whose research interests include bird communication, impacts of human-driven environmental change on bird song and collective soundscapes, and bird extinctions. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defence, and the Eppley Foundation for Scientific Research. Her art practice centers on weaving, through which she expresses stories of grief and loss, and creative nonfiction, writing about bird extinctions. Gill is a professor of Biological Sciences at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, and resides on the ancestral and contemporary lands of the Three Fires Confederacy formed by the Odawa, the Ojibwe, and the Potawatomi.
Billy Friebele, "Inversion / Submersion 1.2”
As a floating waterproof camera system gathers video in the Anacostia River, a river threatened by pollution and high levels of bacteria, Inversion/Submersion (2022) reveals an interconnected ecosystem above and below the water surface.
Billy Friebele is an interdisciplinary artist working in the Washington, DC region. He has exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Art Museum of the Americas, the Katzen Center for the Arts, and the Kreeger Museum among other venues nationally and internationally. His work examines the relationship between humans and the environment – especially along the Anacostia River. Billy was a Hamiltonian Artist fellow and one of the first makers-in-residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. He earned a BA in Philosophy from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Billy Friebele is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Loyola University Maryland.
Laura Iancu, “The Amber Gates”
The Troite are protective totems placed at crossroads, water sprouts and in places of remembrance. They are the pillars of heaven and the mystical gateways of the Amber Mountains of Romania.
Iancu is a visual artist working primarily in experimental video forms and immersive 3D animation & gaming, with an expanded practice of installation and photography. Originally from Romania, she has been teaching, and making images in the US for more a decade. Currently Laura is an assistant professor of film production at Virginia Tech, School of Performing Arts.
Allison Leigh Holt, “Stitching the Future with Clues”
made in collaboration with Kit Young, Thomas Dimuzio, Eric Micha Holmes, Tucker Culbertson, and Corey Michael Smithson
This version of “Stitching the Future with Clues” is an excerpt of the longer film.
Commissioned by The Ford Foundation Gallery at the height of Covid lockdown, the project was created as a single-channel video for the exhibition Indisposable: Structures of Support After the ADA. Its script featured in Yale's Theater Magazine: Disability Dramaturgies (2022, Duke University Press). In 2022, it screened at the Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive and the Mind & Life Institute's 2022 Summer Research Institute. Stitching the Future with Clues also exists as a live expanded cinema performance. The version included in this screening program will be a shortened version from its original.
Allison Leigh Holt is an artist and a Fulbright Scholar who uses techniques of expanded cinema and the Light and Space Movement to model divergent manifestations of mind. Holt’s work has been supported by The Ford Foundation Gallery, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the David Bermant Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Denise Montell Molecular Science Laboratories (UC Santa Barbara), and Cemeti Institute for Art and Society (Indonesia). They have exhibited, screened, and lectured nationally and internationally, in Latvia, Poland, Indonesia, and at the University of North Dakota Writers Conference with sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson and theoretical physicist Brian Greene.
Karl Erickson, “Infinite Choices of Latent Space”
A continuous pull-back to try to find the intrinsic properties of art made with generative AI, with glimpses along the way of data mining, hackers, organic computing, surveillance culture, latent space, Perlin noise, and puppets. The text is generated in the style of Jeremy Narby and Terrance McKenna describing the recursive nature of latent space, voiced by an AI actor and remixed by a plant via bio-electricity.
Karl Erickson makes videos, animations, and audio/visual-performances about language, transformative experiences, self-betterment and environmentalism. His animation Know No Now has been screened at the 2023 LINOLEUM Animation and Media Art Festival in Kyiv, Ukraine, Chroma Art Film Festival in Miami, FL (where it won the 2023 award for Best Animation), and the 2023 West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festiva. He lives in Memphis, TN where he is an Assistant Professor of Digital Art at Rhodes College.