Friday August 26 and Saturday August 27, 2011, 8:30pm

Los Angeles Filmforum, piXel (+) freQuency and the Disembodied Theater Corporation present pixelfrequency.com

Inquiry Towards the Practice of Secular Magic

Ross Lipman, Marcy Saude, and more in person

at piXel (+) freQuencym 931 E Pico Blvd     

**NOTE THE CHANGE IN DAY, TIME AND LOCATION!**

Secular magic is the alchemical act of transmuting everyday life into fiction, and vice versa.  The traveling, continually evolving Inquiry examines actions both State-sanctioned and autonomous, and includes live cinema performances, archival documents, films, artworks, and artifacts.  EXPERIENCE AND OBSERVE:  strange objects, questionable events, and unknown histories in a bewildering tapestry of transfigured reality!

Tickets: General $10, Students/seniors $6; free for Filmforum members

Advance ticket purchase available through Brown Paper Tickets. 

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/190764

Door at 8:30; 9:00 p.m. sharp start time.  Arrive early for seating.floor space.

THIS IS A BYOS event:  Bring Your Own Seating!  There are some chairs and sofas, but not enough.  Plenty of floor space, so small folding chairs, cushions and blankets encouraged.  Floor is hard so bring something comfortable.

The proceedings include:

... Ross Lipman’s THE BOOK OF PARADISE HAS NO AUTHOR,

... a live cinema essay on the Tasaday, Cave People of the Philippines

... Marcy Saude’s illustrated lecture on George Van Tassel, inventor of the Integratron

... Stephen Berkman’s authentic contemporary Ambrotypes

... Luke’s embryonic brains as nightmare

... Liz Goetz’s “astronomically correct” cut-out star quilt

... Anjali Sundaram’s reseach on the legendary Daughter of Kong

... Liz Goetz’s “astronomically correct” cut-out star quilt

... Notes from a mystery caller

... Nina Höchtl’s video installation on the Emperor and Empress of Mexico, Maximilian and Carlota, and their strange relationship to the comedian Cantinflas

... Inna-Marie Strazhnik’s medical illustrations and photographs, and a prosthetic eye

... and live music and sounds by Eric Potter

The Disembodied Theater Corporation is an amorphous entity devoted to the temporary manifestation of non-filmic cinemas  www.corpusfluxus.org

LIVE DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCES:

THE BOOK OF PARADISE HAS NO AUTHOR – Ross Lipman

In the summer of 1971 Ferdinand Marcos announced the discovery of a tribe of primitive cave dwellers who had lived in complete isolation for thousands of years in the rainforest of Mindanao, the easternmost island of the Philippines.  Modernity as we knew it was uprooted.  The Tasaday represented a chance to witness firsthand the origins of civilization, and investigate the very essence of humanity.  They also—seemingly--offered Marcos a number of rather unique political opportunities.  This experimental performance essay integrates rare ethnographic footage, vintage television broadcasts, recordings, and still photographs to look at the unexpectedly tragic, haunting, and provocative tale of our encounter with the Tasaday and their elliptical encounter with us.  The result is a meditative sensory experience that questions the nature of reality itself.

GEORGE VAN TASSEL – Marcy Saude

Flight test engineer turned 1950's UFO conference organizer; discriminator of peace messages from beyond the stars; dweller beneath the World's Largest Boulder; visionary architect responsible for the never-completed Integratron. In this illustrated lecture combining images, film, sound and performance, the life of California eccentric George Van Tassel becomes a node for the exploration of topics such as "contactees," electro-magnetic vortices, ley lines, sacred geometry, time travel, cell rejuvenation, and the potential of architecture to harness Earth's arcane powers.

EXHIBITIONS AND INSTALLATIONS

Accompanied by live music by Eric Potter

AMBROTYPES  – Stephen Berkman

UNTITLED – by Luke

Embryonic brains as nightmare 

I, DAUGHTER OF KONG  – Anjali Sundaram, Cynthia Mitchell, Amy Hicks

video and artifact exhibition

In the early 1970’s a fragment of film was discovered in a warehouse on the Hudson River in New York. The film shows fleeting black and white images of a small, blond woman who appears to have the head of a starlet and the body of an ape.  This bit of film has generated a great deal of controversy.  Is it documentary footage, a hoax, or a piece of lost fiction?  The ensuing years have produced evidence in support of conflicting theories, as well as speculation about the nature and location of this creature. Many people believe that she is the love-child of Fay Wray and King Kong.  It is said that she lives among us, somewhere in solitude, that she is an artist and a poet. Some believe she is a sign of a new era; perhaps even the second coming of the new Christ.  Others say she is just a poor freak, a sad accident escaped from a Soviet laboratory… Some say she doesn’t exist at all.

FAR SEEING MAP – by Liz Goetz

star curtain

A telescope was used to map and record stars, both through video and as a still record on a curtain. The curtain was made by projecting a video still onto opaque fabric, and cutting holes in the fabric in accordance with the stars' positions.  Bright light is allowed to pass through the cuts in the fabric, illuminating the stars.

CARLOTA & MAX EN ESPAÑOL, DEUTSCH & ENGLISH - by Nina Höchtl

3-channel video installation

In 2011 the “Golden Carriage of Maximilan” burst across the world’s headlines as part of a scandalous attempt to exchange it for the controversional Penacho de Moctezuma, a mythic Aztec feather headdress now residing in the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna.  This installation explores the profound ramifications of the proposed exchange, through the revisitation of a scene from the Mexican film El Signo de la Muerte (1939), which depicts the Emperor and Empress of Mexico (1864-67), Maximilian and Carlota as they ride in the golden coach, impersonated by Medel and Cantinflas.

NOTES FROM A MYSTERY CALLER

THE ARTISTS:

Ross Lipman is an independent filmmaker and writer/performer who has

presented work throughout the world at venues ranging from the Oberhausen

International Film Festival to the Chinese Taipei Film Archive, and is one of the world’s leading figures in the restoration of independent and experimental and cinema.

Marcy Saude is a filmmaker and media artist. Her experimental documentaries involve subjects such as marginal histories, the landscape, counterculture, and language, and have screened at festivals and venues including EMAF (Germany), Antimatter, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives (NYC), Other Cinema (San Francisco), and the Echo Park Film Center (LA). She is interested in DIY aesthetics, appropriation, homesteading, expanded notions of non-fiction, and folk magic. She recently moved to Los Angeles after completing an MFA at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The I, Daughter of Kong Center for Research was founded in Rio Vista, California in 1978 with the goal of collecting and preserving photos, testimonials, documentation, and physical evidence of the life and work of I, Daughter of Kong.  

Anjali Sundaram is a cinematographer and experimental filmmaker who works in 16mm and digital video. Her work has screened at microcinemas, film festivals, and local television stations nationally and abroad. Sundaram’s They Last screened in Southern Exposure/Intersection for the Arts’ Grounded? show in 2008. Her autobiographical short,Canada (2007) received awards from the Princess Grace Foundation and the Robin Eickman Foundation. She currently teaches film at the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State University and University of San Francisco.

 

Cynthia Mitchell has studied literature at New College of California and painting at the School of Visual Arts in New York.  She has made work in a variety of disciplines including painting, film, and video.  This year her recent short All Animals  (co-directed with Robert Arnold) has been screening at festivals across the country and in Europe. Mitchell’s play The Exchange was produced at the Festival d’Avignon in 2008 and in Paris in 2009.  She has curated and exhibited work in New York and San Francisco.

  

Digital media artist Amy Hicks received her undergraduate degree in studio art from UC Riverside in 1990 and a MFA from Stanford University in 2005. Hicks’ award-winning films and videos such as the dystopic Hatching Beauty and abstract Suspended Series have appeared internationally at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, Henry Art Museum, New Langton Arts, the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, diRosa Preserve: Art and Nature, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. In 2006,Suspended Series screened at Catharine Clark Gallery and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, her first solo shows. Her book and DVD project, ReAdaptation: the book series was included in “Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon” at the San Jose Museum of Art (2008). She currently resides in Newark, Delaware.

Visual artist Nina Höchtl studied at the University of Applied Arts (Vienna, A) and the Piet Zwart Institute (Rotterdam, NL). Presently, she is a doctoral candidate in Art by Practice at Goldsmiths College (London, UK). In her artistic work, Höchtl is not fixed on a particular medium. She explores the fictional modes of art, literature, politics, history, and popular culture, with an emphasis on the practice of fiction-making as a political process. In doing so she employs the media of video and photography, works with found materials, language and sound, produces printed matters and installations. Exhibitions (selection): Pièces de résistance (Curators: Andrea Domesle, Michal Kolecek, Frank Eckhardt) Motorenhalle Dresden (2011); where do we go from here? (Curator: Elisabeth Bettina Spörr), Secession, Vienna (2010), Too Early for Vacation, OPEN/INVITED e v +a 2008 Limerick (Curator: Hou Hanru) Belltable Arts Centre (2008).

Stephen Berkman

http://www.stephenberkman.com/index.htm

Luke is a poet and mad scientist.

The Inquiry Towards the Practice of Secular Magic is presented with the support of the Austrian Consulate General Los Angeles.

                     

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.  Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.   Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.