FUTURE PROJECTIONS : MY DREAM OF FLYING TO WAKE ISLAND
Mary Helena Clark and Lakshmi Luthra + Sabrina Ratté + Mike Stoltz + Shambhavi Kaul + Cauleen Smith + Harun Farocki + David O’Reilly + Lillian Schwartz
“I’ve been thinking that it’s time – so very time – for you to leave.” – Cauleen Smith
Herein is a kino-dream of flight, of departure, of Being Elsewhere. With a score by the Eternals and a collection of images taken from the archives of the Earth herself (Smith), our journey begins in a desert by the sea (Kaul) – no, in a digital desert by the digital sea (Farocki) – I mean, in a punk club in the shadow of Cape Canaveral (Stoltz) – wait, in a vibrating yellow synth-horizon (Ratté). Wherever we begin, beyond the horizon is Future: where the dream is forgotten and remembered again (O’Reilly), where that computer-animated vessel is revealed (Schwartz) in all of its flickering glory. Featuring the world premiere of a new work by experimental filmmaker Mary Helena Clark!
FEATURING:
My Dream of Flying to Wake Island by Mary Helena Clark and Lakshmi Luthra (3:00, video, 2016)
Sightings: Habitat by Sabrina Ratté (6:00, video, 2014)
Under the Atmosphere by Mike Stoltz (14:30, 16mm, 2014)
Night Noon by Shambhavi Kaul (12:00, video, 2014)
Songs for Earth and Folk by Cauleen Smith (10:40, video, 2013)
Parallel III by Harun Farocki (7:20, video, 2014)
Please Say Something by David O’Reilly (11:00, video 2008)
UFOs by Lillian Schwartz (3:00, video, 1971)
TRT 65:00
FUTURE PROJECTIONS is a 9-part screening program of short film and video work drawn from 125 years of techno-prophecy and oracular future-visions. Taking its title from distopian sci-fi author JG Ballard’s short story collection of the same name, each program in Memories of the Space Age follows the thread of a different tale, tracing out a conceptual audiovisual line into the (im)possible horizons of our future planet(s) – an Earth vibrating under the heat of multiple suns, subject to the pull of infinite moons, and peopled by a population not unlike our own. Herein are 45+ short films, videos and movies-with-live-soundtracks conjured forth by the most forward-thinking media artists of our time(s): from computer pioneers to mechanical futurists, FX wizards to analogue feedback architects, landscape holographers to post-human anthropologists, cyber-essayists to Uncanny Valley voyagers, cut-up creationists to magical (un)realists, and 16mm futurologists to digital humanists – Future Projections presents a kinetic and syncretic history of All That Is Yet To Be.
Highlights include an embedded 16mm tribute to the great musician and filmmaker Tony Conrad (RIP); two radical video synth landscapes by Montreal artist Sabrina Ratté; Japanese noise filmmaker Makino Takashi’s 3D-immersive Cinéma Concrete, late German essayist Harun Farocki’s videogame dissection Parallel I-IV, French avant-garde filmmaker Rose Lowder’s flicker tour-de-force Bouquets 21-30, Cauleen Smith’s Eternals-track’d Afrofuturist collage Songs for Earth and Folk, commissions of 9 new shorts by local and national filmmakers, and more!
FEATURING NEW COMMISSIONS BY: Alee Peoples + Bill Brown + Brendan and Jeremy Smyth + Edward Rankus + Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby + Ephraim Asili + Mary Helena Clark and Lakshmi Luthra + Sabine Gruffat + Stephanie Barber
FEATURING FILMS / VIDEOS BY: Adam Beckett + Barbara Hammer + Basma Alsharif + Beatrice Gibson + Ben Rivers + Cauleen Smith + Chris Marker + David O’Reilly + Deborah Stratman + Doris Chase + Harun Farocki + Hollis Frampton + Jacolby Satterwhite + Jeremy Bailey + Jesse McLean + JJ Murphy + John Whitney + Lawrence Jordan + Lillian Schwartz + Louis Henderson + Makino Takashi + Michael Robinson + Mike Stoltz + OJOBOCA + Peter Burr + Pierre Huyghe + Rachel Rose + Rosa Barba + Rose Lowder + Sabrina Ratté + Sara Magenheimer + Scott Bartlett + Semiconductor + Shambhavi Kaul + Tony Conrad + Wojciech Bakowski + Yuri Ancarani
With support from the Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org