January 10th, 2015
8:00pm
@ grayDUCK Gallery
2213 East Cesar Chavez Street, Austin, TX 78702 (map)
Free ($5-$10 Suggested Donation)
Spring 2015 season opener!
Filmmaker Jeremy Moss, whose work has screened around the globe from the Crossroads Film Festival in San Francisco to the Arkipel International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival in Indonesia, brings to Austin a 60-minute program of recent moving image work. In the summer of 2011, Moss began expanding beyond his narrative training to fully explore expressionistic structural tendencies and its application to place and the moving body, creating the Super8 surrealist documentary THOSE INESCAPABLE SLIVERS OF CELLULOID, the abstract hand-made 16mm films produced at the Independent Imaging Retreat, THE SIGHT and CICATRIX, the dance for camera pieces in collaboration with choreographer Pamela Vail, (UN)TETHERED, CHROMA, and THAT DIZZYING CREST, and the essay film in collaboration with writer Erik Anderson, THE BLUE RECORD. As a program, these works cohesively embody an immersive optical and sonic experience reveling in cinema’s capacity for both meditative expression and the rigors of formal experimentation.
“[Moss’ films, The Blue Record and That Dizzying Crest], I would say, fall into the realm of mastery—no one ought to be confused at their inclusion in any experimental film festival, and in fact I’d say all such festivals should program Moss’s work posthaste.”
– Michael Sicinski, Keyframe
“Considering the robust traditions of collaboration between experimental filmmakers and dancers/choreographers (a legacy which includes Abigail Child, Maya Deren, Henry Hills and Yvonne Rainer, as well as numerous contemporary artists), Moss’ contributions in this field are without a doubt exemplary and innovative.”
– Steve Polta, San Francisco Cinematheque
Program
THE SIGHT
04:09 min / 16mm to digital video / sound / 2012
A song of creation: immaterial space spawns volatile matter; obfuscated landscape emerges from splintering celluloid. Created at the Independent Imaging Retreat, the landscape is seen anew by 16mm hand-manipulation giving rise to a geometry of trees and meadows; the sonic score is subjected to similar direct manipulation.
THE BLUE RECORD
16:38 min / 16mm digital video / sound / 2013
Combining hand-processed 16mm imagery, a deconstructed lyric essay, and an ambient score by composer Vicki Brown, The Blue Record meditates on the pastime of ruin-gazing and its application across a wide range of aesthetic experiences. Informed in part by the work of Alain Resnais, Walter Benjamin, and the Romantic poets, The Blue Record is a collaborative study of what happens when the process of decay is arrested and ruins become commercial entities. Shot on location at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, the film is at once an immersive and Brechtian examination of the experience of destruction as an aesthetic pleasure.
THOSE INESCAPABLE SLIVERS OF CELLULOID
06:45 min / super8 to digital video / sound / 2011
Stumbling upon sun bleached bullet-riddled vintage porn sequestered in hidden desert nooks and sagebrush, circuit boards and shattered glass along off-the-path shooting ranges, rotting cow parts in ritual-like mounds, a prophet’s omniscient and culpable gaze; contemplating ideology and place, attempting to apply memory to moving image.
CICATRIX
06:48 min / 16mm to digital video / silent / 2014
A textural experience in layers, scars, and deterioration that combines hand processed, tinted, and toned 16mm imagery. Both sight and sound ooze and emulate those tangible tremors catalyzed by increasing awareness of loss and decay. Initially created at the Independent Imaging Retreat (Film Farm) in July 2012.
(UN)TETHERED
09:34 min / digital video / sound / 2014
Measured viewpoints positioned on concentric circles dissect and engage the movement of a solo performer in an abandoned mill. The perspective of both movement and place collide. Suddenly unhinged, the figure unravels and weaves freely, abandoning all formal containments. Featuring original choreography by Pamela Vail and an original score by Jonathan Pfeffer.
CHROMA
03:26 min / digital video / silent / 2012
A wild and hypnotic ride that focuses, via manic perspective shifts, on the driving movement of a solo figure against a backdrop of frenetically flickering colors; these jolting chromatic and frame variations dance as much as the performer.
THAT DIZZYING CREST
10:37 min / 16mm to digital video / sound / 2013
Direct manipulation acts as inciting catalyst as a dancing figure becomes ingrained and lost in the celluloid, creating an immersive new realm for the moving figure. She repeats short phrases of choreography on ambient loop; each repetition alters our perception of movement and space.
Bio
Jeremy Moss (born 1978, Saint George, UT) is a filmmaker based in Pennsylvania working in both 16mm and digital video. His films and videos explore and interrogate bodies, identities, and places shaped by rigid boundaries and porous peripheries; his camera design often emulating such strict cultural and physical structures. Moss’ films have exhibited widely at festivals and venues throughout the globe, including Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, Edinburgh International, Chicago Underground, Brooklyn, Crossroads, Cinequest, Athens, Maryland, and Anthology Film Archive in New York. He teaches production, history, and theory at Franklin & Marshall College.
grayDUCK was founded in 2010 in South Austin, and relocated to East Austin in 2014. In our art-energized neighborhood, we strive to exhibit the work of exceptional artists while creating a welcoming place for everyone: viewers, artists and neighbors. Monthly shows highlight artist’s work from a broad range of experience, both locally and nationally. Our refurbished 100-year old house is a hybrid of new and old, clean lines and comfortable wood. The inviting space with a modern sensibility is a beautiful place for artwork, poetry readings, film, music and performance, a place where art is integral to everyday life.