Experimental Response Cinema Announces Fall 2014 Season

Chris Paul Daniels. *Election/Coverage*. 2013.

Phil Solomon. *Remains to be Seen*. 1989.

For a PDF version of this press release, click here

CONTACT:
Ekrem Serdar
admin@ercatx.org

Austin, Texas -Experimental Response Cinema is excited to inaugurate a new year of cinematic activities. Our mission to bring moving image art to Austin continues full steam with a wave of classic and contemporary works along with a number of visiting guests.

Beginning August 24^th, 2014, with a screening guest-curated by Austin-based artist Russell Etchen entitled AN BREAKPOINT, our Fall 2014 season will include: a survey of work by early video artist Andy Mann; our annual salon / showcase ERCATX, featuring Austin-based moving image artists; CINEMA BABYLON, a travelling screening series exploring the excesses of narrative and the unravelling of experimental film; visiting artist Jodie Mack, who will present her acclaimed show LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE; Home Movie Day, the annual, worldwide celebration where the public is invited to share their home movies; A Minor Cinema, a program showcasing a certain tendency in experimental film from the 80s; the Basement Media Fest, a travelling a survey of contemporary artists working with lo-def, lo-tech, and lo-fi motion picture techniques; New Jersey-based visiting artist Gregg Biermann, who will be presenting his digital explorations of film history; Jennifer Montgomery’s Deliver, a parody of John Boorman’s man-movie Deliverance with an all-female cast; a program of works by visiting artist Peggy Ahwesh, a highly influential artist who has been active since the ‘80s, and whose playful explorations of gender, cultural identity, and language have been shown at festivals, galleries and museums around the world; and Journeys from Berlin/1971 by Yvonne Rainer, an investigation of terrorism, radicalism, and rehabilitation, and cited as one of the finest films by the vital American artist.

Beginning in mid-October, Experimental Response Cinema will also debut a new program in which we commission program notes for our visiting artists. Written by fellow artists, scholars, and curators who have a deep knowledge of the artists in question, these notes will provide a greater context and space of appreciation for the work of our guests.

As always, we will continue to collaborate with our friends at the Mad Stork Cinema, who will announce their events in the coming weeks. We may add surprise events as well. Click here to subscribe to our mailing list and be in touch.

Programmers
Jarrett Hayman
Ekrem Serdar
Scott Stark
Rachel Stuckey

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August 24th, 2014
Russell Etchen Presents AN BREAKPOINT
@ Museum of Human Achievement
For our season opener, we welcome Austin-based artist and curator Russell Etchen who will present a program of experimental, found, and transgressive video. Works to be screened include: AIR CONDITIONING (2005) by Giuseppe Andrews, The Urgency (2013) by Jacob Ciocci, among other works.

September 6th, 2014
MANN ON THE STREET: Videos by Andy Mann
@ grayDUCK Gallery
An active participant of the Videofreex and Top Value Television groups, Andy Mann (1949-2001) was “one of the seminal figures in the early video scene” (Gene Youngblood), praised for his groundbreaking camerawork. His videos have been widely exhibited, including the 1973 and 1975 Whitney Biennials at The Whitney Museum of American Art; the 1973 Sao Paulo Bienal; the 1977 Documenta VI, Kassell, Germany; as well as exhibitions at the Walker Art Center; Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art; and Leo Castelli Gallery. This program will present several of Mann’s most vital contributions to early video and the Street Tape Genre. Curated and presented by Jarrett Hayman. Special thanks to the Aurora Picture Show for providing us with the tapes of Andy Mann.

September 17th, 2014
CINEMA BABYLON
w/ curators Michael Bucuzzo & Christina Kolozsvary in Person
@ Farewell Books
CINEMA BABYLON is a traveling US screening series planned for September of 2014, showcasing a program of emerging independent filmmakers exploring both the excesses of narrative, and the unraveling form of experimental film. This series is supported by the Millennium Film Workshop. With filmmakers and programmers Michael Bucuzzo & Christina Kolozsvary in person, and featuring work by Lindsay Denniberg, Rachel Maclean, Gina Marie Napolitan, Mike Olenick, and Stephen Quinlan.

September 27th, 2014
ERCATX III
@ MASS Gallery
ERCATX is our annual survey / salon / showcase of Austin-based moving image artists. Stay tuned for the full lineup!

October 8th, 2014
LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE: Jodie Mack in Person
@ Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz
Experimental Response Cinema, in collaboration with the BLAFFER Art Museum and the Aurora Picture Show, is excited to present the acclaimed program that’s been touring the world, and featuring a live performance by the filmmaker of Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project!
“As far as arriving on a national scene, Jodie Mack must be considered 2013‘s breakout star of the avant-garde. With no less than five new works premiering this calendar year alone, the infectiously animated Mack makes films of equally enchanting, hand-crafted care. Combining elements of analog animation, stop-motion miscellany, performance art physicality, and rock opera histrionics, the forty-five-minute Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project, serenaded by Mack’s live vocal re-imagining of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, is not only the young filmmaker’s most ambitious project to date, but also a monument to familial economics and a dizzying in-person A/V experience in its own right.” (Fandor)

October 19th, 2014
HOME MOVIE DAY + A Minor Cinema
@ MASS Gallery
October 18th is Home Movie Day! Home Movie Day is celebrated at venues around the world; members of the public are invited to bring their home movies on a variety of formats as careful projectionists help screen them. This edition of Home Movie Day will happen in the late afternoon hours at MASS Gallery.

Later in the evening, Experimental Response Cinema will present “A Minor Cinema”. Based on a frequently-quoted article by Tom Gunning regarding a certain tendency in 1980s experimental film, this screening will feature rarely screened films on Super 8mm and 16mm. Including work by Nina Fonoroff, Peter Herwitz, Lewis Klahr, Mark LaPore, Phil Solomon, and others. Programmed by Ekrem Serdar.

October 25th, 2014
BASEMENT MEDIA FEST
w/ curators LJ Frezza and Nicholas Tamburo in Person
@ Farewell Books
Experimental Response Cinema and Farewell Books present an evening with the Basement Media Fest, with curators LJ Frezza and Nicholas Tamburo in person. The Basement Media Fest is a survey of contemporary artists working with lo-def, lo-tech, and lo-fi motion picture techniques. Founded in response to hi-res commercial media and corporate-sponsored film fests, BASEMENT is a celebration of the mediated experience as aesthetic experience. Featuring work by Ben Balcom, Andy Birtwistle, Stephen Broomer, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Chris Paul Daniels, Anja Dornieden & Juan David Gonzalez Monroy, Scott Fitzpatrick, N. Heppding, Faith Holland, Salise Hughes, Josh Lewis, Jordan Lopez, Ryan Murray, Dylan Pasture, Tyler Tamburo, Laura Thatcher, Emma Varker. Curated by LJ Frezza and Nicholas Tamburo.

October 30th, 2014
UTOPIA VARIATIONS: Gregg Biermann in Person
@ grayDUCK Gallery
A widely screened film and video artist who has been working since the late ‘80s, Experimental Response Cinema is excited to host Gregg Biermann, who will be in Austin to present a survey of work he completed over the last decade. Often working with footage from Hollywood classics like The Wizard of Oz (1939), Rear Window (1954), North by Northwest (1959), and others, Biermann’s work takes advantage of the possibilities of digital cinema to advance rigorous compositional strategies.
“My work comes out of the avant-garde tradition of film as visual art. Avant-garde cinema is an important and relatively young artistic project. While it maintains its scrappy integrity, and while many significant works have been created in subsequent decades, current practitioners have not fully moved out of the shadow of the prodigious 1960s and ’70s. The development of new tools has often determined aesthetic innovations. Consequently, I’ve looked to new technologies to discover vast unspoiled frontiers no longer available to small gauge filmmakers interested in exploring cinematic form. Most of these works could not have been achieved in earlier periods and are deeply rooted in digital technology. The meaning of digital technology lies in its ability to copy, alter, mask, fragment, super-impose, mutate, reflect, transmit and reframe.” (Gregg Biermann)

November 3rd, 2014
Jennifer Montgomery’s DELIVER
@ Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz
A parody / remake / reprogramming of John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972) with an all-female cast of experimental film and video artists, Jennifer Montgomery’s Deliver (2008) “is much more than a simple gender inversion. Montgomery takes her funny thought experiment to surprising and provocative depths, and Deliver tweaks our understanding of big ideas like gender, violence, birth and nature: an example of independent cinema at its finest.” (Penny Lane). Programmed by Rachel Stuckey.
“My film’s title, Deliver, refers to the re-birthing experience of surviving extreme physical challenges, the product-obsessed nature of the film industry, and, of course, the fact that it is only women who can, biologically, truly deliver.” (Jennifer Montgomery)

November 22nd, 2014
Parler Femme: Peggy Ahwesh in Person
@ Museum of Human Achievement
Experimental Response Cinema is excited to host Peggy Ahwesh for a presentation of “Parler Femme”. Originally presented at NYU as “an experimental lecture”, “Parler Femme” collects a number of recent works by the renowned artist, including Bethlehem (2009), The Ape of Nature (2010), and a project involving a 20 year collection of answering machine tapes titled Inside Circle: rants and confessions (2013). One of the most influential artists and educators working today, Peggy Ahwesh is oft-described as a media bricoleur; her playful work elaborates on the aesthetics of 1960s and ’70s American avant-garde film with an investigation of cultural identity and modes of subjectivity in the present. Her work has been shown widely, including at the Filmmuseum, Frankfurt, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Museu d’Art Contemporani Barcelona (MACBA), the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among other venues. She is Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College.

December 9th, 2014
Yvonne Rainer’s Journeys from Berlin/1971
@ Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz
Experimental Response Cinema presents this now-classic film by legendary dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer. Centering around a series of psychoanalysis sessions (with film scholar Annette Michelson as “the patient”), Rainer’s film investigates topics of terrorism, radicalism, and rehabilitation. Programmed by Ekrem Serdar.
“The subject matter of the film is pursued and elaborated in parallel – sometimes contingent, sometimes contrasting – investigations of political violence/suicide; self-determination/the power of the State; psychological introspection/political engagement; self knowledge/altruism; and American/European relations to these matters. The film utilizes formal strategies that gained prominence in 1960’s art and dancemaking, namely the inherent expressiveness of quotidian gesture and imagery, and the relativity of meaning resulting from ‘radical,’ random, or ambiguous juxtapositions.” (Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre)