Directors Lounge on Friday at a different
location in Schöneberg, and with an amazing
artist from California: Christina McPhee
Directors Lounge Special Screening:
CHRISTINA MCPHEE
The Delicate Landscape of Crisis
Friday, 15 April, 2011
21:00
at REMISE
FREIES MUSEUM BERLIN
Potsdamer Strasse 91
10785 Berlin-Schöneberg
A premier survey of California-based McPhee's
experimental films from 2002-2011 will screen
Friday at Freies Museum, Berlin
http://www.freies-museum.com/
Christina McPhee's video work is made of combined
textures, colors and details of the landscapes
she is exploring. The flow and beauty of her kind
of compositing lies in its immersive qualities,
which may even become hypnotic. The colorful
layered textures the artist is creating with
video are not unlike her paintings, composed by
layers of expressive drawing lines.
The artist is specifically exploring landscapes
of destruction and landscapes that are shaped by
large technological installations for energy
production. San Ardo Oil Fields in Monterey
County is a place for one of her videos, it is
the biggest area of oil explorations in
California. The film is a composition in red.
Landscape, nature, moving oil pumps and spills of
water, are combined with footage of Carolee
Schneeman's famous 1964 performance 'Meat Joy.'
Oil spills (of paint) on canvas, on bodies and on
natural soil become one of a kind for the viewer.
("Meat Oil Joy Paint: A Tribute to Carolee
Schneemann " (2010).
One may think, that the kind of beauty Christina
McPhee creates and the subject of her films
contradict each other. The artist however would
respond, that it is exactly this kind of
contradiction she is aiming for. Living on the
Californian coast close to Big Sur, a scenic area
where many artists and writers found retreat to
create work in the past, Christina has been
sensitized for the scale of man-made destruction
happening in so called remote natural sites, and
for the contradictions of modern civilization
spreading into areas of rough nature, including
deserts, swamps and geological active zones. "I
am opportunistic too. I shoot what I find. It is
a kind of guerilla filmmaking." The sign
forbidden to photograph" just triggers her
interest, and makes her find ways around for both
shooting the swamps on the North American coast,
affected by the oil disaster from the oil
platform Deepwater Horizon ("Deep Horizon", 2010)
and the area of destruction called "Ground Zero"
in Manhattan, N.Y. ("Seven After Eleven", 2008).
"I never ask for permission." The recorded
footage to her then becomes material for her art.
"Video has some material quality like painting."
She focuses on details and nuances as indicators
of massive environmental change.
Christina McPhee believes in the power of
visualization. The artist searches for layers of
future possibilities, latent in the very places
of crisis that seem most desperate. In this
respect, the material aesthetic and beauty of her
films point to a chance for transformation even
in the most traumatic sites.
Christina McPhee comes to Berlin for this
screening and will be happy to discuss her films
with you.
Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr
http://www.directorslounge.net
http://www.freies-museum.com/
More infos, images and complete text:
http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/index.html
with support from Walden http://www.galerie-walden.de/
and Galerie Suomesta http://www.suomestagalleria.net/
--
richfilm productions, Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Osnabrücker Str. 25, D-10589 Berlin
eMail Adresse: [email protected]
Homepage !!! http://www.kw-eisenlohr.de
Film Produktion: http://www.richfilm.de
Telefon: int.- 49 - (0)30 - 3409 5343 (BERLIN)
--
rohrpost - deutschsprachige Liste zur Kultur digitaler Medien und Netze
Archiv: http://www.nettime.org/rohrpost
http://post.in-mind.de/pipermail/rohrpost/
Ent/Subskribieren: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rohrpost/
