Join Urban Video Project for a screening of the No Emoji for Ennui program, followed by a Q&A with filmmakers Lana Z Caplan, Ross Meckfessel, Alison Nguyen, and Matt Whitman, on Thursday, February 24 at 6:30 p.m. EST.

For those unable to attend in-person, we will offer the screening a second time as a live stream on Thursday, March 10 at 6:30 p.m. EST.

Both events are FREE & OPEN to the public.

This event is held in conjunction with the public exhibition, No Emoji for Ennui, which will be projected by Light Work UVP on the facade of the Everson Museum of Art from January 27 thru March 26, 2022. More info

Program (Total Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes)

Lana Z Caplan, Autopoiesis
2019 | 7:15  

#aerialskiers #PyeongChangWinterOlympics #divers #LeniRiefenstal #Olympia #OpticalIllusions #SpeculativelyGeneratedOuterSpace #SelfHypnosis #SunRa #SpaceIsThePlace #4ECognition #AssaultByHashtags #MeToo #BlackLivesMatter #StillMarching #GiletJaune #Brexit #IdeasofUtopia #AfroFuturism #HashtagActivism #YouAreASystem #ConstantlyBuffeted #Maintain #LoveWins

Lana Z Caplan works across various media, including single-channel films and videos in essay form, interactive installations, video art, and photography. Her work is inspired by notions of utopia and the relationship of the present to history and memory. Caplan has exhibited and screened at Anthology Film Archives (New York), Antimatter Film Festival (Victoria, CA), Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City), Chicago Underground Film Festival, CROSSROADS Film Festival, IC Docs (Iowa City),  Inside Out Art Museum (Beijing), Microscope Gallery (New York), Moving Image Festival (Scotland), Museo Tamayo, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and San Francisco Cinematheque’s Alchemy Film. Caplan’s work is represented by Gallery NAGA (Boston) and her films are distributed by Collectif Jeune Cinéma (Paris) and Filmmaker’s Cooperative (New York).

lanazcaplan.com

Ross Meckfessel, Estuary
2021 | 12:00 | 16mm stereo sound

When you question the very nature of your physical reality it becomes much easier to see the cracks in the system. Estuary charts the emotional landscape of a time in flux. Inspired by the proliferation of computer-generated social media influencers and the growing desire to document and manipulate every square inch of our external and internal landscapes, Meckfessel considers the ramifications of a world where all aspects of life are curated and malleable. As time goes on, all lines blur into vector dots.

Ross Meckfessel is an artist and filmmaker who works primarily in Super 8 and 16mm film. His films often emphasize materiality and poetic structures while depicting the condition of modern life through an exploration of apocalyptic obsession, contemporary ennui, and the technological landscape. His work has screened internationally and throughout the United States including in Antimatter Film Festival (Victoria, CA), IC Docs (Iowa City), Internationales Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, New York Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS Film Festival, The Artifact Small Format Film Festival (awarded best 16mm film), and Toronto International Film Festival.

rossmeckfessel.com

Alison Nguyen, My Favorite Software Is Being Here
2020-21 | 19:47 | 

A collaboration between Nguyen and a machine learning program created with Achim Koh, Andra8 is a simulacral subaltern created by an algorithm and raised by the Internet in isolation in a virtual void. From the apartment where she has been “placed,” Andra8 works as a digital laborer, surviving off the data from her various “freemium” jobs as virtual assistant, data janitor, life coach, aspiring influencer, and content creator.  As she multitasks throughout the day, Andra8 is monitored and surveilled, finding herself overwhelmed by a web of global client demands. Something begins to trouble Andra8: her life depends on her compulsory consumption and output of human data—or so she’s been told. Andra8 explores the implications of such an existence, and what happens when one attempts to subvert them.

Alison Nguyen is a New York City-based artist whose work spans video, installation, performance, and new media. Her screenings include Ann Arbor Film Festival, Channels Festival International Biennial of Video Art, CPH:DOX, Edinburgh International Film Festival, e-flux, International Film Festival Oberhausen, Microscope Gallery, Open City Documentary Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS Film Festival, and True/False Film Festival. Nguyen’s residencies and fellowships include BRIC, the International Studio & Curatorial Program, The Institute of Electronic Arts, Signal Culture, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, and Vermont Studio Center. Her grant awards include the Foundation for Contemporary Art, NYSCA, and The New York Community Trust. In 2018, Filmmaker Magazine featured Alison Nguyen in their “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”  In 2021 she received a NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellowship in Video/Film. 

alisonnguyen.com

Matt Whitman, CAN’T ANSWER YOU ANYMORE (ON FACES) 
2019 | 2:19 | Super8 film transferred to video | Silent | Color

Matt Whitman, HOW MUCH LONGER (ON BALLONS)
2019 | 2:27 | Super8 film transferred to video | Silent | Color

These poetically elliptical, darkly humorous pieces feature extreme close-ups of the detritus of online interaction—emojis, gifs—shot on Super8 film. This medium’s low resolution and prominent film grain defamiliarize the textureless screen images while out-of-sync framerates create a fluttering, off-kilter vision of the present as future past.

Matt Whitman is a New York City-based artist working with moving images, photography, installation, writing, and performance. He has exhibited and screened his work widely at such sites as 8 fest (Toronto), Anthology Film Archives (New York City), Brooklyn Film Festival (New York City), Ethan Cohen Gallery (New York City), La MaMa (New York City), SF Cinematheque (San Francisco), The Front (New Orleans), The Kitchen (New York City), The Lab (San Francisco), and Unexposed Microcinema (Durham, NC). He has taught at Parsons School of Design since 2014.

mattwhitman.com

ADDITIONAL WORKS FEATURED IN THE SCREENING + Q&A EVENTS

Tulapop Saenjaroen, People on Sunday
Thailand | 2020 | 20:53 

People on Sunday is a reinterpretation, a response, and a homage to the 1930 German silent film, Menschen Am Sonntag. However, this response arises from a different context, different country, different era, and different working conditions. People on Sunday comprises episodic stories of moving-image-related workers who work in the same performance-art-video project about free time.

Tulapop Saenjaroen is an artist and filmmaker currently based in Bangkok, Thailand. His recent works investigate the correlations between image production and production of subjectivity as well as the paradoxes intertwining control and freedom in late capitalism. In combining the genres of narrative and the essay film, he explores subjects such as tourism, self care, and free labor. Saenjaroen received his MFA in Fine Art Media from The Slade School of Fine Art and MA in Aesthetics and Politics from CalArts.

Saenjaroen has exhibited and screened his work internationally at sites including 25FPS (Zagreb), Asia Culture Center (Gwangju), Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival, CROSSROADS at SFMOMA, FICVALDIVI (Chile), Harvard Film Archive, Images Festival (Toronto), International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Locarno Film Festival, Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Museum of the Moving Image (New York City), Open City Documentary (London), and Seoul International New Media Festival.

tulapop.wordpress.com

Accessibility

CART services are available on request; please contact with requests no later than noon February 10.

All videos except for Alison Nguyen’s My Favorite Software Is Being Here are captioned. A transcript of Nguyen’s piece is available here.

To make accommodation requests or ask questions about facilities, please contact info@lightwork.org or 315-443-2450.

Sponsors

This event is co-presented with the Visiting Artist Lecture Series of the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts School of Art.