FILMIDEO @ The Newark Museum

Silvana DMikos: The Spirits of Candombe (Uruguay) 6:30
The Spirits of Candombe video, forms a connection between music, fantasy and religion and shows us how similar music can have different realities. Candombe had its roots in African religious music and was brought to Uruguay by slaves in colonial times. They played music together, to substitute for more traditional religious practice, and from this music created the traditional Uruguayan popular Carnival music. When Candombe is played in other South American or Caribbean countries like Brazil and Cuba it’s known as Candombe, and only heard at religious services and celebrations.

Peter Mack: Playing My Favorite Shapes (USA) 1:30
Various guitar notes (or ‘shapes’) played and animated by Peter Mack.

Mark Franz: Rocking Mirror (New World Symphony and AIGA)- (Ohio ) 3:00
This visual interpretation of Rocking Mirror from Takemitsu’s Yureru kagami no yoake references the tradition of visual music, and the work of artists such as Oscar Fishinger, Hans Richter, and Wassily Kandinsky, by creating a synesthetic experience based on non-objective imagery.

Mauricio Saenz: Of Islands and Unicorns (Mexico) 7:30
The idea of “island” is visually like a panorama showing two distant points, each one producing its own sense of fiction and reality. In such isolated territory, utopic thinking functions as ideology, limiting what can be seen to only that which is at hand.

Rui Hu: Metropolitan Triangle Garden (China / USA) 3:53
In this experimental animation, statues in the museum participate in a destructive performance triggered by software glitches and misused simulation, turning the space into a madhouse theater with classical beauty and digital chaos, attempting to provoke the sense of history, turmoil, and technological sublime.

Peter Mack: Alphabet (USA)
The English alphabet animated and performed by Peter Mack.

Carlo Ferraris: I’m No Longer Obsessed With Winning (NY) 3:55
The title “I am not more obsessed with winning” expresses the apparent criticism of the super competitive context of the world of contemporary art The video explores the relationship between visual arts and music, declining a simple sound typical of Hip Hop culture with the resumption of a short walk through the streets of New York

James Chrzan: Conversation In Somerville, MA (Chicago, IL) 1:17
A confused memory of a conversation with a friend.

Edward Ramsay-Morin: Lithics (USA) 3:51
For this film, I was interested in creating an origins story that employed imagery of stone artifacts. Origin stories are often set in a timeless, ambiguous space populated with archetypal characters. The imagery used in “Lithics” was selected to parallel these motifs. Stone artifacts from Paleolithic, Neolithic, Cycladic, and Greek periods reside in the same space with mid-20th century computers. Non-corporeal entities act as agents of transformation. Imagery captured from mid to late 20th century telescopes serve as the backdrop for each scene. The stone in the opening scene, once transformed, returns to its original state at the end of the animation, suggesting a process a regeneration and renewal.

Pik-Shuen Fung: Oceans (NY) 2:15
Scenes of women in my family playing mahjong are punctuated by clips of the ocean. Oceans is a meditation on life, death, and the things we do to pass the time between.

Mark Franz: Body Without Organs (Ohio) 2:34
“Body without organs” is an experimental animation that explores the mystical singularity of the body in terms of its separate functioning parts. Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari use this term to refer to the “cosmic egg” of life.

Nancy Wyllie: Reenactments (Rhode Island) 2:30
Footage shot over a four year period in a variety of settings including Ford’s Theater, battle reenactments in Pawtuxet Village, RI in celebration of the 1772 sinking of the British schooner The Gaspee as well as dispatch exchanges during the Aurora Colorado Theater shootings and an actual student account of the Sandy Hook massacre provide the narrative lineage for this experimental short. The use of surveillance and the invasion of privacy are set against a security breach at Ford’s Theater in a face off with the Second Amendment. Gun violence in the United States has reached unprecedented levels. Gun control debates continue to divide the country and call into question the contributing historical, cultural and sociopolitical factors that have entered into the national conversation. As a Professor of Art & Digital Media at the largest community college in New England, my job now includes active shooter training. It is the voice of RI State Police Tactical Team Commander Derek Borek heard in the background of ‘Reenactments’ that makes this American crisis ever more chilling as he describes the strategies that faculty and staff members should employ in an effort to protect themselves and their students during critical moments while waiting for police to arrive.

Neil Needleman: Two Landscapes (NY) 3:00
The conflict between the landscape the eye sees and the one the mind remembers.

Dominique Duroseau: Baldwin’s Nigger and I Listen (Newark, NJ) 2:40
This video shows a woman of color (the artist) in blackface make-up, listening to James Baldwin as he talks about the word “Nigger”. It’s a charged and multi-layered piece that collapses many issues and references from different points in time; each time through, it ends with a revelation.

Greg Leshe: Flying In The Museum (NJ) 2:30
This is a private performance I made in the Newark Museum during my residency in 2004.